sooo I left Bolivia this afternoon and am now in Puno in Peru, a couple days to check out the lake from this side of the border and then on to Cusco and staying in one place and volunteering. So I´m trying to get used to the idea that my time in Bolivia/travelling alone is over.. anyway here´s what I´ve been up to this week.
After the climb I stayed in La Paz two more nights, attempting to understand Hebrew in the Israeli hostel and exploring some more of the city. Monday after having lunch w/ my friend Max from GHS (so weird/great to see someone from home!) I went to Sorata, a little town at the north end of the Cordillera Real about 3 hours away from La Paz. Definitely the most ¨Bolivian¨ bus ride so far, we were packed in a little minivan that took the downhill curves in the middle fo the road and honked to warn anyone coming the other way.. but lots of awesome mountain views, so I was happy! Sorata was really nice and peaceful and green (much lower than La Paz, although I don´t know the exact altitude), I had a relaxing couple of nights enjoying the views and did a hike out to la Gruta de San Pedro on the day in between. It was a pretty walk, a little exciting when I had to cross the mudslide that covered the whole road in one place.. and the cave itself was cool, not the most exciting in terms of stalactites or stalagmites or whatever but there were lots of bats and a lake that reminded me of where they found one of the horcruxes in HP7.
Two microvans, a boat, and a taxi ride from Sorata and I arrived in Copacabana on.. Wednesday. Nice (although very touristy) town on the shore of Lake Titicaca, I walked up the hill w/ stations of the cross (I swear there´s one in every city) to see an amazing sunset at night, and planned my venture to the lake the next day. Couple hours in a little boat to the north end of Isla del Sol, where I had lunch and tried to understand a really friendly Aymara woman explaining life in Cha´allapampa (the billage on the north end), then hiked up to see the Inca ruins/rock where the sun was born. Amazing views around the island and of the whole lake (which looks more like ocean/Puget Sound to me than a lake)´and the Cordillare Real, then I walked to the south end to spend the night in the village Yumani and watch another gorgeous sunset. Woke up in one of the most beautiful places I´ve ever been, back to Copacabana this morning, border crossing, now Puno and more lake!
Friday, November 28, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
HUAYANA POTOSI (and La Paz and pictures)
first I have to rave: all the fresh fruit has to be one of the best things about Bolivia, I just had an amazing fruit salad with yogurt and honey and bannana and watermelon and apple and grapes and papaya and mango and lots I don´t even know for less than a dollar! mmm... anyway on to the main point.
Yesterday I climbed to the top of 6088 m (close to 20,000 ft) Huayana Potosi; I think it was the hardest thing I´ve ever done, we walked for 14 hours out of 24 and most of my body still hurts today but I´m so happy I DID IT!!!!! My mom at least has requested a blow-by-blow of the climb so I´m going to indulge..
Basically I got to La Paz kind of ready to get out of the city for a bit so I was walking around talking to the different agencies about trekking, and then someone mentioned Huayana Potosi, and all of a sudden it was one of those things I just had to do once I though of it. I signed up with a really good agency and paid $140 (more than my visa to get here!) and rested up to leave Thursday morning. Apparently there were supposed to be three of us but the American guy was too sick so it was just me and Rotem, a 21-year old Israeli girl with lots of trekking experience in SA but also without any technical climbing experience.
After getting set with some gear (clothes, ice axes, crampons) we drove up to the refugio at the base of the mountain, which was really cute and ski lodge-y. There was a big group getting ready to go up that day, but we got to mostly laze around and acclimatize to the higher altitude. We did hike up to some snow/ice to practice using the ice axes, which was really cool and also reassuring because we got to see how much our guide Mario knew about climbing in the snow. Basically we just tried climbing at different gradients with slightly different techniques, and at the end we got to rappel down! Like rock climbing but colder, but lots of fun for me.
The next day we hiked for about three and a half hours up and up and up (lots of scrambling over big rocks) to the tiny little middle refugio.. oh and at this point we were joined by Loik (sp?) a nice French guy and his guide, who had skipped the practice and were doing the climb in two days. At the second refugio we marvelled at the views (finally above the clouds) and ate even though we weren´t hungry and went to bed at 6.
