Boogie down Bolivia

South America » Bolivia
November 29th 2009

Published: December 21st 2009

Edit Blog Post

Jen n Jeff

PB240323

a local goes about his watery business

Okay, so I lied, this blog is not entirely set in Bolivia, a teeny bit of Peru sneaks in, but close enough right?

So after leaving the lovely Cusco we headed to the enormous Lake Titicaca, part of which is in Peru,and part in Bolivia. We went on a tour out to the Floating Islands, which are amazing. Nobody (or at least not our guide)
is sure when people began creating these islands, but create them they did. The islands are constructed by the inhabitants out of the roots of reeds that grow in parts of the lakes. They cut blocks of roots and soil, and these blocks float. They then tie the blocks together with poles and twine, and eventually the roots from neighbouring blocks all intertwine, forming one solid platform. This is then covered with a metre or so of reeds, and voila, you have a floating island. Oh yeah, and to stop it floating away they anchor it with big rocks tied to bits of rope. Pretty amazing, and almost their whole lives are lived on these islands in the middle of the lake, fishing, hunting waterbirds and weaving textiles. The islands are really springy to walk

PB240326

floating islands

on, and you can´t walk to close to the edge without risk of falling in, but they´re pretty ingenious. Even the house are woven from reeds. We had the pleasure of being invited into one of the homes by a friendly local called Jose, and even the bed was made of reeds... But Jose won his place in my heart when he brought out the dress-up gear. In no time jeff and I were kitted out, and you couldn´t tell us apart from the locals...except maybe for our height, and skin colour, and.......
After reluctantly handing back their clothes (I was particularly sad to part with my lime green jacket) we headed on a traditional woven boat to another island to rejoin the motorboat. A lovely way to travel, and a great place to visit.

We then headed to another island on the lake, although this one was a real, made of dirt and rock, island. Once there we headed to the homes of the locals, who are of a completely different culture to their floating neighbours on the lake, and even speak a different language. We learnt all about the importance of their traditional dress, and the meanings

PB240341

aerial view of floating island where we spent our time

associated with various pieces of clothing. For example, you can tell a man´s marital status and importance in the village by the colour of knitted beanie he wears, and the most important men in the village wear a bowler hat on top of their beanies. Also, the people of this island live together for one year before they get married, in order to find out whether they´re really suited - a very civilised approach i thought - although if they have a baby in that time they have to get married, no way round it. When we were told that the locals were going to perform a dance for us, and there´d be crowd participation, i knew without a doubt that I would be chosen, and chosen I was. I spent the next five minutes towering over the other dancers, swaying around like an idiot, but it was good fun.

Our next stop was across the border on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca, where we had grand plans of visiting Isla del Sol and Isla del la Luna (Islands of the Sun and Moon), but Jeff´s digestive tract had other ideas, and instead we spent four days in

PB240327

these are the biggest fish native to the lake - of course trout and kingfish have since been introduced, and the locals eat better

the lakeside town of Copacabana, Jeff watching cable TV in close proximity to a toilet, and me wandering around town, drinking nice coffee and sourcing dry crackers and 2-minute noodles.

Once Jeff felt up to the task of a bus trip, we headed to the Bolivian capital of La Paz. We were staying in the area of the witches market, so were greeted each morning with the sight of dried llama foetuses and bundles of herbs bedecking the neighbouring stalls. Strangely not as strange as it sounds, or maybe our ability to be suprised has been somewhat diminished by our months on the road. One of the highlights of La Paz was our visit to the coca museum, which gave an excellent history of the use of coca leaves in Bolivia, the cultivation of coca, and also the ´war on drugs´ being waged there. A particualrly interesting fact was that the Spanish clergy originally made the chewing of coca leaves illegal when they invaded Bolivia, claiming they were a tool of the devil, until they found out how much more productive it made the locals they´d enslaved to work their mines, at which point they legalised it,and just chucked

jeff gonzales gomez

jeff in front of jose´s house after jose worked his dress up magic

a ten percent tax on. Now that´s ruling!

Also good was seeing the President´s residence - worryingly you can see bullet holes in the facade, but there was no sign of any trouble when we were there, and really hasn´t been for about ten years. Little did we know at the time that a few days later we´d see the newly re-elected president on TV giving hs acceptance speech from the same balcony, but more of elections later.

Our final night in La Paz saw the second victory of the Magic Sausage travelling trivia team, victorious in a hostel bar full of raucous Irish folk, seeing Jeff even kissing the barman for the sake of the prize. Despite the fact the trivia competition degenerated into an Irish ditty singing mob, we maintained our dignity, and claimed our rightful place as winners. Watch out Sydney trivia circuits, when we return you´re in for a shake-up!

