Mom's Homecoming

We recently spent over a week in La Paz, Bolivia with my mom. It was great that she was able to join us for this segment. She was born in Bolivia and lived there till she was 11. Except for a brief visit in the late sixties, she hasn't been back since. Her parents ended up there because that country was one of the few open to taking Jews during the Second World War. Back then, there were thousands of German Jews in La Paz and it was a tight knit community. Now there are less than 200 Jews left there and the number is dwindling. We had lunch with a couple of them and sure enough we discovered that their parents knew my grandparents. My mom even recognized a handful of the names. It was bittersweet.

Of course when my mom was in La Paz last, forty-five years ago, there were no skyscrapers and the city was much smaller. There were a few hundred thousand inhabitants then, and now there are close to two million. We found the house she grew up in (or at least what remains), her elementary school,and her aunt's apartment. We also found the graves of my ancestors. When we attended Shabbat services in the only synagogue, she chatted with some of the old timers and one remembered my Grandpa's clothing factory which he had sold when they left in the early fifties. Pretty amazing.

La Paz probably never stopped being the crazy, frenetic place that seems to function despite itself. There are vendors everywhere selling any random thing they could find cheap, "cholas" in their traditional dress interspersed with teens on smartphones, weaving between "collectivos" yelling their destinations. Adjoining the tourisry shops is the witches market where you can find various potions, talismans, and my fave: dried llama fetuses as an offerring to Pachamamma to make sure she is cool with you building your new house.

There is always so much going on. This moment captures it perfectly: we are standing in the main square when we hear really loud fireworks right near us (they go on through the night too and you never get used to them). We turnaround and see a rally of miners heading down the Prado (main drag) protesting their measly pensions. A minute later we hear music in front of the church as dozens of costumed performers gather to celebrate the saint of something or other. Just as we are trying to photograph these folks, we start noticing groups of people in full zebra costumes congregating. These zebras start appearing from all directions until there is a large group of them in front of us. I asked them what this was all about and they explained that the origin of the zebra costumes was to educate people about the importance of using crosswalks (and they still have a ways to go). They also try to teach pedestrians not to litter, cars not to run red lights, etc. Not sure how effective their campaigns have been,but people do seem to get a kick out of them. 

This is Mom making friends. 

This photo is me repelling down one of the hotels. Now if only our country wasn't the most litigious in the world with crazy insurance premiums, I'm sure this would take off back home too. 

The protests happen daily and they can really inconvenience everyone because they block off whole streets. Our taxis often had to find rather roundabout ways to get us where we were going. A jeweler we were speaking with counted 100days total last year that no one could get to his shop. Some protests are on an even larger. The whole city of Sucre was blocked of a few weeks back.

After La Paz and saying "bye" to Mom, we headed into the jungle, staying at an animal refuge for a few days. This was another highlight. This place takes in animals that have been trafficked and abused, many of whom are now free to roam about in this protected space. My favorites are always the monkeys,but there were a decent variety. Some beautiful Macaws hungout in front of our cabana, and we also got to see an ocelot, brown bear, a cayman, and turtles. The downside was all the bug bites. Those devious beasts were thorough and we were glad to return to our hotel afterwards. 

We are now in Cusco, Peru after enduring a 13hr bus ride with some very loud obnoxious Israelis and back to back episodes of Ice Road Truckers on the TV. I think the driver purposely chose the series called, "IRT: The Most Dangerous Roads -Andes". It wasn't the road we were on though. Apparently the producers plop these truckers down on sketchy roads all over the world and film them dealing with (obviously staged) challenging situations. I honestly have no idea why people watch this show.

Tomorrow we take the train to Machu Picchu. W e found Cuzco to be a strikingly beautiful city but I think that every pound of beauty seems to be matched by a pound of tourists. That's usually how it goes though.

Gettin' Silly on the Salt Flats

Finally warm and comfortable again in an actual hotel. The last four days were rough. Our tour of the Uyuni area of southern Bolivia included a lot of lovely scenery, such as a few high altitude lakes, geysers, rock formations, and salty earth, but also freezing temperatures in very "basic" accommodations. Although most people probably thought the shivering through meals and absence of showers was worth it, we are still on the fence because we had seen a lot of similar landscapes by this point. I guess that's the classic "jaded traveler".

On the last night, our hostal was made completely of salt. Really, the walls, floor, bed platform, stools.

Near where our tour dropped us off, is a sort of "train cemetery". In the mid 1800s, after Bolivia lost the War of the Pacific, they no longer had access to the ocean and therefore had no more use for the trains that carried goods to port, so they just left them there, in the middle of the desert.

A small town called Tupiza, that we saw in the south before the tour had some unique sandstorm formations that reminded me a bit of Bryce Canyon.

The unique part of the Bolivia tour was vast salt flats on the last day. Wide open space like that allows, almost insists upon, kooky photos.

What We Won't See in Bolivia

We are now in a small town in southern Bolivia about to embark on a four day tour of the salt flats. Our Internet connection is too slow to upload photos, so I decided to choose a topic. On our tour, we will only have electricity for an hour a day, so I think it's safe to say there won't be wifi.

The weirdness of this country is apparent from the moment you cross the border. We planned on buying our visas at the border crossing, but didn't foresee that they only accept US dollars: a federally run operation that won't accept Bolivian currency. Once across the border, the next thing you notice is these fancy traffic lights on the streets with countdown timers: the poorest country in Latin America and they chose to splurge on the traffic lights. There are lots of "peculiarities", but I have chosen to write about some of the most popular attraction for tourists that we have no intention of seeing.

The Worlds Most Dangerous Road
Biking down this road outside La Paz is the number one attraction on TripAdvisor. It got this name because of the insane number of fatalities that happen along this narrow cliff clinging road with 600m drops. They even sell tshirts stating that you did it. From what I can tell, the main reason for its popularity is so people can tell their friends that they biked down the most dangerous road in the world. Actually, in the last few years, guard rails have been put up but I'm sure the tourists can chose to over look that.

Visiting the mines in Potosi
Potosi is a pretty mining town and one of the highest cities in the world at 4070m. It's nice, but the altitude makes even short walks tough (I was there last time I was in Bolivia). There are of course functioning mines all over South America, but for whatever reason, taking a tour of these has become a big attraction, probably to see first hand the awful conditions the miners work under (many of whom die young). Some tourists give them little gifts like flashlights perhaps to assuage their guilt for essentially doing little to help their situation. Those sorts of photographs I don't need in my collection.

Tinku
Potosi is also known for this bizarre (at least to the outsider) event which takes place in early May, around when we would be in the area. My guidebook politically correctly describes it as "ritualized means of discharging tensions between indigenous communities." It starts with singing and dancing and swigging "puro", aka rubbing alcohol to the point of being seriously wasted. At this point, the men essentially start beating the crap out of anyone they think may have slighted them in the past year, but in a "rhythmic" and "choreographed" way. Stones are also thrown and serious injury and even death can occur. It's not a popular tourist attraction, but apparently two tour companies do make the visit.

San Perdo prison
I have to admit, this really does fascinate me. It's a famous prison in La Paz because it is essentially a self governing little city. At some point, the authorities just left the prisoners to their own devices and what they created is quite interesting. It has its own governing body with elected officials, stores, restaurants, you name it. The prisoners' wives and often children live within the walls too. I recently finished an autobiography about an English drug dealer who ended up there for a number of years called, Marching Powder: The True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail. He started tours of the jail which apparently continue, but besides being illegal, are not always welcome, and are unsafe.

Of course all this said, there are plenty of "curiosities" we will witness and hope to write about.