The Amazon!

With my lightening bolts a glowin'
I can see where I am going to be when
The reaper he reaches and touches my hand
With my lightening bolts a glowin' I can see where I am goin'
Better look out below!

As has happened multiple times during this trip, my expectations and preconceptions were fairly useless and surprisingly inaccurate in the last month. I have been constantly reevaluating my time frame, trying to make it to all of my intended destinations in South America, before needing to leave for Uganda; however, I seem to be a slow traveler, so maintaining the schedule has been difficult. It crossed my mind to skip going to Brazil entirely because I was feeling so pressed for time, and also because I seemed to hear the most accounts of violence and crime coming from travelers who had been in Brazil. In the end, I decide I could not skip Brazil because I was looking forward to traveling through the Amazon so much, having skipped expensive jungle tours in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. Plus, I had spent 3 days and $100 obtaining a Brazilian visa in Lima. I am very grateful for my decision, as I loved Brazil much more than I original expected I would and, due to having to skip many towns and cities for lack of time, I will definitely be returning to Brazil.

I started out crossing the Bolivian/Brazilian boarder very far to the north of Bolivia. Apparently this is not a usual tourist route, as in the small town I spent the first night in, I ran into more curious stares and frank questions ( "what are you doing here?") than I have anywhere else during my trip. I went north to Porto Velho to begin my long awaited boat journey through the Amazon. The trip from Porto Velho to Manaus took 5 days and 4 nights and was definitely a highlight of my trip. I traveled on two different three story river boats, crammed full of hammocks, people, produce and other goods that need to be transported and distributed to different towns along the river. I quickly became friends with the only other young single girl on the boat, though we didn't share any languages, so she basically just drug me around with her whenever we would dock at a port. A few days into the trip, an Austrian man joined the group. With his help, all three of us could talk together, as he spoke both English and Portuguese. We became an inseparable threesome during the rest of the trip. He told me what people around us were saying -- mostly talking about my blond hair and asking why the gringo got both the single women on the boat. He also filled me in on the fact that Soni, the Brazilian girl, had been telling everyone that I was her girlfriend in order to keep the men from harassing us. They caught on to the lie eventually when they realized we could not actually speak to one another. I eventually made it to Manaus -- the boat only broke down twice, and because the water was receding rather than rising, we didn't hit any submerged trees and sink.

Thomas, my Austrian friend, let me stay with him in Manaus and gave me the scoop on all the sites to see in town. I went back out onto the river for a "jungle tour" which consisted of lunch in a floating cabin and canoeing through the submerged jungle. On the canoe trip, our guide asked us if we wanted him to catch a "slow monkey", as he did not know the name in English. I immediately caught on to the fact that he was talking about a sloth and told him not to catch it, but the other girls said yes and I was left feeling like the odd man out. So our guide went about shaking a sloth out of a tree. When the other girls realized what was actually going to happen, they said not to do it, but the damage was done and the sloth fell from the tree and had to swim to another tree to escape us. I'm sure the poor creature expended more energy in those 5 minutes with us than it usually does in a whole week. Needless to say, not the best money I have ever spent.

Next, I flew to Salvador, skipping much of the north of Brazil for lack of time. I convinced a couple of Australian guys in the airport to share a cab into town with me, as I didn't want to risk taking the bus when I didn't exactly know where I was even going. I stayed in the worst hostel of my whole trip (ok, actually maybe there have been worse. . .) as we were all enticed by its price of 10 reais, about US $5, which is cheap for a big Brazilian city and I think we must have started drinking already by that point, as upon waking the next morning we all agreed we needed to move immediately. We all had very questionable, tiny sheets that had visible bugs crawling around in them, the street noise was incredibly loud and the old blond hippie with massive dreadlocks I found sleeping in the hammock on the way to the bathrooms the next morning may still be there because I am not sure he was actually alive. In order to leave, we had to convince another guest to hold our money and promise to give it to the owner, as no one who actually worked there could be found. I ended up staying in Salvador for 5 or 6 days, waiting to go wreck diving, which never happened due to "weather" (though we had blue skies and calm winds most of the time). Luckily I found a much nicer hostel for not much more money and eventually parted ways with the Australians, as I could not take their drinking and partying, and they had taken to referring to all the girls in the hostel as "whores" in front of me. I think I had been given honorary "dude" status, as I was the only other person sharing a room with them.

All in all, I enjoyed Salvador very much and will have to go back for more warm beaches, colorful people, colorful buildings and perhaps some wreck diving. The one odd thing that kept happening is that I was constantly given colored ribbons to tie around my wrist that said something in Portuguese about the saint of Salvador. I am still not sure whether I was just being marked as a tourist (not that it wasn't already obvious) or whether I was having a curse put on me. I was grateful to leave unscathed from one of the cities I was most sure I would be mugged in. One girl was not so lucky -- she had a necklace ripped from her neck one night while watching capoera (sp?) in the square. A little boy of about 10 walked her back to her hostel, carried her bag for her (after much convincing) and yelled "fuck off" at anyone who even looked at them.

