Argentina and Uruguay!

I've fallen back on my old habits again and haven't kept up with writing this. Oops. But I've been all over. I've seen so much in the last few weeks...and also spent many, many hours on busses. In between the bus rides, though, I visited amazing red rock formations in Salta, Argentina called the Quebrada de Cafayate. A beautiful place to explore and climb around on the rocks. Next, to the wonderful Iguazu Falls. I was there in the dry season and still, the falls were huge. The amount of water and the force of it going over the edge of the falls was stunning. From Iguazu in the north, I crossed the border into Uruguay for a few days. It is a pretty country with lots of rolling hills and farms. And the capital, Montevideo, was a small-ish big city with lots of old buildings and nice places for exploring. Next, was a big big city. Buenos Aires. It was a very lively, exciting city although it's obvious that winter is not the season to be there. It felt like for the low tourist season, it was a bit closed up and especially now with the swine flu...they take it very seriously in Argentina. Even in smaller towns where no one is infected things are closed and people are wearing masks. But back to Buenos Aires. There is a good subway system and lots of different neighborhoods spread out around the city that each have something unique to appreciate. Some areas are very crowded and overwhelming, others are calm and quiet and don't feel like the city at all. Within the city there is a huge cemetary that is like a mini city of old churches and temples that all happen to be filled with coffins. I saw tango dancing and ate good food, stayed out late, did all the big city things. Then, before long, I was in Mendoza, the wine region of Argentina. I had a fantastic time there with an Argentine friend of my cousins who took on the job of being my personal tour guide for the weekend. It was great to be with someone who knew his way around. Taking us to all the best wineries and the most beautiful mountains. I learned how to tango...a little bit...and had a great time. Now, I'm in Bariloche. An amazingly beautiful mountain town at the north end of Patagonia in the Lake District, which, not surprisingly, is full of beautiful glacial lakes. Everywhere I look there is another amazing view of snowy white mountains and a sparkling blue lake. It's fantastic, but a little bit cold down this far south in the middle of winter. Worth it though. From here, I go to Chile for a week or so and then I'll be heading home!

After another (though much much colder) tour of the Salar de Uyuni, I arrived in Chile! So far...it's nice. I knew right away that it's a bit different here than Peru or Bolivia. The first hour on the road, there were about 6 'pistas emergencias'...the equivalent of run away truck ramps in the US. Not something you would see anywhere else I've been. I'm in the town of San Pedro de Atacama. It's a new kind of town for me, with quiet little streets, lots of white washed adobe walls, and pear orchards. It's touristy, but charming. Cute little buildings, nice trees, warm (enough) weather, relaxing. That's it for now, not sure where I'll be going next, so I'll keep this updated...hopefully.

Photo captions

Here are the short explainations for the photos in order that they are posted.

-La Paz at sunset
-La Paz at night
-Mountains from the plane on the way to Rurennebaque (jungle)
-Rurrenebaque airport
-Boats in the Pampas
-Alligator...maybe Caimen
-Sunset 1
-Sunset 2
-Anaconda
-Mountain in the Bolivian Altiplano
-Icy edge of a lake
-Hot springs and ice
-Sunrise through the icy car window
-Jumping for the Salt Flat

Photos

Back in Bolivia

As many people have already heard, my time in Cusco is done. Now, I'm with my friend, Katie, traveling in Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. It was slow going getting out of Peru, due to strikes that closed the roads for a day. Eventually though, we made it to the big city of La Paz. We spent a day here exploring the crowded, colorful city. Ate good food...Japanese, Mediterranean..not much Bolivian food. The next day we took a short, but amazing flight in a little 20 person plane to the town of Rurrenebaque. To get there, we flew over the Cordiollera Blanca, a mountain range with 500 peaks over 5000 meters...it was beautiful! The scenery changed drastically as we neared Rurrenebaque which is about 3000 meters lower than La Paz and in the middle of the jungle. The feeling there, is surprisingly different than other cities I've visited in Bolivia. I think the people there are a little happier because of the warm, sunny climate, even if there is still a lot of poverty there. From Rurrenebaque, we went on a three day tour of the pampas...which is supposed to be different from the jungle, but I'm not really sure how. I guess less dense forset, more grassland/wetland. It was a very relaxing tour. We spent a lot of time riding around in a little boat, watching animals and looking at the scenery. We saw tons of alligators/caiman, beautiful birds, some snakes (including Anacondas...but not very big ones), pink river dolphins, monkeys, capibara (aka giant hamster/rat things), a sloth...and probably more that I'm forgetting. We slept under mosquito nets and had amazing views of the stars. It was a short, but very nice trip. Rather than taking the same flight back, we chose the 18 hour bus. It turned out to be quite an adventure, with dirt roads most of the way and the seat next to us occupied by two women and their three children...so not surprisingly they were spilling over into our laps most of the time. Nonetheless, the scenery was beautiful and we made it back to La Paz. From here we will head to the Salt Flats of Uyuni (the second time for me) and then to Chile. I'll try to add photos when I can.

