Recent Fun in Cochabamba

Our time in Bolivia has begun to feel very short now that we´re nearing October and have already completed one of our three excursions. We will be traveling for two and a half weeks of October and then we´ll be on our own for independent projects in November, so all of a sudden I´m clinging to the time that I have in Cochabamba! I would like to conduct my independent project en el campo (the countryside) to experience the other side of life here in Bolivia, but now that I have friends in the city, I´m feeling sad about the thought of leaving! Much of that sentiment stems from the fact that I´ve been having a lot of fun since returning from our first excursion, venturing out more and hanging with friends.

Cyclists on an outing to a nearby nature reserve, Pairumani!

Sunday the 20th was a day of referendum voting in a number of departments (like states). Any voting is very serious here: there is no alcohol allowed for 48 hours prior, voting is obligatory - you have to show your receipt for three months after to travel, use the bank, etc, or pay a fine - and, the best part, there is no transportation allowed on the day of the vote. What does that mean for folks like me? A day for cycling!

Effectively it was another Pedestrian Day, though with much quieter streets because people tend to stay at home on voting days for some reason unknown to me. But with my three biking friends, Lenka, Oscar and Ale, I headed out for a day of cycling. 

The day was great: a steep climb up to the park but with a reward of wooded trails and gorgeous views.

The view to the north - a small river flows through the valley, which a precipitous trail parallels (first photo).

The view back toward the city. It sure looks big from up high!

Upon reaching the park entrance, we shared a giant plate of pique - basically a pile of French fries, hot dog-esque sausage slices, beef chunks, tomato, onion, mayo and two hardboiled eggs on top. Wow. Can't say I want to eat it again, but it was good in the moment of cycling hunger!  

From there we hauled our bikes up through the woods to the lookout point:

Then biked/walked along the precipitous path to find a place in the river to "chapotear"! This word basically means to frolic/splash in the water like a duck, in my understanding. Which was a lovely way to cool off!

Frrom there, we headed back down the hill - first the nervewracking part through the woods (mostly walking for me), then the lovely descent on pavement. I made it home just as it was getting dark, another wonderful day spent on the bike!

During the week, I went to an outdoor jazz concert with Oscar, attended a dance by the Afro-Bolivian dance troupe MAUCHI, learned the basics of some Bolivian folkloric dances, and played foosball and billiards at the "game parlor" that Oscar runs. Oh, and I wrote an essay about the life history of my host mom - can't forget about the academic side of my education this semester!

On this past Sunday, I took another outing to Tarata - the town that we biked to on the Día del Peaton. Lenka's family attends an annual fiesta at the hacienda of their friends, which is supposedly a religious celebration for the saint of the town, but mostly is just a big party. I was hanging out with her and Oscar right before they left for the fiesta on Saturday, and they invited me to come to Tarata to meet them on Sunday morning!

So Sunday morning, after cooking delicous pancakes with my host mom and aunt to eat with the maple syrup I brought them, I set out for Tarata! This time by bus, because with the roads open it would be pretty dangerous to bike. The 45-minute bus ride cost 90 cents, and pretty soon I found myself in the Plaza Principal of Tarata!

I waited there for about an hour because, like a typical Bolivian, I was much later than I'd told my friends I'd arrive so I had to wait for them to read their texts to see that I had actually come. But pretty soon, a mini van came screeching around a corner and I was dragged in, probably against my better judgment, to a carload of friends/cousins/novios. After a brief but wild ride around the cobblestone streets of Tarata, we headed out to the hacienda - a beautiful old estate of sorts with buildings made totally of stones, fruit orchards, and even a pool!

I was welcomed in and handed a plateful of food: chicharron - hunks of pork, mote - giant corn, and potatoes. With over fifty people in attendance, there was plenty of room for one more. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, dancing, chatting, exploring the buildings/hillside, until finally they kicked us out!

But that wasn't so bad because we were rewarded with a gorgeous view of the lunar eclipse beginning on the ride home! After stopping for pizza - an annual tradition - I made it home at last and watched the eclipse reach completion in the patio with my family. A tired neck but an incredible sight to see!

An extra:

A baby avocado! Super rich and with only a thin sliver of a pit! A perfect snack.

Ciao,

Lucy

 

Read More

Excursion to Sucre and Potosí

Sorry for The delay in posts! The speed of life here has picked up steam, with friends to hang out with, essays to write, and independent research projects to plan. But I will try to give a review of our first excursion here, and then share about what I've been up to since in a following post. 