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.

How to make your stay in a third world south american country even more uncomfortable

All possibilities
Are landing at my feet
There's nothing I can see
But possibilities

All colours are changing in my eyes
Your hopes are all fading, that will never do
You're seeing the world through cynical eyes
I'm seeing the world through the eyes of somebody new

I am traveling through Bolivia right now and despite the somewhat negative title above (which is intended to make fun of myself, rather than Bolivia) I really like Bolivia thus far. I came south from Lake Titicaca to La Paz, where I met up with two friends I had made in Peru. Joshua and Cody are brother and sister and are taking a month to travel together around Peru, Bolivia and Argentina. I was a little jealous of them because of their spontaneity and because they seemed to be such good traveling companions. In contrast, I took forever to plan this trip and still can´t get anyone to come visit me. I also always wonder if I would have done something similar to this trip if I had not received this fellowship. Obviously lots of other people are traveling through their own means and I hope I would be one of them, but I can´t say with certainty that I would. Becoming complacent in life in the States is really easy, or so I have found. I am still on this trip, yet I find myself planning my next trips already -- this is a good thing, I think, as long as I follow through with it. Even though I am not yet half way through my trip, I still think a lot about what I am doing in the future and when I am going home. I worry a bit that I am not using this opportunity to go to more places, but then I also worry that if I don´t stay in a country long enough, I wont get an accurate impression of it. It is a catch 22.

Sorry, not sure where I was going with that. . .

Anyway, I met up with Cody and Joshua and we made plans to mountain bike down "The World´s Most Dangerous Road". So this began my streak of making traveling in Bolivia more uncomfortable and trying than it needs to be. From what I had read, I was already bracing myself for traveling in Bolivia to be quite difficult due to lack of tourist infrastructure, adequate hotels, sanitary food, working buses and roads and general hygiene; however, in actuality I have found Bolivia no more difficult or unpleasant than Ecuador or Peru. In general, I have found all three countries pleasant, and (gasp) not that difficult or frightening to travel in. So I suppose this is why I decided to challenge myself a little in Bolivia.

First challenge: Death Road. I met up with Cody and Joshua, who I had met while spending a night on Amantani Island on the Peru side of Lake Titicaca. We had a fabulously strange night dressing up in traditional clothing and dancing with our host families. The only person at the party from my family was a quite elderly woman who nonetheless insisted that I dance much more than I would have liked (had I had it my way, I would have not danced at all). Most interesting discovery of the night: beer foams over A LOT when you are at altitudes above 4000 meters. In La Paz, we arranged to bike the Death Road, a one lane dirty road cut into the side of a jungle covered cliff. We were told to bring sun screen and bug spray; what we actually needed was subzero weather gear. We started at some ridiculous altitude in the freezing fog and rain. After the first hour, all of us, including our guides, were back in the van, too cold to ride -- with the exception of a crazy Frenchman, who rode the entire way. It was perhaps the coldest I have ever been in my life, and that is coming from someone who snowboards, scuba dives in the Puget Sound and exercises racehorses in the snow. I thought I was going to vomit, but couldn´t decide whether this was from the severe pain in my thawing hands or from the high altitude. Perhaps both. We continued once we reached the actual Death Road, farther down the road and farther down in altitude as well. We all survived and got very dirty and wet. My advice to anyone following in my footsteps: bring snowboarding gear.

Second Challenge: Salar de Uyuni. I left La Paz and headed south toward Uyuni to see the Salar de Uyuni -- the world´s largest salt flat. I splurged on perhaps the nicest bus I have seen thus far this trip but did not enjoy the 12 hour ride much because we traveled down the roughest "road" I have seen to date. It consisted mostly of a stone path through fields with multiple river crossings -- straight through, no bridges allowed. Once in Uyuni, I was greeted by a ghost town, only with living people. The town was all one color -- tan. The streets were ridiculously wide and the buildings very small, giving the whole town very strange, empty-seeming proportions. I left shortly in a Toyota Landcruiser that had seen better days, but was still in much better shape than many of the other SUVs being used as tour vehicles. I quickly figured out that, though most vehicles had the typical mix of European tourists, my vehicle held only people from La Paz, expect the driver (presumably from Uyuni) and me. I was briefly terrified by the prospect of spending countless hours over the next three days surround solely by Bolivianos; however, as usual, my preconceptions were totally wrong -- I had a great time and was warmly welcomed. One of the women had lived in the States, so she and I had a couple of conversations in English, during which I got to ask all my burning questions about the coca culture in Bolivia. This, however, would make the blog way, way too long, so maybe I will cover my thoughts on the Bolivia-US-Coca-Cocaine saga in another blog. So this was challenging why, you may ask? Well, mostly it was easy, as it was just a lot of driving to some of the most incredible landscapes I have ever seen. I know where Salvador Dali got his inspiration, seriously. The only very unpleasant parts were that the last morning we got up and in the car at 5am in order to make it back to Uyuni at a reasonable hour and once again, it was painfully cold. I hate being cold. My future travel plans will now revolve solely around traveling to places that are always between 55 and 70 (I hate being hot too). The second problem? One of the families had a very cute 5 year old who was very sick due to either the car rides and/or the altitude; therefore the truck consisted of me, the driver, 5 more adults, one small child and bowls of vomit. Not pleasant. At least our driver was not a drunk, unlike the driver of one poor couple I met; thank goodness for small miracles.

