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Published: August 19th 2009
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¨Se murio por flojo¨ dijo la Dona Augustina de 90 anos! Her face told hundreds of stories all at once. Eventhough she had a body of an old woman, this lil lady moved at the speed of light! Swift movements helped her keep up with her sheep as she coaxed them into their corral. Spindling her sheeps wool, she soon forgot we were there. I broke her trance as asked my next question. La Dona habia vivido toda su vida en ese pueblito, Chaguanaca ....varios kilometros de la cuidad de Sucre
BOLIVIA. There she raised quinea pigs, rabbits, chickens, sheep, sold ever thing imaginable out of her bedroom, liquor, water, cookies, she even had rooms for rent...she was INDEPENDENT! She needed noone but herself. She was fascinating and strong in every way...
We came to know la dona because we had hiked from Chataquila where we hiked down an INCA road and came to her village, Chaguanaca, here we were to sleep. But Noone was around when we arrived to the desolate town in the mountains. Later we found a man dressed in typical clothes and with broken spanish he told us to go to the school to get
info. On the way to the school, we found a lil info center but noone was there. So we sat in play ground of the school, until a school teacher came out and told us that Dona Augstina had a room to rent us for the night. We walked over to meet this lady. With perfect spanish she showed us around...her dark room was filled with goodies she was selling, under her ceiling hung dried dead lil humingbirds in a macrabe way, three beds lay against the wall and one lil dirty cat scattering about in the room. I think we spent about 2 hrs speaking to her. I rudely asked her how old she was and she laughed and replied ¨soy de 15 anos!¨.
That night we splet in our tent next to the info center. The mountain air was crisp, stars filled the sky and my body ached for some sleep. We had hiked 3 hours under the desert hot sun, so I was tired. I crawled into my sleeping bag, a few hours later I woke up. It was freezing And my sleeping bag was not keeping me warm, my lower extremeties were frozen but
I tried my hardest to forget the cold and sleep. Finally, morning came, kat and i packed up and started our hike into the next mountain village, Maragua. On our hike down we came across 5 lil kids, all carrying longs sticks. We stopped for 5 min to talk....they had been walking three hours to get to Chaguanaca for school and the sticks they carried were LeÑa for the teachers to use for the fire stove. These kids were no shy, they asked if we had candy, cookies and water. But kat had eaten all the candies, so we just gave them water.
We continued our hike. The scenery was breath taking. Mountians, everywhere, Swifts flying all around us, green parakeets chatting away...villagers walking their cows from town to town...some of them tried speaking to us but with them speaking QUECHUA and us only speaking spanish, we tried our best in understanding each other through sign language. At some point we had two big bulls come our way and soon behind them appeared this beautiful young quechuan girl sprinting behind them, throwing rocks at them in order to make them go faster...She sprinted in her green skirt and
rubber made sandals as her long braids lashed around as she galloped like a gazale. At one point she ran up this mountain to get something and here i was walking slowly up the mountain huffing and puffing! Whew, to have her strength!
4 hours later we arrived to Maragua. We stopped at the local store..there a young guy 20 manned it. Tired, sweety, we sat with him not speaking. Just starring at each other. We broke the silence by asking for water. Kat asked about the famed volcano with the crater. ¨Its 2 hrs away, and an old man lives next to it and you have to pay him to visit there¨..baffled we somehow believed him but we were too tired to ask if this was true. ¨if you want a guide to take you, it´ll cost you 120 bolivianos...and if you want to spend the night here in the cabanas, it´ll cost you 65 bolivianos each, meal included¨, kat and I just listened. ¨Lets go find the volcano on our own¨ kat said. I was too tired and didnt wantt o hike 2 hours more. I followed. But soon a fight broke out between kat and
I ...It was the hot sun, it was because we had been traveling together for 20 days now, it was because we were frustated, it was because we had been so far away from the comforts of home, it was because we were woman with sensitive feeling...whatever the reason we fought out loud, in front of the school, as kids watched, as a teacher watched, but noone existed in the moment to us but us two..in the moment, CRYING, telling each other why we were so angry each other...¨well, u didn´t do this, and I expected much more...blah..blah...¨ but I tellyou, after it, we felt so much better, its like a 12 ton elephant had been lifted off our chests. ¨let´s go back to sucre, hopefully we can get on that tourist bus thats leavinga y 6pm¨. Transporatation in those villages was hard to come by, so when theres an opportunity to take the first vehicle you take it. But it was barely 2pm. So we sat and waited around. The village kids were out of school now and with two tourists to hassle, they did not waste their time. We were surrounded by 20. Laughing, talking, asking questions back and forth, things changed quickly. Not knowing what we had done wrong, they were now throwing sand and stones at me and kat....a few 6 yr olds were running around throwing sand at each other in their eyes, some were scrambling up and down the bus, spilling two water bottles that were left on the side of the bus....¨Dame dinero¨, the lil girls exclaimed, ¨Comprame esto¨, they excalimed...I would have but we really didnt have any more money with us, just enough for the bus back. Kat and I got scarred and moved away from the kids but they follwed us wherever we went. Even when we went to the toilet, they watched. Finally, more stones were thrown, we giot scarred and we banged on the door of the bus to see if the bus driver was in it. He was! We told him what was happening and he told us that yes, the kids from the village were actaully mean and that we had to be careful...He told us that one tourist from holland had a stone thrown at his forehead and he started bleeding! But the bus driver didnt let us on the bus, so we just sat besides it and hoped nothing would happen to us. One lil boy screamed, ¨Soy de Caracter fuerte!!!¨, he kept saying it over and over. That he had a Firce character...I then wondered what those men from the village were like.
Finally the toursits from the bus came back from their hike and we were relieved to see them. ¨can you please take us back to Sucre, please we dont want to stay in this village¨....They did! Later we told the guide what had happened and he told us that the story of the volcano was false, that no lil old man lived next to it, and he told us THAT WE WERE IN THE VOCANOES CRATER, he even told us not to trust the lil kids from the village!... man, was i glad to be out of there!
It scared me that these lil innocent looking kids behaved that way...was it because they were in such isolated areas, with the dessert hot sun frying their brains, was it too many damn tourists barging in on their way of living, was it that their mothers and dads were not their to correct their behaviour!?? Who knows, but them kids were MEAN!
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Rancherita
Claudia Cavazos
hey hey Dee....yeah, Claudia V, her husband and I had a good lunch together in buenos aires. It was awesome seeing friendly faces from back home!