Photos...

Ok. Now my pictures are easier to see. You don't have to sign in or anything. Here's the link. http://picasaweb.google.com/levenberg.laura
Enjoy!

Moray to Urubamba

It seems that in most of my free time, I end up leaving the city (Cusco) and its honking vehicles, crowds of tourists, and pollution. It’s a fun place, but weekends and days off are a nice chance to go see other places. Small towns, ruins, mountains. This weekend was particularly long, so I had lots of opportunities to see new things. I drank chicha for the first time. It was alright. It’s alcohol made from corn that has a yellowy white, opaque color, a thick layer of foam on the top, and tons of chunks of stuff floating around in it which end up settling and forming a thick layer at the bottom of the cup. The taste isn’t bad. It tastes a bit like beer, it’s carbonated, but it’s a little bit bitter/sour and earthy/dirty tasting. It’s popular in the little towns here so I had to try it, but I don’t think I’ll be drinking it too often.

Next I went to a baptism party for a little boy whose godfather/mother are friends who are studying/volunteering (like me) here in Cusco. I got to see a real Cusco house. I mean a more average Cusco house. My host family is pretty well off and their house isn’t all that much different than what I’m used to at home. In much of the city though, I can tell that people live differently. There are lots of houses made of adobe bricks with corrugated metal roofs, not accessible by paved roads, and where it’s hard to tell if there is running water and electricity and such. This is the kind of house we went to. The taxi dropped us off at the end of a dirt road and we walked up some steep stairs to the house where the party was. Inside the yard, there were three different buildings. One was the kitchen, with a dirt floor, no windows and only two light bulbs for the whole large room, and an open fire for cooking (with no chimney so all the smoke went into room). Also, scurrying around the floor were a number of cuy (guinea pigs) and a few chickens. The bathroom is a small shed type structure with no running water, a light bulb with an impossible to find light switch, and no door. Although I didn’t try to shower, I’m pretty sure it is done in a similar shed with a couple of different buckets used to pour water over the body. The room where we had the party is tucked away behind the kitchen and has a dirt floor, white walls, and some chairs for people to sit in. I’m not sure what it is usually used for, but it worked quite well for the party. For dinner, we ate cuy…maybe the ones I had seen roaming around the kitchen earlier. It’s a hard thing to eat, mostly because it’s so much work to pick through and find any meat. The taste really isn’t bad though.

The rest of the weekend I spent mostly wandering around beautiful places in the mountains around the Sacred Valley. Between ruins, along a beautiful plateau, looking out above the valley at the tall mountains that seem to go on forever. Each time the clouds moved, another jagged, snowcapped peak became visible. Walking in this area, I didn't meet any other tourists. Most people I encountered were out herding sheep, feeding cows, or doing some such task like this. Everyone was very friendly, happy to stop what they were doing to give directions or just chat for a moment. After descending down into the valley and resting for the night in the town of Urubamba, I got up early in the morning to hike up to a glacier, high up on the mountain above the town. Unfortunately, it was a wet morning. It rained the whole time, making it cold and soggy, as well as impossible to see the glacier and the route we needed to take to get there. We hiked up a beautiful valley, filled with trees (most places here don’t have many trees and when they do, they’re usually eucalyptus), wildflowers, and great views up to misty mountain tops. It turned out that this valley didn’t lead to the glacier, but up along a beautiful, roaring stream into a huge grassy meadow with towering walls of rock and waterfalls in all the cracks in the tall walls. There was no one else here, except for two cows. Somehow this valley escaped the Incas and their construction. It was raining more here, and there was not really any way to climb out of this steeply enclosed valley, so we headed back down the way we came, into the Sacred Valley and back to Cusco.

