Monthly Archives: November 2012

‘You speak Spanish like Obi-wan-kanobe’

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I think he probably meant Yoda, but I let the reference slide. In any event, I had a great opportunity to practice my Spanish when I went out with An (my friend from Montreal who I met in Cochabamba when we were stuck inside for Census Day) for happy hour in Sucre on Tuesday night.

An has been working for nearly six months in Sucre, and knows lots of co-workers and locals from her time there. She graciously invited me out to happy hour, where drinks are two for one. We ordered 4 mojitos, which I thought meant well, 4 mojitos, but apparently that means each person gets the two for one special. So the four of us ended up with 8 mojitos, which cost us a grand total of 72 Bolivianos — approximately $10. No, not each. Total. 

I laughed, thinking about what I would have been able to write in BostoNite for drinks that price. They weren’t weak either! We had a great time, and even though my new friend told me I speak like a Star Wars character (the flaw of thinking in English and speaking in Spanish) I was happy to have the opportunity to go out and socialize in a different language.

Other Sucre highlights?

I went to visit the Cal Orck’o, a ‘museum’ built around the longest sets of dinosaur tracks found on earth. Tourists have relatively visceral reactions to these prints when they find out the ‘wall’ with the sets of tracks (because of tectonic plate shifting millions of years ago, the prints appear on a wall which was once the floor of the earth) is quite far from the museum and they can’t actually go touch the prints, sit in them, or do other terrible tourist-like things. Regardless, I decided to fork over the very pricey $4 admission (hah) and check ’em out myself. Included in my $4 was a free guided tour, and I was the only person at that hour who needed an English tour. So, Juan Carlos met me and showed me around, explaining tons of interesting facts about dinosaurs and Bolivia and geology. I learned more in 20 minutes with him than I did in 2 days in ToroToro. Shocker. Anyways, Juan Carlos was clearly infatuated with me a little bit, and in between learning about dino prints, making me pose for many awkward photos, and practicing my Spanish, he managed to slip an awkward “want to go get a drink and talk about Bolivia?” question into our conversation. Earlier, we’d talked about where in the city I was staying, and since he was harmless enough, and when he offered to stop by the next night, I shrugged and said sure, I’d be happy to grab a beer.

Chillin’ with some (fake) tyrannosaurus rex bones.

Fast forward to 30 hours later, I’d finished making dinner and left the hostel to meet An and her friend at her apartment from some girl time with a bottle of wine. When I got back to my hostel around 10 PM, Mike, the owner, had a message for me. “Juan Carlos stopped by for you…” he said with a smirk on his face and a questioning sparkle in his eye. Shoot. I feel totally guilty and like a complete jerk. Even though I wasn’t interested in him romantically whatsoever, I would have loved to practice my Spanish with a local guy, and feel so badly for accidentally standing him up. Yikes! Even worse, I had no way of apologizing or being in touch.

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting on a bench in the main plaza with my eReader when two little boys came trotting up to me, shoe-shining kits in hand. When I tried, in Spanish, to explain that my cloth mocassins cannot be shined, they showed me the magazine they were selling instead. Similar to the Spare Change newspaper made by and for the homeless population in Boston, the publication costs 3 Bolivianos, 1.50 of which goes directly to the child, and 1.50 of which goes to the non-profit helping the poverty-stricken children. I gladly bought a copy, especially when one of the boys proudly grinned and pointed to his picture in the magazine. After some more nagging, I let them use their brushes to ‘clean’ my moccasins, which, admittedly, were getting to be more brown than black. They each took a foot, working meticulously, and though most shoe shiners only charge about 3 Bolivianos, with wax, I handed each boy a 10 Boliviano note. Just seeing their little eyes light up and the grins spread across their faces was worth the $2.50 I’d just forked over. That money means so little to me and so much to them, and it was a very humbling reminder of what a poor country I’m traveling through.

Sure, Bolivian cities are hectic, disorganized and relatively dirty. But when you’re staying in a hostel with hot showers, full kitchen facilities and tons of other English-speaking tourists, it’s easy to forget the poverty around you. Bolivia is an incredibly poor country — as Westerners, we marvel at how cheap the produce and food are, but many families can barely afford those prices, as is. When you’re traveling from hostel to hostel, city to city, on the gringo trail it’s easy to forget the poor people in the countryside, the ones you aren’t interacting with, and the ones who have to shower once a week in the public shower facilities scattered through the city.

Mostly, I just spent the last 3 days doing lots of wandering, reading in the sun, drinking real-sugar Coca Cola’s, and cooking using a million fresh veggies I bought for just a few cents at the nearby mercado.

I was going to stay in Sucre through the end of the week and go on an all day hike to the siete cascadas today, but, to no surprise, the tour I was depending on to take me got cancelled. Surprisingly, not because of Bolivians — the couple I’d met who committed to go with me (and knew I couldn’t go without them because the agency needed 3 people for a tour) bailed on me last minute when we were supposed to go pay. So instead, I took an afternoon bus to Potosi, and tomorrow I’m seeing the two highlights of the town: the mines and the Casa de Moneda, before hopping on a night bus down to Tupiza.