We woke up at 12 in the middle of the night, drank a little coca tea, got all our gear on, and started climbing at about 12:30. Then 6 hours of walking uphill in the snow.. in the dark it was easy to kind of zone out and just concentrate on the little light from my headlamp, but then when the sun rose at like 5 and we could see what was ahead, it got a lot harder not to keep looking up at how much was left. I was really lucky and didn´t have any problems with the altitude besides difficulty breathing (which I would have had anyway just from the excercise) but I was definitely out of shape and was basically just really tired the whole time. I guess I just didn´t let myself consider the possibility of not getting to the top.. it also helped to be roped up (I felt like those kids you see in the mall tied to their mom) to Rotem and Mario; I knew if I stopped I´d be letting Rotem down, and Mario was amazing, going really slow and steady and letting us take breaks just when we really needed it. Songs I had stuck in my head: the Bolivian parade song that all the bad marching bands play, ¨Come On Over Baby,¨ ¨Back in Black¨, several random OC songs, that rock song with ¨we´re not gonna take it¨in the chorus; also I had a nice mantra going that was ¨"Tene.. (step).. mos.. (step).. suer.. (step).. te..(step)..pode..(step)..mos..(step)..hacer..(step)..lo" (we are lucky we can do it). Some parts were steeper than others, and occasionally we had to kind of climb up with the ice axes; the trickiest part was right before the top when we had to climb up kind of a rock/scree slope. And then maybe 15 more minutes of walking in the snow and we were there!! Anyone who knows me well will not be surprised to hear that I cried.. but it may have freaked Mario and Rotem out a bit. I was just so exhausted and so happy and amazed that we actually made it.. and I didn´t have enough oxygen in my brain, okay?
After all that we could only stay at the top for like 10 minutes because it was so sunny already and the snow was getting wet/sticky/dangerous. The descent took about 3 hours and we were slipping all the way down, with the snow clumping on our crampons.. I lost a waterbottle to the slope that Rotem almost slid down but luckily that was the only casualty. We rested a bit at the middle refuge and then went another hour and a half or so (down the bad rocky bit) to the base refuge.
Back to La Paz, I decided to go to the Israeli hostel w/Rotem b/c it´s cheap and central and for a different kind of cultural experience; we checked in and then went to a salsa class! And dinner and ice cream to celebrate and then I realized I had no energy left. It feels pretty surreal right now but I DID IT!!!!!
Pictures...I just checked the preview and somehow I messed up the captions again my b but oh well, it can be like a puzzle to figure out.
views when we finally got above the clouds (Illimani far away), the little refugio, la cumbre!
view from top w/lake titicaca in the distance, cordillera real!, me on the top! w/ my Israelita climbing buddy Rotem, w/our awesome guide Mario
s1600-h/IMG_1238%5B1%5D">
another view from the top, views on the way down, the bottom (Huayana Potosi park sign w/very peeling paint)
me in the Potosi mine, Jorge who showed me around Sucre posing with a sundial, castillo outside Sucre, llama foetuses in Cochabamba, my favorite snack: api (sweet hot and spicy) and pastel (fried dough w/melted cheese inside)
busy La Paz streets, crazy Valle de la Luna eroded snadstone landscapes outside town, me in Valle de la Luna, the cool Aymara guy playing music there that I chatted with
Yesterday I climbed to the top of 6088 m (close to 20,000 ft) Huayana Potosi; I think it was the hardest thing I´ve ever done, we walked for 14 hours out of 24 and most of my body still hurts today but I´m so happy I DID IT!!!!! My mom at least has requested a blow-by-blow of the climb so I´m going to indulge..
Basically I got to La Paz kind of ready to get out of the city for a bit so I was walking around talking to the different agencies about trekking, and then someone mentioned Huayana Potosi, and all of a sudden it was one of those things I just had to do once I though of it. I signed up with a really good agency and paid $140 (more than my visa to get here!) and rested up to leave Thursday morning. Apparently there were supposed to be three of us but the American guy was too sick so it was just me and Rotem, a 21-year old Israeli girl with lots of trekking experience in SA but also without any technical climbing experience.