Photos, Life

I've finally gotten to post some pictures! They aren't yet captioned very well and there are more I'm hoping to put up soon, but decent internet is hard to find. Also, I'm going to try and put them somewhere different so people don't have to have an account to see them. For now, they are at laurainsouthamerica.snapfish.com/snapfish

As for what I'm up to here, I've started doing volunteer work with a couple architects in Cusco. They are both professors at the university here and are working on various projects around the city. It's interesting to go with them to their classes and see how architecture school is here. The classrooms are really crowded and the students have far fewer resources and materials than I'm used to seeing available at a major university. At Berkeley, we all had our own desks, there were computers, printers, tons of books, all kinds of different materials for building models, etc. Here, they work at their houses, without computers usually, and with really limited materials. It's fun to talk to them though. About the differences and similarities in our education, the architects we like and dislike, about Cusco, etc.

So far, with the architects, I've been working mainly on redesigning a little chapel in the town of Andahuaylillas. My chapel isn't on the website, but the big church that is being restored is...andahuaylillas.com. Haven't done much work on my design yet, but I have to show some preliminary sketches to the Priest sometime soon, so I guess in the next few days I'll be working a lot. And then I'll have more to say about what I'm doing. For now, that's more or less it.

Cusco

I have been in Cusco for over a month now. The time has gone by amazingly fast. I have Spanish class all week and weekends have been filled with outings to nearby towns and hikes in the lovely mountains. I live with a host family here. They are a lot of fun and are very easy going, don’t mind me coming and going when I want to, etc…they seem to worry less about me than other host families I’ve heard about, which is perfect for me. We live about 20 minutes from the center of the city, in “combi” that is. Combis are little vans that seem to run constantly, cost about 15¢, and pack in as many people as possible. Today as I rode home on Servicio Rapidio, with my head smashed against the ceiling and a man’s elbow digging into my back every time he turned the page of his newspaper, I counted over 25 people in the little bus. It’s great to have such a convenient, cheap way to get around, since most days I find myself making a couple trips from home to the center where most everything seems to be going on. Even when nothing in particular is going on there, it’s a good starting point from which to explore the city, which is what I often do in the afternoon once I’ve finished class. I’ve also visited a number of Inca and pre-Inca ruins in and around Cusco. It’s amazing and fascinating to see what people were able to do with stone so many years ago.


I spent last week differently than the previous few. I went with a friend from my Spanish school to Puno, again. It was very different than my first time in Puno. We went there slowly, stopping in little towns on the way to see Inca ruins, the “Sistine Chapel of the Americas” (where it turns out I will be doing volunteer work with a couple architects from Cusco), hot springs with a view of snowy mountains in the distance, etc. We arrived in Puno on a bus that reminded me a lot of those that I rode in Bolivia. It was overflowing with people and stopped all over to let people on and off, including the largest woman I’ve seen in Peru who got on the bus, set up a table at the front, and began chopping meat, putting it into bags and selling it to almost everyone on the bus. Once in Puno, we met up with my host mother and two host sisters from my family in Japan. They had hoped to visit me in California, but when they heard I was in Peru they decided to visit here instead! It was great to see them again, to be speaking so many different languages (English, Spanish, Japanese, and German), and to teach them what I’ve figured out about Peru so far. Together we all went on a trip to the islands of Taquile and Amantani about three hours away from Puno out in the middle of Lake Titicaca. The islands are beautiful! From the top, the view is amazing. The lake is blue and sparkling and there are big, tall mountains in every direction. Although our tour of the islands was too touristy, it gave us an interesting perspective of life on the islands. We slept on Amantani with families. We got to see their houses (without electricity or running water), the way they cook everything over a fire in the tiny kitchen, and we tried to learn a few words in Quechua, their primary language. Early in the morning we got up to watch the sunrise over the lake and saw the people of the island waking up to tend their fields of potatoes, quinoa, and wheat. It felt a bit wrong to invade their island like we did, but it was also a very interesting experience.


Now that I am back in Cusco, I have just a few days left of Spanish class left before I get to start my volunteer work…finally! I’m not totally sure what I’ll be doing or where I’ll be most of the time, but I’ve gotten in contact with a couple architects who I’ll be working with. The projects are different than I originally thought, but seem interesting and will give me a chance to visit areas outside of Cusco. One of the projects is in Andahuaylillas, where they are doing a three year long restoration of the “Sistine Chapel of the Americas.” Their other project is building something…not sure what yet, in the town of Chinchero, where I haven’t yet been. This week, one of the architects, Mario Castillo, who is also a professor at the University, is showing me various places in Cusco. He took me to the very unimpressive Central Library at the University and tomorrow he is taking me to meet the director of the Inca Museum. He seems to have connections everywhere, so that should make things interesting for me. I’ll get to meet lots of people and see different places, I think. I suppose I’ll just have to wait to know more until next week when I actually start doing my volunteer work.