Well, I didn't expect to be so excited to come back to Cochabamba after a week away! But it's amazing how much my attitude has changed about the city from spending time in two much more touristy cities of Bolivia. For the first few weeks in Cocha, I felt defined by my foreignness. I constantly felt stared at because of my height, blond hair and pale skin. There was always a nagging feeling of "you don't belong here." I knew that I had picked this location partly for that reason - I didn't want to go to a city that was full of tourists and have that assumption define my interactions with locals. But it's hard to remember that when everyone is staring at you all the time! However, this excursion provided a glimpse of what it would have been like to spend the semester in a tourist destination. And I am now much happier about my location decision because of it! In Sucre, everywhere we went there were tourists, so we were assumed to be tourists as well. (Which, technically, we were, although our purpose was different from that of most others.) As we learned, people treat tourists very differently - not nearly as warmly and openly as what we've experienced in Cocha. And the assumption that you are a tourist carries a very different weight than the acknowledgement that you are a foreigner but here to live/work/volunteer/study. Cocha is not a tourist destination and for that I am glad because people do not assume they know what we're doing here. My time away has allowed me to come to appreciate that, and I am glad to be back in my at-times-uncomfortable but mostly entertaining place in this city. 

So the trip: we first headed up to Potosí, the highest city in the world (there are other towns in the Andes that are higher, but not cities). 

The landscape on the drive up - very dry!

Potosí was the silver mining capital of the world back in the colonial era - the wealth of Europe literally came from one hill in the city: Cerro Rico. 

There it is - the landmark that defines Potosí, and facilitated the inequality of wealth distribution in the world today. 

Some scholars consider Cerro Rico to be the birthplace of capitalism in action: through the enslavement and repression of the native people, the Spanish colonizers sacked the riches of Bolivia, creating the monetary wealth of Europe and impoverishing the land and the people from which it came. Bolivia is living the legacy of this era, as it tries to act on a world stage while the countries of the Global North exert their dominating power that is derived from the wealth extracted from Bolivia's own resources. This is similar to the story of many countries, but I think the trauma is particularly painful for Bolivia because it literally supplied the money whose legacy continues to define power relations in the world today. 

So, while in Potosí, we visited one of the 300 some mines that are still active on the Cerro Rico today. Most of the silver is gone, but there is still a mixture of minerals - tin, zinc, platinum. The experience of visiting a mine was emotionally challenging in many ways - confronting the history that the hill contains, understanding the dangers and difficulties of work there, but also feeling extremely uncomfortable for entering at all. 

A vein of ore running across the rock above us. 

On one hand, leading tours gives some men the opportunity to stop mining, stop spending twelve hours every day inside the hill. But the nature of a tour - entering for an hour, talking to miners who were very generous and accommodating but who we know will likely die in fifteen years of silicosis, then exiting to the light and to return to our normal lives - feels just as extractive in some ways as the mining itself. While it is important to confront the privilege in our lives and learn about the industries that underwrite that, such an experience needs a time for reflection afterwards, which is not part of the package! As a program, we took that time, and our discussion was probably even more important in my opinion than the tour itself. But for the majority of people who entered the mines on tours, I wonder what they take away and how they process it. 

The new hill that is growing next to Cerro Rico - composed of all the material that has been extracted from the mines. As Cerro Rico shrinks (and it is shrinking), its new neighbor grows. 

After a mostly-sleepless night for me - the altitude wasn't a problem for me during the day, but when I tried to sleep I had a psychological problem of feeling like I couldn't breath in enough air - we descended to Sucre. Because Potosí was too high for the Spanish to feel comfortable, they built their administrative capital down in a valley. Sucre is thus the most colonial city in Bolivia, and sucreños still hold onto the ideal of European cosmopolitanism the most. 

Lots of churches and whitewashed buildings!

In Spanish, people call crosswalks "zebras" because of the stripes. So in some cities in Bolivia, there are groups of volunteers who dress up in zebra costumes and facilitate pedestrian crossing! How great is that!

The two highlights of Sucre were visiting a museum of traditional Andean weaving and an education center that teaches traditional folkloric music to kids. 

The weavings of the area are gorgeous and intricate, made for both festivals and daily life. The museum is run by an organization that has helped to revitalize traditional weaving by promoting the products so that the weavers are paid their true value. In the past, merchants bought up much of people's heirlooms for next to nothing, then sold them at high prices around the world. So this organization has had a tremendous impact by facilitating more direct sales so that people can make a good living off of their amazing handiwork. 

The music school is similarly trying to revitalize traditional instruments and songs of the region by teaching them to younger generations. We learned how to play a basic version of their instrument similar to a pan flute, and then had an incredible private concert with the band that runs the school, Los Masis! They come to the US to play sometimes, so if anyone ever has the chance to see them, they are fabulous!