Her Story: I quit my job to travel in South America

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After reading the Lost Girls book in the first week of my travels, I vowed not to be like Amanda and make myself crazy freelancing from the road. That being said, a pitch I’d sent to HerCampus pre-travels was finally approved, so I decided to quickly bang out a “Her Story” contribution for one of my favorite websites. Here is the link to my original piece, published yesterday, but I’ve republished the story below. 

Her Story: I quit my job to travel in South America

Over the last four weeks, I have straddled the equator line, zip-lined through a rainforest on the edge of the Amazon, and climbed to 15,780 feet above sea level on Cotopaxi, one of the highest active volcanoes in the world. I took 80 hours of intensive Spanish, learned how to make Ecuadorian soup with shrimp and plantain “meatballs,” and had my first fluid and coherent conversation in another language.

But six months ago, I was sitting in a cubicle at a desk job in relative misery, anxious, heartbroken and depressed. So let me start from the beginning.

I went to college at Northeastern University, a school I immediately fell in love with because of its co-operative education program: an opportunity to spend six months working full-time in your field in between academic semesters. As an avid writer with my heart set on a journalism career, I knew the key to success in my field was gaining all the clips and experience I could get.

So over five years, I participated in three co-ops – at a small neighborhood newspaper, an IT media company, and for The Boston Globe’s Boston.com. On the side, I co-founded and helped run the Northeastern chapter of Her Campus and was in charge of the extensive tour guide program at my university. I was career-driven and determined to write as much as I could. I even gave up a traditional semester abroad (which I was dying to do) because I wouldn’t have been able to interview for a senior year co-op position.

As the end of my college years loomed, I used my co-op connections to my advantage and started a job immediately after graduation at TechTarget, the IT media company where I’d done my second co-op. A few months later, a nightlife blogging position opened at Boston.com, and I took the blog on as my second job.

I worked meticulously at both jobs for a year. Don’t get me wrong — I was incredibly thankful for my jobs. I knew how lucky I was to be employed not just by one employer, but two. But in the span of that year, I’d faced two rough heartbreaks and was feeling antsy and anxious. I couldn’t believe this was “it” – the rest of my life. I wanted to travel and see the world, and I felt stuck and depressed.

Everyone told me to wait it out. “First jobs are never perfect; the adjustment to the real world is really hard,” they’d say. “Heartbreak just heals with time.” But I knew it was something more than that.

So I started brainstorming and saving every penny I could, adding it to the savings account I’d built up over the last several years. I dreamed of a trip to Europe, a re-location to NYC. I contemplated applying for other jobs, even moving back home to Los Angeles. But in May, the stars aligned.  One of my best friends from high school, who had been living in Chile for just over two years, was quitting her job in Santiago to relocate to NYC. Before she left, she was hoping to do some traveling through South America. Her sister was also quitting her job and starting graduate school in the fall, so the three of us made plans for a jaunt to Argentina and Uruguay.

With shaky hands and tears in my eyes, I took a huge risk – one that many people warned me against – and gave my boss my two weeks notice. It was one of the hardest and best things I have ever done.

My father’s proudest moment was when I, his only daughter, graduated from university. But not because I finally had a diploma in hand. It was because I graduated with a job offer, and he knew that I wasn’t one of the many recent grads who would be forced to move back home and desperately seek work. I was employed, and to him, that was success. So you can imagine his reaction when I told him I wanted to throw all of that away to go see the world. Thankfully, my Mom was a little more supportive. She understood the depression and frustration I was going through, and though she wanted me to remain on the same continent, she understood I was feeling restless.

That being said, I’ve always been independent. I moved across the country at the age of 18, and have been living on my own for six years. I knew my parents would love me no matter what, and so despite my father’s disappointment, I took the risk.

I don’t think I know a single person who doesn’t say one of their life goals is to travel and see the world. But how many people really do just that? How many people quit their jobs, leave their worldly possessions, pick up their lives, and just go? Too few.

That being said, most American teenagers and young adults who do take a gap year, or gap months, dream of backpacking through Europe. They talk of buying Eurorail passes and seeing Paris, Amsterdam and Rome, of taking a summer off to explore the Grecian isles. And while there’s nothing wrong with that, let me start by saying that South America is half the price. Europe is expensive and glamorous, with amazing meals to be had and expensive hotels to stay in. Everything in South America is, bottom line, cheap. It’s meant to be roughed through — living on $30 a day here is no problem, and taking buses across borders for $10 each is as easy as ordering the menu de dia – the daily lunch menu of fresh juice, soup, and a main course for as little as $2.50.

I immediately fell in love with South America. But after six weeks in the southern hemisphere — three with my friend and her sister and three on my own in Peru and Bolivia — I got on a plane bound for Los Angeles, not ready to leave. My plan when I returned to the US was to face the real world again: work my butt off to get a job in NYC, sign a lease, and make the next steps in my journalism career.

But as I reunited with my family and friends back home and contemplated beginning my life again across the country, I just couldn’t stand the thought. My career-driven self had a brand new thought: I have my whole life to work. Why wouldn’t I go see the world now, when my only physical obligation was $98 a month to the UHaul in Middletown, Connecticut where my mattress and boxes sat in storage?