Bolivia to Peru

I’m not sure how to begin writing…I’ve been in South America for a month and a half, but it feels longer. It feels like far too much to summarize here, but I’ll try.

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I arrived in the beginning of January, in La Paz, Bolivia. I spent my first day there, in the biggest city in the country, 12,000 ft. up in the mountains. I walked up and down the steep streets overcrowded with people and honking vehicles, looking at the brick box houses that cover every part of the deep valley, and felt intimidated and overwhelmed by so many new people, sights, and sounds. I didn’t spend much time here, though. The first night I took a 25 minute flight to the city of Cochabamba. Looking back, it seems silly to have paid fifty whole dollars for that flight. To travel between La Paz and Cochabamba would have taken 8 hours on a bus and would have cost no more than six or seven dollars, but at that time, I was inexperienced with buses (and with everything in Bolivia) and it seemed like a safe idea to fly. Although I learned later that most Bolivians would tell you never to fly on TAM, the airline we took. Lots of people said that is more dangerous and unreliable than the other big Bolivian airline, but I’m not sure I believe this after some friends were stuck for three days trying to fly on the “better” AeroSur.

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In Cochabamba, I met up with 19 people from a class I took last semester at school in Berkeley. Our class, called “Design Bolivia,” was mainly architecture students, but also included a mix of others. Throughout the semester we studied Bolivian culture, politics, life, etc. and worked with a San Francisco based volunteer organization (FSD ) and a Bolivian non-profit helping children with disabilities in the city of Cochabamba. We worked with these organizations to come up with a design project at one of the facilities used by the non-profit. They needed paths built to make their farm more accessible to the children living there. So, once we got to Cochabamba, that’s what we did. We all lived with host families and worked most days on the paths at the farm. It is a bit outside the city, so we went everyday in a big, yellow, tourismo bus. The countryside is really interesting. There are lots of cows and sheep wandering around and kids playing along the side of the road in front of small brick houses with rusty tin roofs. Most buildings have mud brick walls around them with some kind of spikes on the top for security. Everyone grows corn, and probably a lot of other vegetables, but most obviously, lots of corn. Since we were in Cochabamba during the rainy season (although it only rained a few times) there was green everywhere. The clouds in Cochabamba are huge and puffy and there are tall, bright green mountains close to where we were working. We usually spent all day on the farm, laying a level rock path, then building wooden framework around that, and finally mixing concrete to fill the framework, covering up our carefully fitted rocks. We thought all this would be much quicker and easier, but the hot and tiring work turned out to be quite a process and we finished just in time, late in the afternoon on our last day.

We didn’t work all the time though. There was time to tour the city and some nearby towns. We had dinner at a peña where we ate Bolivian food (guinea pig, cow stomach, etc.), heard a few different Bolivian bands play, and danced late into the night. Other nights we spent with our host families, walking around the many plazas in the city, or going out dancing. Finally, the end of our two week program came and 18 of the 20 people in the class left. Myself and a friend, Sanya, stayed, with plans to travel in Bolivia for a couple of weeks and then to head to Peru in the beginning of February.

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Our first adventure, we decided, would be to Santa Cruz. A city to the east, much lower and near the jungle. So, we took our first overnight bus, with only a moment of panic when we realized we were on the wrong bus, headed to a very different city, in the opposite direction. Luckily, we were able to quickly get ourselves where we needed to be and arrived successfully in Santa Cruz 11 hours later. There isn’t a lot to do in the city. Other than the zoo, we didn’t find many exciting attractions. Santa Cruz turned out to be an interesting city, culturally. There is obviously more wealth in there. Nicer cars, people dress more formally (and much less traditionally), and the restaurants feel and look very European. At night, we sat on the second story of a restaurant overlooking the main plaza watching people arrive at a fashionable restaurant opening with TV cameras, a small red carpet, and fireworks. We also watched as big groups of people drove down the street, honking, yelling, and blaring music campaigning for the constitutional referendum that happened a few days later. In Cochabamba and La Paz, graffiti reading “Evo, Sí” and “Sí en la constitucion nueva” told us that people were in favor of the current president, Evo Morales’, constitutional referendum. In Santa Cruz, most cars had bumper stickers saying “vota NO” and banners saying the same thing were in all the plazas and along the streets. There was even a song that played continuously…”vota no, defiende tus derechos…”