Our next stop in Bolivia was the colonial town of Sucre - after all, the guy´s head is on my engagement ring, we could hardly miss it out. Sucre is a nice place, lots of parks, big white buildings and cafes to hang

PB240333

what a fine pair of floating island dwellers!

out in. However we were feeling the need to get out amongst the countryside, so embarked on a two day walk through the mountains nearby. Beautiful landscapes, with many locals along the way, most of whom have only limited Spanish, and speak their traditional language of Quechua. Also many cheeks bulging with clumps of coca leaves. It was a great walk, but there was the ever present problem of my stomach, and it´s reaction to any kind of exercise at altitude. About halfway through the first day I started feeling queasy, and it was pretty much downhill from there...But nonetheless we had a great time, and spent the night chatting a mix of Spanish and English with our guide, Dora (as in Dora the Explorer), finding out all about life in the Bolivian highlands, before making our way back to Sucre the next day. Also near Sucre you can find the longest continuous set of dinosaur footprints in the world, so we hopped in the ´Dino-truck´and headed out to what happened to be a cement manufacturer and quarry. Turns out they were quarrying away, when someone noticed something strange, that looked kind of like footprints in the wall. Turns out

PB240335

this cute little one jumped into my arms...must have been fooled by the dressups

the wall used to be horizontal (crazy geological happenings in Bolivia because of the uplift of the Andes), and the whole place was a lake. At some stage heaps of dinosaurs walked through the mud, and their footprints were preserved. It´s amazing, you can see the tracks of hundreds of individuals, some small, some large, some three-toed carnivores, some herbivores with feet like elephants. The really amazing thing is that you can also see some behavioural things, like at one point two of the big herbivores circled each other, and in another place there´s supposedly the imprint of a carcass with small carnivore footprints all around it, althoug unfortunately that bit´s off limits due to safety restrictions. It´s really amazing, although the slightly worrying thing is that at the base of this huge wall the cement company is still quarrying away. Makes you wonder just how long these footprints will last....

With the Bolivian elections looming, we had to hurry to our next destination, as everything shuts down on election day, no booze, no buses, no nothing except a whole lot of democracy. So we headed off to Potosi, a town based on the mining of silver. There is

PB240345

amazing woven boats

a massive mountain just behind the town, Cerro Rico (rich hill), from which a ridiculous amount of silver has been extracted. Back in the day the Spaniards enslaved the local people and forced them to work the mine, selling them coca leaves so they could work the long shifts without getting tired and without needing much food - nice stuff. It´s said that the amount of silver that flowed out of Potosi, through Spain into Europe enabled much of the industrial revolution to occur by enriching people so obscenely. And Potosi used to be an incredibly wealthy city, near the cathedral the street was even coated with silver, but you wouldn´t know it nowadays. When the productivity of the mine decreased, most of the Europeans left, taking their amassed riches with them, and leaving Potosi as the poorest area in all of Bolivia. Many people still mine the mountain, under horrendous conditions of intense heat and dust, and most die young of horrible conditions like silicosis from breathing in so much crap. There´s a very popular tour which takes you into the mine, but as Jeff is asthmatic he decided against it, and I decided I don´t need to see

PB240343

the ladies of the island farewell us in song, and finish by saying Â´hasta la vista, babyÂ´. nearly wet ourselves

such things in order to understand their existence, but by all accounts it´s an amazing experience, shocking but interesting. We did however manage to catch a film called ´The Devil´s Miner´which is a documentary following a thirteen year old boy who works in the mines, and has done since he was ten. It´s a really good movie, but quite devastating. Apparently thousands of children still work in the mines, and most don´t have a particularly bright future. A particualry interesting thing about the miners is that they worship a being called ´Tio´in the mines. Tio is the Devil, and every mine has a statue of him and a shrine where the miners make offerings of coca leaves, cigarettes and alcohol. While the miners are very religious, and staunchly Catholic, they believe that God rules above ground, but Tio is the boss underground, and if they don´t respect and make offerings to him, he will punish them with bad air, explosions going wrong, ceiling collapses and all other manner of mining accidents. Interestingly, Tio often resembles a Spanish conquistador. Hmm.

Potosi was also where we were for yet another election day. It was really nice, because although everything was closed,

PB240347

being rowed among the islands on a traditional woven boat

cars were banned from the centre of town, which made it a really nice day to just wander around looking at everything. There are still beautiful buildings from the wealthy days, and some nice parks. At night, the Christmas lights were out in the main plaza, and it seemed like all of Potosi had gathered to look at them. Beautiful, and much more of a community thing than when they´re on every house like at home. Here they´re a real novelty!

Oh, and if there´s not another blog before Christmas - Merry Christmas and Feliz Navidad to you all. Hope Santa stuffs your stocking with goodies!
j and j

Additional photos below

Photos: 37, Displayed: 29