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Published: July 23rd 2007
ENGLISH VERSION
(les francais, y a le meme pour vous un peu plus bas)
Hello, the world here, there and beyond
We apologize for those awaiting to hear whether we eventually got out of the strikes still… The journey was quite epic, but we got out!! We re back in Crespieres (maaan, there was more internet network on top of Titicaca islands than here!!) We have never been happier to live in the forest, to rest in a hamac and listen to the birds and dream away back to the mountains under the stars. It’s two in the morning, Emilie is getting up in a few hours to go to Inverness (Scotland) and hasn’t packed yet --typical arnaud—Marion is going to Germany to write her thesis in a week. aaaand here is the final FINAL blog. Completely bilingual. Completely written by both of us.
So we are finally home. .It was quite an adventure to get here…isnt it always? That’s how we love it…
Where did we leave off…. Oh yeah, the jungle in Bolivia. We left the jungle a day late (traffic interrupted by snow storms of course) but this worked out
quite well since we had completely fallen for the village of Coroico. We d gone walking in the mountain-forest for hours already, in search of a waterfall -we were doing psychotherapy for Emilie-. Technically, normal people arrive to the fall in 1.5 hours….(yuan, the jungle is massive!!) Us, well, after 3 hours we started wondering where these damn falls were ( I told Em she just wasn’t mentally ready yet, she had to accept them first) Anyways, she only eventually accepted a tiny wimpy one…we somehow took a wrong, very wrong path and arrived three mountains further. It was hilarious though…we walked down to a village through the coca fields, that was like a ghost town (a secret bandito hide-out, translated Marion) We arrived to a football field with sheep at each strategic position (center and goalies) then to a basketball field full of coca leaves, with random people stepping on them. We thought both looked waaaaay to suspicious… Then we saw a huge house making what seemed dinosaur noises (it was a probably a pig house, they must have been millions in there) some scary stuff out there, I tell you. We came back hitch hiking with an engineer
to our favourite part of Coroico…The Plaza.
See, the plaza is the hangout place there, and is extremely entertaining. Kids laughing and running, hippies hippying about, indigenous travelors selling their art, mamas gossiping about the latest village scandal, old abuelos drinkin and singing, dogs chasing other dogs or tourists… all the village is there together in the evening, on this little plaza. The adolescent found a very bizarre activity which intrigued us, passionate village observers, which consists in walking around the plaza (this is a small plaza, and a long lasting activity) until they meet more friends, then go around some more with the newcomers. After only three days there, here we were, circling the plaza to blend in. We eventually met a really awesome guy, son of important political friends of Castro, Che and Chavez, hiding in the jungle learning Tai massages…Perfect Man. what better encounter for a last night in Bolivia, playing pool and learning about the latest independent movements…
We eventually left, as our plane date was advancing, and so were the strike movements. We were stuck in a strike twice. Once on the bolivia-peru frontier, when a massive teacher strike broke out and all
the busses were interrupted because the roads were blocked by angry people throwing stones....while we had to take the plane the next day in the afternoon from Puno lake Titicaca…still many bus hours away. The next morning, the busses were running again, so we felt very relieved and considered ourselves lucky. However, we learnt a couple hours later when we reached Puno, a city an hour from the airport, that there was a big strike there too! Peasants decided that they would attack the airport, and apparently it was quite destroyed...wooooops. big oops. Because there was really no alternative. all the roads were blocked to the airports near by that still had free seats...we felt quite hopeless in the middle of all this mess! our other plane was leaving from lima the following night...so we called to see if we could cancel and try to find another one a couple days later, not knowing when we’d be able to leave...people were saying that maybe the airport would reopen the next day but we were quite sceptical about that (and not just Emilie, who is the established sceptic of us 2) After a month and a half, we are quite familiar
with the Peruvian tradition of never wanting to let people down, and telling them what they want to hear if the truth is unknown… turns out we were right to have doubts, i think its still not running even today, and i think the entire city is in chaos now!