So that’s exactly what I did. I planned three months of solo travel in South America. The first month would be spent on a traveling classroom program through Ecuador, taking 20 hours of Spanish classes a week and staying with local, Ecuadorian families to hone my speaking skills. The next two months would consist of making my way down the coast of Peru, into Bolivia, down through northwestern Argentina, and finally into Chile, where my return flight to Los Angeles is booked from Santiago on December 30.

For the most part, my family and friends reacted well. My Dad was still hesitant about my decision, but at that point I’d already given up my job, so he simply shrugged and said, “It’s your money, honey.” Mostly it was my parents’ friends, my older family friends, who reacted so positively, which really solidified my decision. “Good for you!” they’d say. “Now’s the time to go, when you’re young and have nothing tying you down.” My own friends reacted with just as much enthusiasm, sending emails, Facebook posts and g-chats about how jealous they were that I was “living the life” and seeing the world.

Making the decision to pause my life and see one of the most spectacular, and underrated, continents of the world has been the best decision I’ve ever made. Sure, I miss my parents and my friends. Sure, I wish I wasn’t scraping every penny out of my savings account. And trust me, living out of a backpack with eight outfit options doesn’t exactly appeal to my inner fashionista. But I know the comforts of home — a guaranteed hot shower, all my favorite outfits, and a refrigerator to call my own, not to mention my true friends and family — aren’t going anywhere. As I face challenges small and large: bug bites swollen to the size of my fists, misunderstood bus schedules, insanely challenging hikes, and horrifically bad maps, I’m learning more about myself than I could have even imagined.

Looking back to when I was just out of a three-year relationship and struggling desperately to come to terms with my new single status, one of my old bosses told me this: You’re the only guaranteed and stable partner you’ll have for the entirety of your life.” I didn’t want to listen to her then, but as the years have passed, those words ring truer than ever. Of course, having someone next to you is a wonderful way to travel, and a huge comfort. But the bottom line is I am secure and comfortable with myself, and I knowing that, if need be, I can face whatever challenge comes my way on my own. It’s one of the most incredible feelings in the world. What better way to achieve that goal than by seeing the beauty of the world?

 

The La Paz jinx?

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I think there’s just something this city has against me. It’s hard to believe it was only 8 days ago that I limped, in tears, through the La Paz bus station, frantic to find a cab and get myself to a hospital or clinic, worrying that my foot was broken and my travels are over. But here I am, another huge hitch in my travel plans, and back in La Paz, where I don’t want to be.

My overnight bus from Cochabamba arrived in La Paz around 7 AM this morning and I was at the airport by 7:30 AM. The ticket agent told me to check back at the counter at 9 AM, that’s when she would know if my flight to Rurrenabaque was cancelled.

So, with my typical luck, and the travel gods clearly against me this week, every single flight for the day was cancelled. And, most likely, there will be no flights for the next several days because of weather conditions and a bad runway at the airport in Rurrenabaque.

I met a nice Australian couple also on my cancelled flight, so we shared a cab back down to La Paz and began brainstorming. The options?

* A 20+ hour bus ride on a non-tourist bus (not a “cama” or “semi-cama” — bed or half bed — bust with reclining, comfy seats like the ones I usually take overnight). No thank you.

* A private jeep, which would cost about 550 Bolivianos per person (I paid 650 Bolivianos, or $90, for the 40 minute flight I was supposed to take) and take between 16 and 18 hours, getting us into Rurrenabaque at 7 AM to start 9 AM tours into the jungle that same morning. Again, no thank you.

* Wait it out in La Paz and see if weather conditions improve/flights by chance don’t get cancelled over the next several days. Feasible, technically, since I’m not completely crunched for time, but I’m not exactly enthralled with La Paz and I feel like all I’ve been doing lately is sitting around and waiting.

I was able to get a full refund for the tour I’d booked and can go to any Amaszonas Airlines office in Bolivia to get a full refund for my cancelled flight, so with those things in mind, I went back to the bus station (for what felt like the thousandth time in 8 days) and bought a bus ticket to Sucre for tonight.

My purchases for the day!

It was bright and sunny this afternoon (it’s currently absolutely down pouring with thunder and lightening sneaking its way in every few minutes — luckily I’m tucked in a cafe with wifi and a coca tea) so I did some retail therapy shopping, which I’d been itching to do since I first arrived in Cochabamba. I bought myself a gorgeous Incan calendar ring, some Chakana cross silver earrings, an awesome South America patch with the flags on every country, and two pieces of beautiful embroidered artwork – one for me, and one for Mom!

I’m officially giving up on northern Bolivia, and hoping that the southern half of the country treats me a little bit better. I smell, I haven’t showered in nearly 3 days, and am totally exhausted from half-sleeping on the bus last night, but hopefully I can just pass out for the 12 hour ride and start a fresh new week in Sucre.

Lies, dinosaurs and chocolate milk

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Well, I’ve officially had my first vacation meltdown.

I’m surprised how easy that is for me to admit, but I suppose these sorts of moments happen to everyone, and in an honest attempt to document my trip — the breathtaking moments, the hysterical stories, and the sad, frustrating days, I have to report that Thursday was one of the later.