After getting set with some gear (clothes, ice axes, crampons) we drove up to the refugio at the base of the mountain, which was really cute and ski lodge-y. There was a big group getting ready to go up that day, but we got to mostly laze around and acclimatize to the higher altitude. We did hike up to some snow/ice to practice using the ice axes, which was really cool and also reassuring because we got to see how much our guide Mario knew about climbing in the snow. Basically we just tried climbing at different gradients with slightly different techniques, and at the end we got to rappel down! Like rock climbing but colder, but lots of fun for me.
The next day we hiked for about three and a half hours up and up and up (lots of scrambling over big rocks) to the tiny little middle refugio.. oh and at this point we were joined by Loik (sp?) a nice French guy and his guide, who had skipped the practice and were doing the climb in two days. At the second refugio we marvelled at the views (finally above the clouds) and ate even though we weren´t hungry and went to bed at 6.
We woke up at 12 in the middle of the night, drank a little coca tea, got all our gear on, and started climbing at about 12:30. Then 6 hours of walking uphill in the snow.. in the dark it was easy to kind of zone out and just concentrate on the little light from my headlamp, but then when the sun rose at like 5 and we could see what was ahead, it got a lot harder not to keep looking up at how much was left. I was really lucky and didn´t have any problems with the altitude besides difficulty breathing (which I would have had anyway just from the excercise) but I was definitely out of shape and was basically just really tired the whole time. I guess I just didn´t let myself consider the possibility of not getting to the top.. it also helped to be roped up (I felt like those kids you see in the mall tied to their mom) to Rotem and Mario; I knew if I stopped I´d be letting Rotem down, and Mario was amazing, going really slow and steady and letting us take breaks just when we really needed it. Songs I had stuck in my head: the Bolivian parade song that all the bad marching bands play, ¨Come On Over Baby,¨ ¨Back in Black¨, several random OC songs, that rock song with ¨we´re not gonna take it¨in the chorus; also I had a nice mantra going that was ¨"Tene.. (step).. mos.. (step).. suer.. (step).. te..(step)..pode..(step)..mos..(step)..hacer..(step)..lo" (we are lucky we can do it). Some parts were steeper than others, and occasionally we had to kind of climb up with the ice axes; the trickiest part was right before the top when we had to climb up kind of a rock/scree slope. And then maybe 15 more minutes of walking in the snow and we were there!! Anyone who knows me well will not be surprised to hear that I cried.. but it may have freaked Mario and Rotem out a bit. I was just so exhausted and so happy and amazed that we actually made it.. and I didn´t have enough oxygen in my brain, okay?
After all that we could only stay at the top for like 10 minutes because it was so sunny already and the snow was getting wet/sticky/dangerous. The descent took about 3 hours and we were slipping all the way down, with the snow clumping on our crampons.. I lost a waterbottle to the slope that Rotem almost slid down but luckily that was the only casualty. We rested a bit at the middle refuge and then went another hour and a half or so (down the bad rocky bit) to the base refuge.
Back to La Paz, I decided to go to the Israeli hostel w/Rotem b/c it´s cheap and central and for a different kind of cultural experience; we checked in and then went to a salsa class! And dinner and ice cream to celebrate and then I realized I had no energy left. It feels pretty surreal right now but I DID IT!!!!!
Pictures...I just checked the preview and somehow I messed up the captions again my b but oh well, it can be like a puzzle to figure out.
views when we finally got above the clouds (Illimani far away), the little refugio, la cumbre!
view from top w/lake titicaca in the distance, cordillera real!, me on the top! w/ my Israelita climbing buddy Rotem, w/our awesome guide Mario
s1600-h/IMG_1238%5B1%5D">
another view from the top, views on the way down, the bottom (Huayana Potosi park sign w/very peeling paint)
me in the Potosi mine, Jorge who showed me around Sucre posing with a sundial, castillo outside Sucre, llama foetuses in Cochabamba, my favorite snack: api (sweet hot and spicy) and pastel (fried dough w/melted cheese inside)
busy La Paz streets, crazy Valle de la Luna eroded snadstone landscapes outside town, me in Valle de la Luna, the cool Aymara guy playing music there that I chatted with
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
mas de bolivia
wellllll in the last week or so I did a bit of the big city circuit here, Potosi then Sucre the Cochabamba and now La Paz. Sounds like a lot of ground to cover in not very much time, but I felt like I got the feel of each city, saw what interested me there, and moved on when I was ready, so it hasn't felt rushed. Plus I've discovered that when I'm on my own, time passes a lot more slowly.. in a good way.