My flute with the song we learned to sing (in Quechua). 

Besides the scheduled visits, we spent a lot of time just wandering around the city. It was nice to explore a different place, but now I am happy to be back in Cochabamba where I know the streets, how to take a trufi, and can eat a delicious lunch with my family every day without worrying about getting sick!

Read More

A Reminder of Home

This weekend brought me a special surprise, first in Cochabamba and then in the city of Potosí! The surprise: Nora Randolph!

Nora, my friend from Williams, has been traveling in South America for seven months now, backpacking to the end of the continent, dancing tango in Buenos Aires, and taking a back trail in to Machu Picchu. After a month of trekking in Peru, she needed to return to Argentina for her flight back to the States in October, so why not pass through Bolivia?! Lucky for me, that's what she decided to do, and so Saturday night we found each other in the chaotic bus terminal of Cochabamba. 

What a joy it was to see a familiar face so far away from home. As many of you probably know, my aunt passed away this week, so it was a great comfort to have a visit with a close friend. 

We kept each other up late that Saturday night, wandering around the city, chatting and eating chips of chancaca - a block of unprocessed cane sugar that tastes like solid molasses! Then we were able to spend all of Sunday together exploring the city! We first skyped with Sonja - what a surreal experience to be with Nora in Bolivia talking to Sonja back in North Carolina! Then we meandered through the market, admiring all the delicious-looking fruit. Because Monday was the anniversary of the city, there was a big parade going on through the center of downtown. In Cocha, there always seems to be some festivity happening somewhere each day!

We met a bike tourist in the park by my house! Look at the great panniers that he made out of the cloth that indigenous women use as "backpacks" tied over one shoulder. 

Nora and I shared lunch with my family, which included a fabulous pineapple cake in celebration of Cochabamba day! Our first dessert during my time here, and now I know that my aunt is a very good baker! Then in the afternoon, we set out to explore some more and decided to walk up the hill to the north, which was something I hadn't done before. Basically, most of the city's growth is in the south, but some people are building farther and farther up the foothills in the north as well. We went until the pavement stopped and some empty, trash filled lots began, then turned back for the beautiful view of the city. Also, the streets were pretty quiet so it could be a good biking spot for me, though very steep!

The view from up high. 

Cristo in the distance!

Once back down, we ended up at a space age-y restaurant for dinner, where I'd had ice cream before. Turns out they have great omelettes! And then we confused them by trying to use Nora's camping bowl for ice cream - something they had clearly never dealt with before! But the effort was mostly successful, other than the fact that they put my order in it so I was the one who ate out of it!

With our ice cream!

From there, we went to the last performance of the Festival of Contemporary Dance that has been going on for two weeks now at a cultural center in the city. Every night, there was a free, outdoor dance performance by a different group from all over South America. I had gone one other night with my family and thought it was fabulous. This performance was as well, with lots of humor and fireworks going off in the background!

Though we didn't leave the dance until nearly 9:30, but the night was only getting started for me, I was to learn. My friend Ale, who I biked with the previous weekend, is a drummer in a rock band, and they play a concert at his house the night before Dia del Cochabamba every year. So we headed over there, feeling accomplished because we were showing up an hour and a half late, but of course even when we arrived the concert was far from starting! So we headed out again with my other biking friend, Oscar, to go collect our other friend Lenka. At eleven we returned and the music was almost ready to start. At that point, Nora decided to go back to her hostel to sleep, which would probably have been a good decision for me as well! But I was with the three Bolivian friends who I have so far, who are all wonderful and goofy and a blast to hang out with, so I decided to stay for the duration!

The band. My friend Ale is the drummer. 

That ended up being till 4am...way out of the norm for me but worth it for all the fun I had. The bands were good, the guys there danced like madmen (there were only four women there total) and a sickening amount of Coca Cola was consumed.

At last I went home, slept for two and a half hours, then hopped on a plane with the group to go to Sucre and Potosi! My visit with Nora continued because she came to Potosi for her next stop as well! So she joined our group for an afternoon before parting ways for the immediate future, she concluding her trip and me just beginning mine!

(More on Sucre and Potosí coming soon.)

Read More

Día del Peatón

Sunday was The Best day I have had in Cochabamba, and that I probably will have! This is because it was the Día del Peatón - pedestrian day. On this day, all across Bolivia, pedestrians and cyclists rule the streets and no automobiles are allowed until 6pm. How fantastic!

Setting out for the day at 8am!

 The tradition began in 2000 in Cochabamba, and has since expanded to be a nationwide event on the first Sunday of September and a thrice-annual event in Cochabamba. Because this city is the birthplace of the day, my first surprise was seeing the country's president, Evo Morales, bike down one of the main avenues, with a massive pack of cyclists following behind!