While most Americans were sleeping in, preparing to stuff their faces with turkey and for a day filled with family, football, and lots of booze, I got myself up at 5 AM and directed my cab driver to an intersection where there was supposedly a bus leaving at 6 AM for ToroToro, a small town at the edge of a national park six hours south of Cochabamba.

That supposedly is emphasized because despite the fact that I had my hostel receptionist call the office to triple check they were indeed running buses on a normal schedule, this is Bolivia after all, and I knew nothing could be that simple.

Unfortunately, I was right.

Around 5:40 AM, a gigantic 6-wheel Volvo truck, painted yellow and red with a front cab at least four feet off the ground, rolled up in front of the bus “office”: a storefront hidden by a locked metal grate and marked only by a single sign saying “Torotoro Autobuses”. As the driver got out and opened the small puerta above the 5 rung ladder leading to the back bed of the truck, I ran through the possibilities in my head.

My lovely ride.

Maybe he’s delivering things for the bus to bring to ToroToro? Maybe this is the cheaper form of transit I’d read about in my guidebook and the real bus will be here soon? Maybe he knows one of the señors y señoritas he’s shaking hands with and pulled over to say hello? Maybe it’s so early in the morning I’m hallucinating?

Despite my subconscious’s inner protests, twenty minutes later I’d forked over 20 Bolivianos (approximately $2.85) and was climbing into the front cab of that truck, trying to mentally and physically prepare myself for a six hour drive down a windy, dirt road. To my right was the only other tourist of the bunch — a Japanese man named Hiro who I could only communicate with in Spanish since he didn’t speak any English. We gawked, laughed and shrugged our shoulders together at this ridiculous adventure we were about to embark on. He had his point-and-shoot digital camera out and was taking dozens of pictures every chance he got. Meanwhile, I was too sleepy and shocked to even process what was happening.

Apparently, there weren’t enough people, so they didn’t bother booking a bus. If we wanted to get there that day, we were stuck in the camiones.

The dozen or so indigenous men and women, waiting on the sidewalk with huge parcels, hopped in the bed of the truck — protected by 4 foot ‘walls’ — with their bags and our backpacks, which I could only pray wouldn’t roll off the elevated platform above the truck’s cab where they’d been precariously placed.

My first observation upon hopping in the truck? The speedometer was rotated 90 degrees to the left, with the 60 where the 0 should be, and, not surprisingly, the needle stayed at 0 no matter how hard our driver pushed on the gas. Which was relatively hard, but to no avail, as I’m not sure we drove faster than 40 miles an hour the entire morning.

One cannot make things like this up.

Several holes in the dashboard revealed handfuls of tangled wires, the glove compartment was held shut with a piece of string, and a pine tree-shaped air freshener that looked as old as I am hung from a skull pin tacked to the felt, zebra-striped dashboard cover. If I looked down at the driver’s feet, I could see a hole revealing more wires and the ground, whizzing by below. The cab had no windows, let alone seatbelts, and there were no windshield wipers, just a singular black knob at the end of a two inch plastic stick. Whenever we stopped and the driver needed to get out of the truck, he placed a brick-like metal block on the brake pedal.

I wish I were making this up.

Only half of the six hours of road we covered was paved. In this case, however, paved meant cobblestone, which explains why when I finally got out of the cab for good at 12:30 PM, I felt like my kidneys and stomach had involuntarily traded places.

Both Hiro and the driver were smokers, and between the windy roads, strong diesel smell and the cigarette fumes, I’m shocked I didn’t lose my roadside breakfast of a coca cola, banana and 1 boliviano bread roll. Although I was convinced at one point my legs were going to fall off because my ass was so numb from the thin, unpadded bench we were sitting on, we somehow arrived in ToroToro in one piece.

I walked to the one hostel I’d seen on the main plaza, and enticed by the ridiculously low price of 25 Bolivianos — or $3.75 — for a night in a single room, I said yes, grabbed my key and set down my backpack.

I quickly discovered this very small pueblo has no restaurants, only a big room that looks like a university mess hall, with several cashiers and long tables set up with plastic chairs. It was empty by the time I arrived, and although there were several señoras eating in the back corner of the room, when I asked if they had any almuerzo, they simply scoffed, said ‘no hay‘ and went back to their conversation. I asked a half dozen people for directions to markets, restaurants or other hostels. Nobody had the slightest interest in helping me, nor did they acknowledge how bizarre it was that their town — at the foot of a national park frequented by tourists — didn’t have any other places to eat.

Instead, I made do with fruit and snacks from a tiny tienda, grabbed my reader and sat in the sun in the main plaza waiting for the tourist office to open. In Torotoro, it’s explicitly stated that you may not walk on any of the trails in the park without a guide, who needs to be hired through the tourist office. You cannot enter the park without paying your entrance fee, which also must be done at the tourist office. At just past 1:30 PM, I was told the tourist office would re-open after almuerzo at 2 PM. By 3:45 there was still nobody there. I went back to the my hostel to ask, and the owner pointed me toward a man sitting outside. “El es a guia,” was all he said. So I began pestering the poor man with questions, discovering that he too had no idea when the office would open again for the day, if at all. He confirmed I needed a guide, but also informed me that even if I could hire a guide (which I couldn’t) it was too late in the day to do anything in the park. So that was it, my day had officially been deemed useless.