Third Challenge: Potosi Mines. Immediately after returning to Uyuni from the salt flat, I boarded a bus for Potosi. For some reason, all buses leave at 7pm, leaving you no time to eat upon returning to Uyuni and before boarding the bus, and also causing you to arrive in Potosi sometime between 12am and 2am (or 5am depending on how many flat tires you get). Luckily, I ran into a kid I had met in Cusco and convinced him to let me join his group in searching for a hotel when we arrived in Potosi. The next day we went to visit the Potosi mines. The mines have been operating since colonial times and still operate today, harvesting silver and zinc. The mines were perhaps the most thought provoking thing I have seen since beginning my travels. I hesitate to call them a human rights abuse, as workers are not technically forced to be there; however, they are forced to be there in a way because the salary at almost all other jobs is very, very poor and pales in comparison to the miners salary. That said, one miner dies every day in the mines, most often caused by alcohol-related accidents, since many miners drink heavily while working. Otherwise, miners die within 10 years of entering the mines from silica pneumonia. We met a boy working in the mines hauling wheelbarrows of rock and mineral outside to where the women separate the valuable minerals from the invaluable rock. Not only did he haul a wheelbarrow, that was a challenge for me to lift, for 10 hours a day, but he is only 10, which means he will likely die of a respiratory illness by the age of 20. One interesting coca fact: coca was seen as "from the devil" by the Spanish colonials until they realized that it increased the output of the indigenous people working in the mines, after which it was official supported by the Vatican.

After this whirlwind tour of the south of Bolivia, I needed a break, some warmth and rest, so I headed to beautiful Sucre. I took advantage of a hot (ok, warm and slightly weak) shower and put on some clean and comfortable clothes. I finally untied my tennis shoes from the outside of my bag -- they had been hanging there for 5 or 6 days; ever since I had ruined them riding the mountain bike through rivers. I successfully rescued the insides with shoe powder I bought in La Paz, but the outsides were still covered in mud. I put them on anyway and went out to explore the town. One commonality between many of the cities in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia is the presence of shoe shine boys around the center of each town. There are slight difference between the shoe shine boys of each town; for example, in La Paz they wear ´80s style sky masks and baseball hats pulled low over their eyes, so it appears that they intend to mug you rather than shine your shoes. I have become used to being approached by these boys, who will shine anything you walk on, including chacos, so I tend to say "no gracias" without paying much attention to them. This time however, two small boys followed me and would not leave me alone. Then I began to understand what they were saying. Basically, they were telling me how dirty my shoes were. I looked down and saw the still present mud from the bike ride and consented to a shoe shine. I paid the boys 10 bolivianos -- 10 times more than they asked, but still only $1.25. Now I have black Asics with a military shine!

I had a wonderful, relaxing time in Sucre resting in a 3 star hotel, for $15 a night and hanging out with a new group of friends. I had originally intended to stay in Sucre for only one night, then head on to Santa Cruz, then on to an animal refuge; however, I was having unspecified anxieties about this plan. Not only was I concerned about time constraints, but also about committing to an organization I knew very little about. Then it finally dawned on me to consult one of the veterinarians I worked with while in Argentina a year and a half ago. Just before I was supposed to leave Sucre, my vet friend emailed me telling me not to waste my time. I felt so relieved to be able to base my decision on good advice. It was also great to find myself suddenly with extra, unplanned time.

Since then, I have been trying to live day to day a little more, not planning so much, which can be difficult for me. I ended up staying in Sucre for four nights with a group of friends from Canada, England and Israel. We kept ourselves pretty busy, seeing a huge set of fossilized dinosaur foot prints, finding the best viewpoint in the city, eating incredibly cheap but good food in the local market, hiking to a set of waterfalls to go swimming and visiting a Sunday market. Now I am in Santa Cruz, again, finding myself here longer than originally planned. I stayed, in part, to meet with some people who work for the Wildlife Conservation Society. They work in the Kaa-Iya de Gran Chaco National Park helping to manage the park and the surrounding indigenous societies. I got to browse their library and learned a lot about this project as well as other similar projects around the world. Unfortunately it does not look like I will make it to the park, as, unlike easily accessible North American Parks, this park has no tourist infrastructure and is quite difficult to reach, let alone navigate inside. Now I am headed out to an organic farm and hope to see Amboro National Park. After that it is on to Brazil. I am feeling the itch to change countries again, though I am having some trouble wading through all the possible travel plans for Brazil. Possibilities are great, but also overwhelming.