Evo is the one smiling in the middle. 

The brigade of cyclists following him!

I happened to be there because a Bolivian student we'd met during orientation had invited me to spend the day biking with her and some friends. It was so exciting to meet a female cyclist in my first days here, and I'd been looking forward to our excursion since. So after the presidential entourage passed (with practically no security, I might add) we set off for Tarata, a small town to the south of Cochabamba.

Ready to ride!

 It was my first time passing through the south side of the city, which is were the new migrants from the campo (rural areas) live, in houses covering the sides of the hills:

The view back towards the north was quite impressive, with the snowy mountain Tunari visible in the distance:

We stopped on the side of the road for a late morning snack - sopa de pescado. Though I expected I would get sick from it, I decided to share a bowl with Lenka. It's hard to turn down newfound friends! Though I have no idea where the fish came from, it was quite tasty, especially when we added some fresh citrus juice from some sort of fruit that was like an orange. 

After our descanso (rest), we continued up the hill. Though the street was a bit hectic, we only had one accident! Lenka ran into two kids who were swerving around on one of those seated scooter toys. But all were okay. At last, we reached the Lago Langostura, a huge lake that is the color of coffee with milk.

Lenka and me, showing off our girl power on the wall of the dam that we crossed!

After crossing the lake,we continued along a fairly straight road the rest of the way to Tarata. Our surroundings quickly turned to small farms, with sheep, cows and skinny chickens roaming around, and fields of aba (fava beans), alfalfa, and other crops. Upon arriving in Tarata, we took a loop around the town square to admire the colonial architecture. Tarata is the most well-preserved colonial town in the area, with cobblestone streets, old buildings, and a bridge that no longer has any water under it!

The old clock that still works!

The bridge that an ex-president built for only himself to use.

Besides seeing the architecture, the main reason to go to Tarata is for the typical meal of the town: chorizo con trigo (wheat berries!) and chicha, the famous fermented corn alcoholic beverage of Bolivia. So of course we partook of these specialities for a big lunch. Though Heidi, our director, had expressly warned us not to drink chicha, it is of the best quality in Tarata and, with the peer pressure of newfound friends, I decided to join them in sharing a gourd. How could I resist a traditional fermented beverage!? Besides, I was already eating street food, so I might as well disregard all the warnings in one day, right?

Here is the chicha gourd. There is a communal cup/ladle, made out of the husk of a fruit, that you fill with chicha, run around the ring of the gourd and then pass to someone at the table. Before your first sip, you spill a few drops on the ground, which is a toast to Pachamama, Mother Earth. 

The chicha was very tasty! Similar to kombucha, with its fermented bite, but a bit sweeter in its main flavor. And the food was delicious too:

We hung out at the "restaurant" for a while because a short rainstorm hit and there were tarps covering where we were sitting. Then when we went to leave, we discovered that Lenka had a big thorn puncturing her back tire and it was totally flat. We went to the one bike shop in town, but the owner was away. However, his wife let us in to use the workshop space and I proceeded to teach the other three how to fix a flat tire. Luckily I had all my supplies with me! It was pretty funny to be the one with the knowledge for once, even if I could only express it in broken Spanish. (I better brush up on my bicycle vocabulary!) 

Pretty soon we were on the road again, with mostly a downhill grade to carry us home. I had had so much fun all day that my cheeks were hurting from smiling! A strong headwind slowed our return, but we made it back to town to catch the last hour of pedestrian rule. 

A view to the northwest from the one big hill that we had to summit on the way back.

Riding through the center of town was crazy,  weaving through all the people that crowded the streets. Eventually we had to get of our bikes because there was no space to maneuver. However, after stopping for an ice cream bar as the sun set, the cars came out in force, making the final few blocks home a bit more sketchy. But we made it to my house, and Lenka came in to see the surprised looks on my family's faces when I told them we'd been to Tarata and back! Apparently that's a pretty big deal (about 30-35 miles in total). 

My bike did pretty well (this was my first ride of any significant distance on it) except for one problem. The attachment of the saddle to the seat tube is really old and hard to tighten, so my saddle kept rocking backwards while I was on it. I could punch down the nose to reset it, but it would soon rock back again, and got worse over the course of the day. Definitely something that I will need to figure out how to fix before the bike trip!

At the end of the day, after having such a blast, I was pretty sure that I was going to be sick soon after all the risks I'd taken. But the best news? I am fine! Somehow my body managed to process everything I put in it, and I am very thankful for it. I guess that means it's time for some more chicha!

 

Read More