Exhausted, not quite satiated from my pathetic snack lunch, the pain in my foot returning from my painkillers wearing off, and beyond frustrated at the crappy town I’d chosen to drag myself 6 hours down a windy dirt road to stay in, the tears began to pour down my cheeks. I was totally alone (Hiro booked it from the truck when we arrived and I had no idea where the hostel he’d found was), there wasn’t a single person who spoke English, and I couldn’t find a real meal to save my life. And you can imagine exactly how thrilled I was to spend a second day in a row doing absolutely nothing.

Then, it started to pour. Thunder and lightening shook the trees around my hostel, and the rain came down so hard it leaked through my window and into a huge puddle in my room. Fed up, exhausted and lacking motivation to interact with more Bolivians, I had another pathetic snack meal, curled up with some Newsroom episodes and tried to ignore the storm.

Thankfully, Friday was a slight improvement, and I managed to find a group of 6 other tourists, including Hiro, who had hired a guide for the 5 km circuit to the canyon outlook, waterfalls, and dinosaur footprints. Of course I’d gotten myself up at 8 AM and in the four hours between my wakeup call and then time our group actually left for the trail, I’d been given so much contradicting and plain wrong information, I was ready to hurdle an ancient stone at somebody’s head. One guide told me it was possible to do the main circuit in 2 hours and then the caves in the afternoon. Another told me the main circuit was actually 5 hours. Another told me my group had left without me when they clearly had not. Yet another man told me my ticket would cost 15 bolivianos when it really cost 30. It’s unbelievable what people will tell you when they simply don’t know. It’s the same with directions — they don’t know where you’re trying to go, so they point in a random direction. It’s truly unbelievable. 

The circuit we took was a beautiful walk — along an old rock riverbed, out to the canyon outlook, down into the canyon to the river at it’s very bottom, then back up a massive number of stairs to several other outlooks, then a loop back around to a fenced in area with dinosaur footprints sh erred in sandstone. Because it had rained so hard the night before, the dirt had runoff everywhere, and all the rivers were a disgusting yellow-brown color, which our group joked around looked exactly like chocolate milk. Chocolate milkshake waterfall, anybody?

From the very bottom of the canyon!

Not quite Colca, but a stunning canyon nonetheless

Being in ToroToro, I felt like I’d stepped into the Land Before Time. It sounds sort of bizarre, but the world here just feels old — the canyons and mountains all reveal layers upon layers of various sediments, lizards scurry along the ground, and age old rocks smoothed by millions of years of weathering lay in every direction. The landscape is breathtaking, and though I’m still trying to decide whether the 12 hours of transport on a dirt road was actually worth it, I can’t deny the beauty of the national park.

And right in line with the ridiculousness of the last two days, the 5 AM bus I had a ticket for didn’t actually leave until 6:15. Of course. I love setting 4:30 AM alarms for no reason. And then, halfway through our ride, the bus broke down in the middle of the cobblestone, windy road. Don’t ask me how, why, or what even happened because despite my many questions nobody quite had an answer, but an hour and 15 minutes later the bus cooperated and miraculously started again. Seven hours later, I am finally in Cochabamba… again.

Thankfully, the entire two day shlep was dirt cheap — 3 bucks for the bus, er.. truck, each way, and less than $4 per night for my room. It was 100 bolivianos, or $14, for a guide for the day, but split 7 ways, we each ended up paying less than $3. And food didn’t cost much… not that I had any restaurants to choose from.  In two days, I managed to spent less than $30. 

And now I’m holed up in Cafe Paris on the Plaza 14 de Septiembre, avoiding the rain and catching up on my internet life. I’ve got 6 more hours to kill until my overnight bus to La Paz, and once I arrive there I’m going to pray I can find myself some breakfast and then head right to the airport. I can’t wait to finally be in Rurrenabaque and heading off into the jungle on an organized tour for three days.. a welcome change!

2,271 miles down – 2,159 miles to go

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In my infinite census day boredom (I’m relatively terrible at doing nothing, its sort of pathetic) I added all of my South America destination cities to a public google map.

According to Google maps, I’m traveling a total of 4,430 miles through 4 different countries. So far, I’ve gone 2,271 miles, and I have another 2,159 to go.

Of course that doesn’t include the flight I’m taking up north to Rurrenabaque, a starting point to see the Bolivian Amazon in the Madidi National Park, or take into account that I’m going down to ToroToro National Park (a six hour bus ride from Cochabamba) and then backtracking all the way back to La Paz (I know, insanity) to catch my flight. This seems relatively insane (especially when you look at the map) but you can only access ToroToro via Cochabamba (and you can’t return to Sucre how I’d originally anticipated) and you can only fly to Rurrenabaque via La Paz. I hadn’t anticipated either of these bizarre Bolivian realities when I’d made my original plans, so now I’m facing the consequences in having to retrace my steps back to La Paz.

Thankfully, that squiggly line headed north is actually a 40 minute flight. Flying is recommended since the roads to Rurrenabaque are windy, not to mention often flooded and dangerous, so I’m paying the $90 each way to fly instead.