Potosi was the big celebration, parades and Evo and such, my discovery of Bolivian food and how much I love it, a lot of walking very slowly because of the altitude, and then the tour of the silver mines. Closest I've ever felt to claustrophobic, we went down in these tiny dark tunnels and the air got all hot and dusty and smelly.. and of course lots of historical/social interest there too.
Moving on to Sucre.. lots of really well preserved colonial architecture, I got shown around the city by a guy from then university tourism office named Jorge who wants to start his own company with hot air balloon tours, I saw multiple Peruvian drag queens, my favorite market so far complete w/pinata section, went to an old colonial castillo outside of town, lots of visits to the indigenous art museum where the curator thought I was doing a project or something b/c I was so into the weaving displays (yeah, yeah, I liked them okay?)
Leaving Sucre/when I arrived in Cochabamba THE FEVER returned, so I had to chill out for a bit; basically slept all of one day and then took the next two at a nice slow pace. Lots of exploring in the markets (I couldn't tell where one specific one was like in other cities, they just kept connecting for blocks and blocks), a walk to the lake & up to a nice view, my first restaurant meal (Hare Krishna veggie buffet!), many dried llama foetuses hanging from the roof in the markets, bus to a suburb to check out the church that Max recommended/they were having a flower festival, Rough Guides was right about Cochabambinos being open and friendly
I just got to La Paz last night, decided to branch out from my usual alojamientos (private rooms with shared bath for like $3 a night) and stay at a more typical hostel; definitely a different experience, what with the bathrooms having toilet paper and the people my age speaking English and the free pancakes for breakfast. So far La Paz is BIG and with lots of mountains! And back to the having to stop and breath every 5 or 10 minutes...
Potosi was the big celebration, parades and Evo and such, my discovery of Bolivian food and how much I love it, a lot of walking very slowly because of the altitude, and then the tour of the silver mines. Closest I've ever felt to claustrophobic, we went down in these tiny dark tunnels and the air got all hot and dusty and smelly.. and of course lots of historical/social interest there too.
Moving on to Sucre.. lots of really well preserved colonial architecture, I got shown around the city by a guy from then university tourism office named Jorge who wants to start his own company with hot air balloon tours, I saw multiple Peruvian drag queens, my favorite market so far complete w/pinata section, went to an old colonial castillo outside of town, lots of visits to the indigenous art museum where the curator thought I was doing a project or something b/c I was so into the weaving displays (yeah, yeah, I liked them okay?)
Leaving Sucre/when I arrived in Cochabamba THE FEVER returned, so I had to chill out for a bit; basically slept all of one day and then took the next two at a nice slow pace. Lots of exploring in the markets (I couldn't tell where one specific one was like in other cities, they just kept connecting for blocks and blocks), a walk to the lake & up to a nice view, my first restaurant meal (Hare Krishna veggie buffet!), many dried llama foetuses hanging from the roof in the markets, bus to a suburb to check out the church that Max recommended/they were having a flower festival, Rough Guides was right about Cochabambinos being open and friendly
I just got to La Paz last night, decided to branch out from my usual alojamientos (private rooms with shared bath for like $3 a night) and stay at a more typical hostel; definitely a different experience, what with the bathrooms having toilet paper and the people my age speaking English and the free pancakes for breakfast. So far La Paz is BIG and with lots of mountains! And back to the having to stop and breath every 5 or 10 minutes...
Sunday, November 9, 2008
sola en bolivia: unabashed tourism + 198 años
first some final pictures from the farm: French chicos with the goat skin they plan to make into clothing, me with the goat I finally managed to milk, the "greenhouse" with trees in different stages of.. transplantation? (english whaaat..), baby chicks!
After leaving Salta last Tuesday, I had to stop somewhere for the night due to the unfortunate combination of bus/train/border schedules, so I stopped in Humahuaca, a fairly small, fairly touristy town at the north end of the Quebrada de Humahuaca, a gorgeous desert-y valley with some crazy rock formations and multi-colored hills. I walked around and explored a bit in the morning, watched the town wake up and checked out the view of the hills, and then caught a bus to La Quiaca at the border. It was a pretty crazy scene; aside from all the usual border traffic, there was a whole seperate bridge that was just used by people carrying goods across on their backs, most of them bent double from the weight. After all the stress about getting in to Bolivia, the actual border crossing couldn't have been easier; the guy who stamped my passport actually shook my hand and gave me a big smile and a "bienvenidos a Bolivia!" On the Bolivia side of the border was Villazon, where you could definitely see the mixing of Argentine and Bolivian cultures and faces.. also the strong tourist presence; the street pretty much all the way to the train station was lined with stores selling all kinds of woven goods, sunglasses, llama bags, etc.