Since there wasn’t much more to do in the city, Sanya and I headed to a town a couple hours to the west called Samaipata. We had heard that this was a fun place to visit, with ruins, waterfalls, rivers to swim in. Although we never made it to the rivers and waterfalls, it was great. The town is very small. It doesn’t take long to walk from one edge to the other and we went out in search of lunch an hour too late and as hard as we tried, we could only find one restaurant that was open. From our hostel we had a view of the whole town and the surrounding hills. It’s very lush and the flowers and tile roofs of the old buildings are beautiful with the green surroundings. The next day, we woke up early to walk to El Fuerte, the ruins that are on the top of a hill about 10 km from the center of town. It was a beautiful hike up through the hill with always changing views of the mountains, fields, valleys, and various rock formations. Once at the top, the ruins were impressive, but to me a little bit less so than the scenery. There are a number of low walls made of adobe bricks and a huge flat rock covering the hilltop, carved with various patterns, things that look like doorways (where I think mummies were put), seats, and stairs for walking onto the rock. As soon as we finished our long hike back into town, it was time to go. We had to get back to Santa Cruz so as not to be stuck there on the day of the voting for the constitution when everything was closed. We were advised to walk down to the highway to catch a bus or taxi or something. After a short time worrying that perhaps we wouldn’t find a way back to Santa Cruz, we got a taxi. We piled in with a bunch of locals and spent a hot, squished couple of hours in the car back to the city. From there, we eventually caught a bus and made it back to Cochabamba to stay with a friend (from FSD) during the weekend of voting when everything was closed and no one was supposed to be too far from their own houses.

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It was great to be back in Cochabamba for a few days. We stayed with our friend at her apartment, so we were able to spread out a little bit, cook our own food, and relax. Cochabamba felt a bit like home after traveling. We went grocery shopping, got a cell phone number (to call the few friends we had…), and made plans to go to El Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world. A couple of other people we knew from FSD in Cochabamba decided to come with us, so a few days later, four of us set out for Uyuni.

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We left Cochabamba, more or less for good this time, on a bus to Oruru where we hoped to catch a train, but when we got there, it turned out to be the wrong day or the wrong hour for buying tickets, or something. So, we had a day to spend in Oruro, which is not the nicest city in Bolivia. It’s dirty and brown, has very little vegetation since it’s at such a high elevation, and felt sad and dusty. I liked the city even less when, in an effort to explore the city a little bit, my camera was stolen. Luckily, it was quickly recovered with the help of some kids armed with water balloons. But this encounter left me a bit uneasy and ready to get out of Oruro. I’m not sure whether the next portion of our journey was more or less pleasant than the day spent in Oruro. It was just as someone had warned us…like an earthquake all night. This was the bus to the town of Uyuni. It was overfull, with children on every lap and people sleeping in the aisle. For almost the whole eight hours the, the bus drove on bumpy, rocky dirt roads and everything on the bus shook and rattled with quite impressive volume. It was good that the movement and noise kept me awake all night, because otherwise I think all my belongings would have vibrated away to opposite corners of the bus. We arrived safely in the deserted town of Uyuni at 4 am and found somewhere to sleep. Felling a little tired and dirty (since the water at the hotel never did end up getting turned on) we ventured out to find ourselves a tour and were quickly able to do so, to eat some breakfast, and get into our “Jeep” (really a Toyota Land Cruiser) to head out for three days on the Salar and beyond.

We saw so much in those days. The first day was on the Salar itself. It is amazing!! White for as far as you can see, with mountains that look like floating islands in the distance. I expected it to be fluffy like snow, but when you walk on the salt, it’s hard, a bit sharp to the touch, and fairly wet. It has to be collected in piles to dry before it can be taken away in trucks to sell. And in some places there are small ridges that outline a pattern of hexagons on the ground. Somewhere out in the middle, there is an island covered in cactus, huge cactus, and rocks that look they were once coral in the ocean. It’s a strange, highly populated little place in the middle of such nowhere. But it’s a beautiful contrast, the pure white with the greens and browns and blacks of the cactus and rock. The next couple days were spent off of the Salar, but were nonetheless amazing. Beautiful mountains in every direction. Lakes like mirrors filled with graceful flamingoes. Sitting in a hot spring pool next to a steaming lake at sunrise. Valles de Rocas where llamas graze next to a stream in a picturesque green valley enclosed by tall boulders and rock formations. From the top, you can see that these rocks go on for miles in every direction. I think I would be happy there for weeks just climbing up on the rocks and into the valleys. How beautiful.

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And with that, we finished our tour of Uyuni and I, my time in Bolivia. A couple days later, I was in Peru. First in Puno (on Lake Titicaca) for a couple of days, to Los Uros, the floating reed islands. Then through pretty little farming towns, next to tall mountains and rivers to the city of Cusco. Here I will be for a few months.