It’s crazy to look at a map and see all the distance I’ve covered and all the places I still have to go — it really puts my trip, and how much I’m seeing, into perspective. Aside from playing on google maps, Ann and I also made delicious homemade guacamole. No kitchen required!

Now I’m off to repack and watch some Newsroom!

La dia de la census

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Today is Census Day in Bolivia — a day that hasn’t come in 10 years, and one that plays out much differently than one might expect.

For the next twenty four hours, the entire country shuts down. Between midnight on November 21 and midnight on November 22 nobody is allowed to leave their houses, let alone go to work — you can be fined up to 3000 Bolivianos ($430!) if you are caught on the streets without a special permit. Even worse: drinking alcohol is prohibited, which I discovered while trying to buy a bottle of Malbec at the grocery store yesterday, as alcohol sales are banned for the day prior as well. It appears that even foreigners and travelers will be talking to the hundreds of thousands of census workers going door to door interviewing people, so I’ll be sure to report on my experience later this week.

It seems the world is trying to tell me that this week wasn’t exactly the worst week to tear a ligament in my foot.

I met a sweet girl named An, (also from Montreal!) who is working in Sucre and was supposed to be in Cochabamba for a conference, which got canceled two hours before it was supposed to start. Welcome to Bolivia. The two of us went to the grocery store yesterday to stock up on food — the kitchen at our hostel is close to non-existant, but we’ve got cold cuts for sandwiches and avocado, tomato and onion to make a homemade batch of guacamole.

I’ve spent the last two days hobbling pathetically around the city — mostly depending on cabs (thank goodness they’re so cheap down here) to get me far distances. I’ve seen a few of the plazas, read several books in a myriad of cafes throughout the city, and even tried Bolivia “mexicano” food — not too bad! Thanks to the very convenient telefericos — cable cars — I was also able to get up to the El Cristo de la Concordia outlook and get a great panoramic view of the city.

The very strong prescription of ibuprofen I’ve been given does wonders for getting rid of the pain in my foot, but there’s no doubt the sprain is still there. I’m trying very hard to have self control and not overextend myself by hurting it even more. So with that in mind, here’s to a serious vacation day of absolute nothingness!

Plaza 14 de Septiembre in Cochabamba, Bolivia

View of Cochabamba from the teleferico station

Clearly, Stella was enjoying the view as well.

The necessary selfie on the cable car

Colca Canyon and a torn ligament

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I would hike down, and through, one of the deepest canyons in the world but manage to tear a ligament in my foot just several hours afterwards… from tripping trying to get on a bus. All I can think right now is “typical Rachel.”  That, and a huge sigh of relief that I didn’t break a bone or seriously hurt myself to the point where I’d need to go home. I just have to be off my foot for a few days, and then I should be good to go. Even after one nights rest and some painkillers/anti-inflamatories, I’m feeling much, much better, and can put some weight on my foot.

It was nearly 4 AM, and I’d been waiting at the bus station in Arequipa for close to 4 hours. The woman I bought my bus ticket from specifically told me (and even wrote on my ticket) to be at the station by 12 AM. Although the bus schedule indicated the bus arrived at 1:30 AM, I decided I’d better listen to the woman instead. Two hours passed, and no bus. I paced, asked the attendant, who said it’d be another hour. After an hour, he said it would be another 20 minutes. Finally, around 3:45 AM, I was sleeping on and off against Dora when he woke me with a start, saying the bus was here. I grabbed my backpacks and my plastic bag of snacks and dashed for the door. Exhausted from being up for nearly 23 hours straight, and out of it from sitting at a bus station for 4 hours, I missed the curb and tripped, slamming my left knee onto the pavement and twisting my right foot inward, landing on top of it, my gigantic backpack slamming me further into the ground.

Everyone around me rushed to help, but when I tried to stand I nearly blacked out from the shock and pain. In complete disbelief, I let the driver stick my bag in the back of the bus, wiped my tears and hobbled up the steps to my seat on the second floor.

I managed to sleep a few hours, but I was so worried about the pain in my foot, and how little weight I could put on it, that I was mostly just freaking out.

Was I going to have to give up six weeks of travel and go home? Was I going to have to fork over a thousand bucks for x-rays? Were my parents going to flip out and try and force me to come home? Could I even walk on crutches with my enormous backback?

When I got to La Paz, I originally had every intention of getting right on a bus to Cochabamba. Instead, I grabbed a cab to the only place I knew: Loki Hostal, the party hostel where I’d stayed almost three months ago. I mostly hated the place for its atmosphere, but I knew they’d keep my bags safe and have a good doctor to send me to, and they did. Fifteen minutes after my arrival, my bags were locked up and I was in another cab, off to a clinic. After I explained what happened in my exhausted form of Span-glish (thank god for my hospital vocabulary lesson in Montanita!), the doctor assessed the pain and explained that because there wasn’t much swelling and I had a wide range of movement, there was no way I could have broken a bone.

Fourteen hours later, I could finally breathe again. I had, however, torn or significantly sprained a ligament on the top of my foot. He gave me a prescription for 800 mg of ibuprofen, cleaned my scraped-up and bruised left knee, wrapped my foot/ankle in an ace bandage and sent me on my way.