I caught the train to Uyuni from Villazon (pretty scenery, challenging temperatures, multiple american movies), arrived in the middle of the night, and found a place to crash with another sola chica (from New Zealand). In the morning I headed out to booka trip into the Salar and ended up hooking up with some other people trying to get a big enough group together.. so that worked out well and we left around noon that day. Having accepted that the whole tour was just a blatantly touristy experience, I had still been sort of hoping that I might end up with non-English-speaking tourists.. not the case, but it turned out to be a great group anyway. Emily and Tristan from Australia, Charlotte from New Zealand and Justin from California, and Christian from France (by way of Buenos Aires). Everyone was 20-soemthing which made me the baby, but we all had a lot of fun together.. and Justin and Christian actually spoke some Spanish too, so we practiced a bit with our awesome driver/guide Franz (who spoke no English) and it worked out fine.
The tour (in a 4x4 with our bags strapped to the roof) started in the Salar de Uyuni, a giant lake covered in a crust of salt thick enough to support the weight of many cars, and then continued into a big national park that covers the southwest corner of Bolivia. Generally crazy surreal landscapes and lots of amazing sights, too much to write abotu all of it but I'll put some pictures and list the highlights: the whole salar, realllly old cacti, herds of llama and vacuña, weird colored lakes with flamingos, waking up before dawn and seeing the southern cross and the sky reflected in the lake, the craziest geysers/bubby volcanic pools, weird lava rock formations, hot springs... talking to Franz about Bolivian politics, listening to Jimi Hendrix while driving across the desert, needing all the warm clothes I bought in Villazon
Back in Uyuni I decided to take the overnight bus to Potosi; sprang for the slightly more expensive ticket (yeah parents) so there weren't any problems except for when we stopped at a.. rest stop? and needed to change a tire too.. but that was cool cause while we were waiting these guys came through leading a heard of HUGE bulls (at like 11 at night). weird. Yesterday morning in Potosi I had a bit of trouble finding residenciales with space, so when I finally got a room I asked if something special was going on.. and the lady laughed at me and said it was only THE day of Potosi, 10 de Noviembre is the anniversary of the city/department's indpendence and to celebrate Evo Morales was coming to Potosi that day. Whaaat! So my first couple days here haven't included any usual tourist activity, as everything is closed, but the anniversary celebrations have been awesome: little parade yesterday with crazy costumes and bad marching band, huge rally in the Campo Marte and Evo Morale's speech, music and dancing in the Campo last night, huge parade with all the police and military (much better marching bands) and then indigenous people from all different parts of the department w/music and dancing. The people watching has been amazing, I haven't eaten in a restaurant since I crossed the border (street/market food highlights: llama meat, cow heart grilled w/potatoes, delicious sweet hot syrupy api drink, frsh squeezed orange juice, fresh sliced pineapple, every kind of ice cream), and so far the biggest problem w/altitude (Potosi is the highest city in the world, and I think we were actually higher on the tour, at like 4700 meters) has been breathing/walking slower.
Tomorrow I'm doing the tourist stuff (tour of the mines, museum) and then on to Sucre!
