Wine in Tarija and conversational confusion

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Odds and Sods

Spanish Lessons

As you heard from Simon our rather elegant elderly neighbours invited us around for a BBQ last weekend (called Asado here). What he forgot to tell you was that in our efforts to make converstation with them our misuse of Spanish nearly caused an international incident and contintues to be the source of much hilarity...

Over dinner we asked our neighbours if they had heard the kiddies party that was going on in our street the night before. There were startled looks all round and we couldnt understand what was wrong. Luckily our neighbours (who dont speak English) had invited their friends around who do speak English - let me explain..

The Lonely Planet our Guidebook gives you the low down on colloquial Spanish for each country and in the Bolivia section it says that in Bolivia a party is called La Bomba. We had used this term sucessfully with a prostitute in Villa Turnari the day before the Asado (dont ask!) and so we used it again.

Unfortunately its usage with the over 70´s isnt that widespread and we had inadvertently told our hosts that the neighbour´s children had a bomb next door!

Mishaps continued this week in our own Spanish lessons when in an effort to simulate a converstation at the doctors Simon was explaining how he injured his knee through dancing (bailar). Stunned looks once again as bailar has a similar pronounciation to bala which is a gun!

Tarija

This weekend (21 May) we have come to Tarija in the far south of the country which is the centre of Bolivian wine production and where the locals consider themselves more Spanish or Argentine than Bolivian.

Time to take our first internal flight in Bolivia. Brand spanking new
terminals, rather older 727´s! All the flights in Bolivia go round in a
big circle between Cocha, La Paz, Santa Cruz, Tarija and Trinidad and you just join the merry-go-round and get off at your destination.

Waiting at the gate the chairs begin to fill up with rather good looking guys (if not a bit older than their European counterparts) wearing sports gear, its Aurora the Cochabamba football team. This provided a welcome diversion for 15 minutes or so until it dawned on us that we were about to embark on a trans andean flight with a football team... anyone remember the film ‘Alive’? of course it wasnt so glamerous when you considered them a
potential dinner!

We later told our student how we had travelled with the famous aurora team - they were less than impressed and it turns out they are the worst team in COchabamba and no-one follows them!

Anyway it turned out to be the most amazing flight we have ever taken. Cocha is nestled in a valley at 2500m and La paz our next stop is at 4000m.

We flew over breathtaking andean peaks with tiny roads snaking over the top and huge valleys below. Twenty or so minutes in to the flight when we´re cruising at 20,000ft we´re tucking in to our snack when not more than 1 mile away from us hones into view a peak which is higher than us - this place is surreal! The flight to La paz took 30 mins, this is a trip we´ve taken 3 times by coach now and the average length is 7 hours.

The flight from La Paz to Tarija was just as stunning because we could appreciate the size of the Altiplano ( a high plane at 4000m) and could see the Salar Uyuni the worlds largest salt flat where we are going wc 4th June.

Everyone had told us that Tarija has the same weather as Cocha (warm days, lots of sun) so we were a little suprised to step of the plane into a chilly wind. It seems that Tarija does have the same climate except for when the Surasco comes, a chilly wind from the south - a bit like our north wind, in which case it is freezing!

On Saturday we toured some vinyards and appreciated just how small and unmodern Bolivian wine production is. Not to worry we sheltered from the chilly winds with some of the samples to keep us warm.

We also visited the gran chaco hinterlands (think grand canyon style mesa butts) where there are amazing fossils which are washed out by the rain. Here we found (literally you just pick them out of the ground) glyptodon shells, giant sloth teeth and other bits and pieces of the enormous herbivores that roamed the area in the cuaternary period. They also find bits and pieces of the Andean Elephant here including 6ft long tusks on a regular basis.

Of course we took the opportunity to sample the local wines over dinner which was a rather suprising but totally yummy cheese fondue topped of with liquer coffees (total 8 pounds! Viva Bolivia!)

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Photos

Andes
View from the flight to Tarija of an Andean mountain

Bodega in Tarija
Wine making the old way - stomping the grapes with wellies!

Comments

[Hunter Cashdollar]

Hunter Cashdollar
I did not know Southern Bolivia was known for wine. But looking closer at the geography I can see why.