Because of the convenience, I asked for a night at the Loki hostel, stumbled pathetically up the stairs, and settled myself into my bunk bed, where I’d been instructed to stay, immobile, for at least 24 hours.

The damage…

After a much needed 12 hours of sleep, I am feeling a lot better, and I can now put a significant amount of weight on my foot. Since I’ve already spent several days in La Paz and don’t particularly want to be here, especially in this cigarette-smelling hostel filled with party travelers who never leave the building, I’m spending the day relaxing with my foot elevated, then heading to Cochabamba on an overnight bus. I don’t plan to do much walking there, but at least I’ll be in a new city.

And since I’ve got nothing else better to do than write, I’ll make this blog post ridiculously long by including my four days in Arequipa and at Colca Canyon. 

I’d anticipated that Arequipa would be a city I’d like, and I was definitely right. Smaller and more quaint, with beautiful architecture and lots of people out and around at all hours of the day, I really enjoyed my two days in the city.

Filiz and I spent our time relaxing, wandering, doing a bit of shopping, seeking out good coffee (a task which proved relatively costly), cooking our own dinners for ridiculously cheap, and taking an interesting walking adventure to the bus station, which wasn’t quite on the city map we had.

Arequipa’s pigeon-infested main plaza

The main square of Arequipa all lit up at night

After talking with several tour agencies and the woman at our hostel, we finally committed to a two day, one night tour of Colca Canyon — one of the deepest canyons in the world, and one of the most popular trips on Peru’s gringo trail. We’d been told the first day would involve 8 hours of walking, after which we’d spend the night at the bottom of the canyon, and the next day would be a 3 hour hike straight back up the canyon. We knew it wouldn’t be easy, persay, but everyone we talked to who’d done it hadn’t had major problems, and really enjoyed it. We figured if everyone did it, we could too.

And we could — we did — but it certainly wasn’t a cake walk, that’s for sure.

After our 3 AM wake-up call and 3:20 AM hostel pick up, we drove 3 hours in a packed, 12-person van to Chivay, the small town that serves as the gateway to volcano row and Peru’s stunning canyon country. After paying our steep 70 soles ($26 bucks!) entry fee, we got to a restaurant for the typical South American breakfast: bread, jam, and tea. We had another 3 hours or so of driving, broken up by a stop at the Condor lookout, where we were lucky enough to see several condors gliding gracefully above our heads and into the valley below.

View of the mountains from the Condor Lookout

Gorgeous condor (with a 15 foot wingspan) gliding over the outlook + lots of tourists

Just past 9:30 AM, we began the first half of our walk: 3 hours straight down the canyon. As a total klutz (oh, the irony), the steep, and very dusty, path made of rocks and lose gravel wasn’t exactly my favorite, and I quickly fell behind the group – slowly taking my time getting down the mountain, stopping plenty to take photos and steady my feet. We all met at the bridge crossing the river at the bottom of the canyon, and spent the next half hour walking uphill on the other side of the canyon, finally making it to our lunch spot.

After lunch, we had another hour of uphill walking (yes, up the other side of the canyon, after we’d just climbed all the way down the opposite side), then an hour of relatively flat paths through small villages, and then an hour of downhill walking. Yep, you read that right. We climbed all the way down, then up, just to go back down to the very same river. When we crossed the river for the final time, we’d made it to the ‘oasis’ — a set of bungalows with swimming pools where we’d be spending the night.

It had been ridiculously hot all day, and though I’d specifically purchased a horrifically touristy hat for the hike, the two liters of water I’d drunk throughout the day were clearly not enough. I immediately got a pounding headache and intense nausea and yes, you’ve guessed it: puked for the second time in southern Peru. Sun stroke, dehydration, who knows. My poor body, I just can’t stop abusing it.

Thankfully I managed to keep some coca tea down, and somehow fell asleep around 8 PM, which gave me a solid 10 hours of sleep before we had to be up to catch our mules back up to the top of the canyon.

Yes, you read that right. I copped out. There were four of us in our hiking group: Filiz, myself, Tom and Chloe – a couple from London. Though we felt a tad guilty, Chloe and I both opted for the mules. After being sick, not to mention challenging and exhausting myself the day before, I decided I deserved a ride up, instead of killing myself walking straight up hill for 4 hours. I know my resistance was mental: if I wanted to get up the side of that canyon, I absolutely could have, but I simply didn’t want to. After all, this is my vacation, hah!

The mule ride was slightly terrifying — steep, narrow paths aren’t exactly easily traversed when you’re sitting on top of an animal — but after adjusting to the bouncing and learning to trust our new four-legged friends, we ended up having a great time. I took a slightly nausea-inducing video as we climbed, but the internet here is too weak to let me upload it.

We walked 30 minutes from the entrance to the canyon to our breakfast restaurant, where were all shocked to be served eggs instead of bread — a welcome change. We hopped back in the van and made our way slowly back to Arequipa, with several stops for photo pops, bathroom breaks and an amazing vicuna (another high altitude animal similar to the alpaca and llama) spotting.

So there you have it — how Rachel Kossman traversed a canyon, but managed to tear a ligament in her foot getting on a bus. Like I said, typical Rachel. Moments like this make traveling alone a little bit lonely and a little more scary, but the clinic was wonderfully helpful and in the scheme of life, I’m completely fine, and everything could be much, much worse. After another few days of rest, I’ll be ready for more adventure!