Monton de fotos:
bienvenidos a bolivia!, train view, llama herd, people gathering salt on the edge of the salar
me on island w/cacti in the middle of salar, on top of crazy rocks by a volcano, by the laguna colorada (flamingos!), group picture w/Franza and car by laguna verde
parade dancing, cerro rico (where all the mines are) from the street, rally & EVO, in this picture there is a tame monkey, indigenous dancing, and bouncy castles
After leaving Salta last Tuesday, I had to stop somewhere for the night due to the unfortunate combination of bus/train/border schedules, so I stopped in Humahuaca, a fairly small, fairly touristy town at the north end of the Quebrada de Humahuaca, a gorgeous desert-y valley with some crazy rock formations and multi-colored hills. I walked around and explored a bit in the morning, watched the town wake up and checked out the view of the hills, and then caught a bus to La Quiaca at the border. It was a pretty crazy scene; aside from all the usual border traffic, there was a whole seperate bridge that was just used by people carrying goods across on their backs, most of them bent double from the weight. After all the stress about getting in to Bolivia, the actual border crossing couldn't have been easier; the guy who stamped my passport actually shook my hand and gave me a big smile and a "bienvenidos a Bolivia!" On the Bolivia side of the border was Villazon, where you could definitely see the mixing of Argentine and Bolivian cultures and faces.. also the strong tourist presence; the street pretty much all the way to the train station was lined with stores selling all kinds of woven goods, sunglasses, llama bags, etc.
I caught the train to Uyuni from Villazon (pretty scenery, challenging temperatures, multiple american movies), arrived in the middle of the night, and found a place to crash with another sola chica (from New Zealand). In the morning I headed out to booka trip into the Salar and ended up hooking up with some other people trying to get a big enough group together.. so that worked out well and we left around noon that day. Having accepted that the whole tour was just a blatantly touristy experience, I had still been sort of hoping that I might end up with non-English-speaking tourists.. not the case, but it turned out to be a great group anyway. Emily and Tristan from Australia, Charlotte from New Zealand and Justin from California, and Christian from France (by way of Buenos Aires). Everyone was 20-soemthing which made me the baby, but we all had a lot of fun together.. and Justin and Christian actually spoke some Spanish too, so we practiced a bit with our awesome driver/guide Franz (who spoke no English) and it worked out fine.
The tour (in a 4x4 with our bags strapped to the roof) started in the Salar de Uyuni, a giant lake covered in a crust of salt thick enough to support the weight of many cars, and then continued into a big national park that covers the southwest corner of Bolivia. Generally crazy surreal landscapes and lots of amazing sights, too much to write abotu all of it but I'll put some pictures and list the highlights: the whole salar, realllly old cacti, herds of llama and vacuña, weird colored lakes with flamingos, waking up before dawn and seeing the southern cross and the sky reflected in the lake, the craziest geysers/bubby volcanic pools, weird lava rock formations, hot springs... talking to Franz about Bolivian politics, listening to Jimi Hendrix while driving across the desert, needing all the warm clothes I bought in Villazon
Back in Uyuni I decided to take the overnight bus to Potosi; sprang for the slightly more expensive ticket (yeah parents) so there weren't any problems except for when we stopped at a.. rest stop? and needed to change a tire too.. but that was cool cause while we were waiting these guys came through leading a heard of HUGE bulls (at like 11 at night). weird. Yesterday morning in Potosi I had a bit of trouble finding residenciales with space, so when I finally got a room I asked if something special was going on.. and the lady laughed at me and said it was only THE day of Potosi, 10 de Noviembre is the anniversary of the city/department's indpendence and to celebrate Evo Morales was coming to Potosi that day. Whaaat! So my first couple days here haven't included any usual tourist activity, as everything is closed, but the anniversary celebrations have been awesome: little parade yesterday with crazy costumes and bad marching band, huge rally in the Campo Marte and Evo Morale's speech, music and dancing in the Campo last night, huge parade with all the police and military (much better marching bands) and then indigenous people from all different parts of the department w/music and dancing. The people watching has been amazing, I haven't eaten in a restaurant since I crossed the border (street/market food highlights: llama meat, cow heart grilled w/potatoes, delicious sweet hot syrupy api drink, frsh squeezed orange juice, fresh sliced pineapple, every kind of ice cream), and so far the biggest problem w/altitude (Potosi is the highest city in the world, and I think we were actually higher on the tour, at like 4700 meters) has been breathing/walking slower.
Tomorrow I'm doing the tourist stuff (tour of the mines, museum) and then on to Sucre!
