I traveled with Erika (my host mother), Valeria (a woman from La Paz Erika met during an earlier excursion to Bolivia), and Jesse (a 20-year-old from Holland traveling around South America who met Valeria). So many random connections between the four of us made me feel like it was something more than coincidence that brought us all together at this specific time and this particular place to experience Bolivia. It was a weird feeling. I'm very grateful I could experience such a beautiful country, travel with some really interesting people, and spend time with a rural community just starting to make their place in the world. Even though it was a very superficial tour of the country, with a great deal of time spent traveling from place to place, I still felt rejuvenated and a bit more connected to my place in the world.
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| The route I ended up taking. The airplane ride made multiple stops there and back, allowing me to see some more of the geography of Chile: ocean, cordillera, desert... Chile seems to have it all. The sites in black are where I spent the most time. |
La Paz, Bolivia
A city like no other. The cerros of Valaparaíso/Viña del Mar in Chile cannot compare to the cerros of La Paz. The city is basically a bowl, with the buildings reaching up into the mountains and spreading across the hills. Although Valpo/Viña has colorful houses to paint the views, La Paz has earth with tones of green, gray, brown, and red to create a mural of natural colors. We spent 3 days here, at Valeria's house with her family. We got to celebrate the birthday of her daughter by climbing La Muela del Diablo (The Devil's Molar) and eating pies at a mini birthday party. Pictures obviously can't do the views justice, but I tried.
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| La muela del Diablo |
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| Driving up to La muela del Diablo, we got a chance to snap some photos of the city below. Absolutely breathtaking: clouds rolling over the mountainsides and the city enveloping the hills. The curving road full of huge potholes made it a little nerve-racking, but we still got to the top safe and sound. |
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| One of the many views at the top of La muela |
We wandered around the city and encountered paceñas (women dressed in
big ruffled skirts, shawls, and hats), markets that stretched for dozens
of blocks, hundreds of shops selling colorful textiles, and lots of
garbage. Unfortunately, Bolivia doesn't have a great infrastructure to
take care of the environment and there isn't much awareness about the
damage litter does to the land. So huge piles of garbage contaminate the
otherwise wonderful landscape. Overall, La Paz is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever been to.
Hopefully one day I can go back to learn more about its people and see
more of the views.
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| Paceñas: the woman on the left also has a backpack made out of colorful fabric, something seen almost everywhere. |
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| A small part of one of the many open air markets throughout the city. They're pretty much the norm. |
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| 3 guesses for what these are! :) Potatoes!! Bolivia is known for having all different kinds of potatoes. Tunta are made in a very complicated process that involves storing them in the high altitudes to freeze and preserve them. That's how they get their distinct white color. |
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| Cinnamon!! |
Samaipata, Bolivia
A very touristy town 3 hours outside of Santa Cruz. The drive there was gorgeous; we were following a mini river most of the time with bluffs and green forests on either side. In the town itself, some of the original architecture remains while some of the buildings boast a more modern feel. Some of the travelers who come through here are people who earn their living while they travel: they make jewelry or juggle at stoplights to earn enough money for food, lodging, and then a ticket to their next destination. While I don't have the mentality or the flexibility to live like that, I admire their strength and willingness to absolutely go with the flow.
The highlights of my time there include: having a monkey crawl on my back at an animal refuge
and discussions with my host mother about Catholic churches in Bolivia and the rest of the world. We wandered around two churches in Bolivia, one in La Paz and the other in Samaipata. We even crashed a wedding ceremony the night we stayed in Samaipata! I don't remember the last time I was in a Catholic church in the States, so I don't know how these pictures compare to the inside of one back home:
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| The church in Samaipata. According to my host mother, this is one of the more modest ones. You can see that the virgin image is front and center, with other saints surrounding it. On the sides, there were other statues of virgins and Jesus. Each town has its own virgin representing the community. At the back of the church, there was even a coffin that displayed a mannequin of Jesus's body, showing the wounds from the spear and the nails. I saw various people touch the statues and then cross themselves. |
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| The church of San Francisco in La Paz, clearly more extravagant than the one in Samaipata but still showing the same motifs of actual statues depicting saints and other holy figures. |
I felt very uncomfortable walking around these churches and seeing all the figurines. One of the most notable things in protestantism is the absence of all "idols," statues, or figures of Jesus and God. So that's what I'm used to seeing, and naturally what I most agree with. I think it's a bit weird that people will make images of the figures they worship. To me it makes it more tangible and in a way less meaningful than if you create your own personal image of God. Also, the fact that most people are still fed the image of a blue-eyed Caucasian Jesus bugs me. It reinforces that idea of "whiteness" equaling the ideal of purity and beauty. The fact that so much money has gone into decorating these churches with real gold and fancy fabrics instead of into directly helping others (something that many churches of all types struggle with) is another thing that makes me raise my eyebrows.
But with all that pushed aside, it was definitely a positive experience seeing the churches. Even though we have different ways of expressing and practicing our faith, we still worship the same God. That's one humbling fact that overpowers any sort of divisions within a church or between denominations.
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| Sorry guys, but baby Jesus was most likely not a rosy-cheeked redhead with that cut-and-paste hairstyle from the 40's. |
In general...
One thing that is super convenient about Bolivia is that it is SO cheap. Hostels are about 4 dollars per night and a huge plate of food is around 2 dollars. It does make me feel weird and a little guilty though, knowing that I'm taking advantage of their economy so I can travel. It makes me really aware of how privileged I am that I grew up in a place with clean food, water, and free education. For Bolivians, these are basic rights that people struggle to find everyday. I know that sounds like every other sentence anyone says when they reflect upon their experiences in "developing" countries, but it really is something you don't realize until you see it first hand. I'm incredibly grateful for four things: first, not having to pay for my primary education; second, having high quality education with resources that help me prepare for the future (things not even considered when the basics are still being worked on); third, that my native language was the same as the instructor's; and fourth, that I wasn't pressured at home to work in a dangerous mine for less than two dollars a day or in agriculture with dangerous pesticides.
Everyday in Bolivia brought something new and challenging, but I feel like I came out of this trip a little more comfortable with the unknown and little more trusting that everything will figure itself out in the end.
Stay tuned for the blog post about Chirimoyas, the biggest part of this adventure. :)
Hasta luego!