Opinions

Jet City won’t let you go without a fight
You see the pod people on prom night
At Hater High
Don’t stay up late to cry
You’ve got a big trip to plan
Say goodbye to your old friends
Say goodbye, goodbye Jet City

I was really excited to visit this organic farm in the Bolivian jungle that an Israelis friend told me about. He had told me that it seemed I would fit well with the owner there, an American ex patriot. Overall, my feelings toward the place are neutral to positive, but I couldn´t escape the feeling of being back around a high school clique that I just couldn´t quite fit into. That, and few things are more annoying than an overly dogmatic, under educated hippie. I hesitate to state my criticisms, as the family that runs the farm is extremely generous and welcoming. I had a good time hiking, eating home grown, home cooked food, and hanging out in the family´s own house; however, this is my blahg and I am going to continue to attempt to limit my self-censorship. I will try to explain my qualms.

I found that the owner had some very strong opinions which I couldn´t help but feel were not well founded. Being his guest, I did not feel that able to criticise him or argue with him, so I often sat in uncomfortable silence. He had a certain way of voicing opinions in a friendly, non-argumentative way that was still somehow overbearing. For example, within my first hour of being there, he asked what I wanted to do while on the farm. I already knew that preparing meals was a big part of the daily routine and I am truly interested in becoming a better cook, so I told him I was interested in cooking because I didn´t often cook at home. His immediate reply was, ´you eat a lot of frozen food, don´t you.` Said as a statement rather than a question, in a way that wasn´t exactly an insult but more that he pitied me for my evil ways. His sentiments and disguised criticism of me was often backed up by two girls, ironically from Bellingham. They were going through the annoying self-righteous hippy phase I see in so many young people in Bellingham. The combination of the three of them and an Irish girl they had also befriended had me feeling very outnumbered. To them, I was the one who just didn´t get it. I was put in a weird position where any argument from me just seemed defensive toward the group.

One of the things that bothered me most was the blatant hypocrisy there. I know that everyone is hypocritical, but these people were really unbelievable because they spoke with such strong opinions but acted so differently at times. For example, on girl told me, ´the antiperspirant you use can give you breast cancer, and any makeup you have will also give you breast cancer, assuming you didn´t buy it from a natural product store.´ She then goes outside a lights up a cigarette. Ok, I´m confused. As for the farm owner, he prides himself in having such a harmonious life, living with nature and bla bla bla; however he has two pigs on the property, one of which is slowly loosing a leg from having a rope that was tied to tightly still stuck around it, while the other has already lost his leg. He seems totally unconcerned with the blatent animal cruelty he is passively taking part in. The other thing that really got to me were the conspiracy theories this guy believed so strongly in. For example, he believes most historical wars in the Middle East were based on the trade of hash, rather than religion. This could be true, I have no idea. But it is hard to believe coming from a guy from the States who sits around in the Bolivian jungle smoking weed. That argument is slightly amusing; however, when he claims that all vaccines are evil and AIDS is a complete conspiracy I take it personally. I am not denying that some vaccines have side effects and sometimes side effects are not discovered as quickly as they should be. I am also not claiming that all treatment of AIDS is handled efficiently or fairly, but to claim that no constructive work is being done is a severe insult to the many people, some at my university, who dedicate their lives to curing diseases. Also, to claim that all vaccines are useless is to ignore all the children who used to die from now preventable diseases. Perhaps my favorite are song lyrics of a song he wrote that suggest that war footage on the news is faked because reporters are never harmed. He ignores the current and past journalists who have been injured or killed reporting near combat zones. Somehow, whenever I heard those lyrics, I always imagine that he is trying to argue that the photo of Phan Thi Kim Phúc, the little girl burned by napalm in the Vietnam War was faked. What would she say?!

All in all, I am probably being hypersensitive and hypercritical. All of us living in one little house in the middle of nowhere for 5 days was probably a little too much for me. I don´t regret it though and have plenty of good memories as well, including being able to visit the Amboró Park, which is the major reason I headed down there in the first place.

I left the farm by hitchhiking from the road -- really the only way to leave the farm as there is no town there and therefore no bus stop. Hitchhiking in most South American countries is not what we in the United States imagine as hitchhiking though; you dont ride in semi trucks with old fat men on speed (I´m sure they exist down here, but you don't flag down big trucks, only cars and buses, unless you want a real adventure to write home, and possibly your insurance company about). Basically, if you are so lucky as to own your own car in Bolivia, you probably need to use it to make money to pay for it, so it is also a taxi. So when you hitchhike, you are actually just hailing a taxi. You pay for your ride just as you would in a city. I was lucky enough to flag down a real taxi from the company I had used to get to the farm originally, which is the safest option. In the taxi, I met a woman from Madagascar, her Bolivian boyfriend and her very small puppy. She had left England, where she was living earlier, to travel and just hadnt gone back yet. She had a business selling street crafts that you see all over Bolivia and the rest of South America, but she had a friend who sold them back in a store in England as well. She was a wealth of information and stories. She had fallen and broken her ankle several months earlier, exposing the bone. The roads were so bad at the time that she could not get to Santa Cruz to go to the hospital. So she popped things back in place herself, treated it with herbs from the local "doctor" and finally got surgery a month later. I almost didn´t believe her, but she told the story with such innocence and simplicity that it had to be true. She had taken the same river trip I was planning in Brazil 4 times already. She definitely made me feel more confident about doing the trip. It was a great coincidence to meet her before heading to Brazilian rivers, even though she was giving me advice while instructing me to drink the beer she had stashed in the back of the car quickly or her boyfriend drank it all.

Next I headed to Trinidad (the capital of Beni, Bolivia, not the island). Lonely Planet, as is often the case, was extremely negative about Trinidad, so I was not too excited about going there. Inevitably, this was the town I got stuck in. Luckily, I thought it was a nice town and once again, LP is full of crap. I had planned to take a 24 hour bus to Guayaramerin, at the Brazilian boarder after resting for a day in Trinidad, but inexplicably the bus didn´t leave the next day and I was told to come back the following day. I then ran into several people over the next 12 hours who basically told me that I was crazy to try to take a bus to Guayaramerin at this time because the road didn´t even exist in some places due to the heavy rains recently (seems to be the theme of my trip, right?). I took a motorcycle taxi (yes, with my 20kg pack) to the bus station. Luckily, the driver also did tours and was very protective of me as a tourist. He talked to the bus company with me and we eventually decided that I should not go, but rather buy a plane ticket. He tried to get my money back for me, even talking to the station police, but as far as I know, he never succeeded. Before taking my flight, I told him he could have the money if he could get it back. Having to stick around a few days was actually nice as I spent an extra day touring the surrounding area -- we saw the local river port, ate a huge fish lunch in a local village that reminded me very much of Mexico and talked a lot about Bolivian corruption. It was really interesting to notice the difference in opinion on Evo Moralez, the Bolivian president, between the people of the high lands and the low lands. I had thought that he was generally popular with all the lower class people and fairly popular in general, but in fact he seems to be pretty unpopular in the low lands across multiple socio-economic classes.

I eventually did catch a flight to Guayaramerin and crossed over into Brazil without a problem. I had a slight (ok, big) problem getting money in Brazil as no ATM wanted to accept my cards and there was no place to change money, but I improvised in the end and headed north to the rivers. More on that later.