Happily, however mad all the plans seemed, after a day of phone calls to airports, Europe assistance, continental, and walking around town talking to locals to get reliable info…we were taking things rather well and found this whole thing quite funny. We ran into this group of Americans when we were starting to feel a tad low, and they were so amusing that it made us see everything under a new, entertaining angle. It was a group of young Christian volunteers who had come to Peru to "spread the message that God loves us all". After so much running around trying to find a way out, you can imagine how relieved and deeply reassured we were to learn that despite it all God loved us all! It was such a funny scene. imagine 8 Americans "on a mission", waiting with us outside in the busy Peruvian street for a
plane agency to open...we were smoking, all smelly and dirty on our 4th showerless day watching them in all their strangeness. They decided that it would be helpful if they all made a prayer circle on the sidewalk and prayed together for god’s protection. So that’s what they did! I think they were quite puzzled about us too, especially when their leader spoke to Marion and learnt that we were French, even though she spoke good English. Who would have known that someone could speak 2 different languages...wow...so, of course, Marion and I told them about our lives: Well Marion spoke, as Em couldn’t, obviously: she was her half sister, who didn’t speak English as she had been raised by our father and Marion by our mother in the states. u see, we were here to see our brother, jean François, who lived in the jungle ...they were quite impressed about how exciting our lives were, and so were we. They were about to take a bus to Arequipa, where an airport was open and seats were free. We had thought about that but people had advised us against it given that a strike was going on and that the
busses leaving would most likely be stuck in the middle of nowhere. This sounded oddly familiar!!! So we thought we wouldn’t try our luck this time. We warned them against it, (well I told Marion in French who then translated, as my English wasn’t so good...) but they didn’t seem alarmed. They probably thought that French girls shouldn’t be trusted! We learnt later that no busses got through, and that a few were attacked by people throwing stones at the windows. No one got hurt or anything, but I bet they must have done a lot of praying…
So a few hours after that, everything got better, perhaps because of God, Allah or the PachaMama who knows...we managed to find 2 free seats on a plane leaving from Cuzco, where we were a couple weeks ago. So we booked that, and took an 8 hours night bus to Cuzco, slept a few hours in the train station, and left the next morning. We arrived in Lima, the capital of Peru, and left our bags at the airport to go walk around the city. After about a half hour we realised that it might be a good idea to get
out of the streets, as we were the only gringas there, and there were a lot of dodgy looking Peruvian guys saying "hello hello, pretty pretty" all the time. We felt very vulnerable with all our backpacks and Peruvian sweaters that only tourists wear. Its like walking around with a sign saying "rob me I’m clueless". So in search for a safe and comfortable environment; we did what anybody would have done in such a situation: We went to see Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix. It was quite good we thought, all the cool magical tricks sound nice in Spanish. Emilie likes Ron a lot. She even dreamt about him.
After that, we went to visit this old guy we had met when we were at the Machu Pichu called Manuel. He gave us his address, and we were surprised to see that he was actually really rich, and lived in this amazing house where we rested a few hours. He was really nice, and fed us some good fancy food that we forced ourselves to eat as we had had some big fast food lunch a couple hours ago. We took a shower, a very
hot shower, which felt amazingly good after 5 days of smelliness. Later on he showed us around the city in his BMW and gave us some more fancy food that we again forced ourselves to eat. Here its really bad to say no to food, its like an insult... It felt very weird to be in such an environment after having spent so many days eating in markets and sleeping in cheap hotels. He drove us to the airport and we left, tired but happy to have finally reached our plane. The journey after that was quite long, especially for Marion who was sick, probably from all this food...it was really cool though because we had 10 hours in New York and we went out to explore the city. Marion used to live there, so we went to her old flat and saw her old flatmates. We had the most amazing bagel with cream cheese and salmon with herbs. People looked so clean and shiny. Compared to us anyways.
The plane from New York to Paris went by pretty fast; we had those cool individual TV screens with all the movies to choose from. So, we did what you,
fellow reader, would certainly had done: We watched Aladdin and sang along to the songs… A whoooole new wooorld!!! Don’t you dare close your eyes… We arrived in Paris where our parents came to get us (they actually recognized us and took us home! Who would have known), and we have been indulging in French life ever since. We would like to say that we are sad to leave Peru and all but for now, we feel so good. hot shower. gooooood food. Warm weather. Drinking wine in the middle of a corn field, seeing the sun rise lying down under the Eiffel tower…its all so relaxing. We are readapting slowly to the European ways. Putting toilet paper IN the toilet, and NOT in the bin, which sounds easy but is actually quite challenging. French people are quite funny in their own little way. The posh ones say stuff like Li-lali-laloooo. They don’t laugh at us so much. We feel a bit transparent in the street… all these gringos everywhere.
Ok, here is the sentimental part, which Emilie laughs at, cuz Marion writes, and it s very Li-la-lila-looo. It’s really weird to write this blog, knowing it’s the last.
It’s even weirder to separate tomorrow and go or own separate crazy ways… (take out the klinex here). We ve loved every bit of the way, the good, the bad and the smelly, and our dreams will be tainted by all the colors of the incredible adventure we shared. Thanks for following us every bit of the way, and worry not, we shall be back…
Special little note:
Sy, you’ve been our biggest fan. Li-lali-laloo. Get a life.
To all the people we made fun of, we hope you never read this. Especially to you, poussin. Sorry.
To all the others, we love you (or most of you anyways) and hope that you enjoyed reading all this silliness.
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Kirsty
non-member comment
ahhhh
ahh girls, its sad this is the last blog! Ive enjoyed reading all about your crazy adventures!!!