Monton de fotos:
bienvenidos a bolivia!, train view, llama herd, people gathering salt on the edge of the salar
me on island w/cacti in the middle of salar, on top of crazy rocks by a volcano, by the laguna colorada (flamingos!), group picture w/Franza and car by laguna verde
parade dancing, cerro rico (where all the mines are) from the street, rally & EVO, in this picture there is a tame monkey, indigenous dancing, and bouncy castles
Saturday, November 1, 2008
happy november!
well this time I got a computer where the USB works for pictures but the keyboard scks. Entonces, pictures first (Salta and the farm) and then a bit of an update.
my favorite church in Salta
view of the city from the big hill and the teleferique I took up
dramatic path down
mysteriously deserted lake/dique
wildlife at the dique
other volunteers
beautiful campo
baby goat
these bunnies are so cute I didn't really mind cleaning up all their poop
home sweet home
Farm life has been lovely, it's hard to believe it's November now when the morning was hot and sunny and everything is so green.. although it rained earlier this week, so I got to pretend I was in Seattle for a bit. This week I worked a lot more with the school/making bread, did some weeding, firewood gathering/breaking/stacking, planted onions and beets and carrots and lettuce, did a bit of actual hard manual labor hoeing/shoveling in the potato.. garden?, harvested blackberries from the trees (!)... I don't even remember what else, the work here is always varied and generally not too hard. Lots of downtime for reading (I'm working on a "Choo-se Your Own Adventure" in Spanish.. awesome practice) and hanging out and getting to know the other volunteers. I've also been trying to figure out the next month, as Aviva has decided to go to Chile instead of Peru; but I've decided to go anyway, by myself, so that's a little intimidating but mostly really exciting. I ventured back into the city yesterday to go to the Bolivian consulate and get my visa, and I'm leaving this Wednesday.
Random other things:
-I've been attempting to milk the easiest goat all this week and this morning I triumphed with half a pitcher. It's actually really hard, I swear.. I'm gonna get a full pitcher before I leave
-I saw a goat drink another goat's pee while it was peeing
-I'm the only girl on the farm who's not vegetarian, and I had my carniverous convictions challenged a bit when we ate a gose that I had seen walking around that morning.. and they killed a goat today that should show up as dinner. But I decided if I eat anonymous animals I should eat animals I know too, so I'm toughing it out for now
-We found a chick that looked like it was dead but after a morning in Theo's pocket it came back to life!
-The French chicos make the most delicious fried bread ever, especially with jam from the farm. Also listening to them try to speak English is my main source of entertainment
-My ballot will probably never arrive so everyone make sure to vote!! Aaah
my favorite church in Salta
view of the city from the big hill and the teleferique I took up
dramatic path down
mysteriously deserted lake/dique
wildlife at the dique
other volunteers
beautiful campo
baby goat
these bunnies are so cute I didn't really mind cleaning up all their poop
home sweet home
Farm life has been lovely, it's hard to believe it's November now when the morning was hot and sunny and everything is so green.. although it rained earlier this week, so I got to pretend I was in Seattle for a bit. This week I worked a lot more with the school/making bread, did some weeding, firewood gathering/breaking/stacking, planted onions and beets and carrots and lettuce, did a bit of actual hard manual labor hoeing/shoveling in the potato.. garden?, harvested blackberries from the trees (!)... I don't even remember what else, the work here is always varied and generally not too hard. Lots of downtime for reading (I'm working on a "Choo-se Your Own Adventure" in Spanish.. awesome practice) and hanging out and getting to know the other volunteers. I've also been trying to figure out the next month, as Aviva has decided to go to Chile instead of Peru; but I've decided to go anyway, by myself, so that's a little intimidating but mostly really exciting. I ventured back into the city yesterday to go to the Bolivian consulate and get my visa, and I'm leaving this Wednesday.
Random other things:
-I've been attempting to milk the easiest goat all this week and this morning I triumphed with half a pitcher. It's actually really hard, I swear.. I'm gonna get a full pitcher before I leave
-I saw a goat drink another goat's pee while it was peeing
-I'm the only girl on the farm who's not vegetarian, and I had my carniverous convictions challenged a bit when we ate a gose that I had seen walking around that morning.. and they killed a goat today that should show up as dinner. But I decided if I eat anonymous animals I should eat animals I know too, so I'm toughing it out for now
-We found a chick that looked like it was dead but after a morning in Theo's pocket it came back to life!
-The French chicos make the most delicious fried bread ever, especially with jam from the farm. Also listening to them try to speak English is my main source of entertainment
-My ballot will probably never arrive so everyone make sure to vote!! Aaah
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