Puking over the Nazca lines

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My post title pretty much gives this one away, and I’m once again forced to report that my motion sickness got the best of me. I swear, this trip would be much easier if my body would just cooperate with what my mind would like to do!

It wasn’t quite as horrific or disgusting as it sounds. Thankfully, the only thing in my stomach was a small lemon-flavored candy our co-pilot had handed us just before we took off, so there wasn’t much to up-chuck. And, once it was out of my system, I felt much better, and could easily enjoy the rest of the flight.

Let me, however, start this story from the beginning.

On Saturday night, I was practicing my Spanish with a nice man who works at my hostel in Huacachina. Nicknamed “Tiger,” this gentleman seemed very nice and well informed, and told me he could easily organize my trip to fly over the Nazca lines. He told me that I’d have an hour long flight instead of the standard 20 minute one, that my taxi would come right to the hostel to pick me up, I could store my luggage at a hostel for the day during my flight/time in Nazca, and then hop on a bus to Arequipa that night. Marie, a sweet Danish girl also staying at the hostel, agreed to do the trip with me, so the two of us put down a 100 soles ($40) deposit, packed our bags and went to bed early, anticipating our 8 AM wake up call.

8:15 AM came, and we were still sitting, sleepy-eyed, on the couches. 8:30, still no sign of anybody. At 8:45, our stomachs started growling watching our bunkmates order delicious looking breakfasts at the bar. By 9:15, we’d half given up and ordered our own breakfasts, figuring that if the driver showed up at that point, he’d just have to wait for us to finish eating. At 10 AM, I started harassing Fernando, the only person working at the hostel that morning, to call my dear friend Tiger. When we finally reached him (there were many unanswered calls) an hour later, he said it was too windy in Nazca to fly that morning, he got delayed, he was sorry, but he could come pick me up and we’d go now. Frustrated, I said no, I’d rather go the next day instead, since I knew the lines were best viewed first thing in the morning.

I walked down the street to some travel agencies and began asking questions. Tiger was, to put it politely, full of it. And of course, as soon as Fernando, and the other guides I spoke with  (in a town with 4 travel agencies and very few people, it seems everyone knows everything) found out Tiger had been a no-show that morning, they laughed and rolled their eyes. Turns out, he’s reliably unreliable.

That, and a liar. Flights took off yesterday without a hitch – the wind problem was completely falsified. And, flights don’t run for 60 minutes, they only go for 35, no more. Needless to say, I called him back and demanded a refund of my deposit and discount for my second, now necessary, night in the hostel since I was stuck in Huacachina for an extra day, no thanks to him.

Thankfully, even though I’d been up waiting for 3 hours, it was only 11 AM. So I had a relaxing day in the sun, laying by the hostel pool reading, booking a real Nazca flight tour with Marie and Feliz, and joining Rachel, Belinda and Filiz, other girls I’d met at the hostel, for some Pisco winery tours in the afternoon. We came back to relax for a bit and then had a delicious Italian meal next door before heading to bed.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but I will admit I wasn’t overwhelmingly wow-ed by the flight or the Nazca lines. And not just because of the puking. It was interesting, and I’m glad I did it, but I think the patterns would have been better appreciated had we had a guide who explained the history/theories of the designs. I think seeing the lines from up close, to comprehend how gigantic they really are, would have been helpful as well, since they look so small from so high up. That, and puking 2,000 feet above earth came at a high price: $110 USD for the flight, airport tax, 2 1/2 hour bus ride to Nazca, and taxis to/from our various hostels, bus stations and the airport. Not a cheap day, that’s for sure!

We were picked up in Huacachina at 7 AM, on the bus station in Ica by 7:45 AM, in Nazca by 10 AM, and at the airport by 10:45 AM. We were back on the ground and at our ‘hostel’ with our mochillas grandes (aka our gigantic backpacks) by 11:30 AM, and our 12 hour, overnight bus to Arequipa wasn’t leaving for another 11 hours. So we grabbed a cheap local lunch, wandered a bit through the ‘city’ (there’s nothing to see), and then forked over another 25 soles ($10) to lay in the sun by a gorgeous pool at the singular posh – and expensive – hotel in town. Money well spent, since the $10 included a soda and sandwich, plus baggage storage and unlimited use of the pool, showers, wifi and electric outlets — so necessary for three girls with several dying electronics.

And now we’re sitting in a coffee shop trying to kill the evening — only an hour until we need to leave for the bus station. Marie is traveling north to Lima, and Filiz and I are off to Arequipa together. I’ve got two days to spend in Arequipa, and then I think I’ll do a 2 day Colca Canyon trek and afterwards, head into Bolivia. Cross your fingers it’s an uneventful 12 hours to Arequipa tonight!

My camera cord is buried deep in Dora somewhere and my laptop battery is dying, so no pictures tonight, but I’ll post some good ones of the lines/our group with the pilot later this week!

Cruising down sand dunes

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The Peruvian dessert, especially south of Lima where I’ve spent the last two days, is truly spectacular. As I’ve been wandering and exploring and taking a million photos, I’ve been trying to come up with the right adjectives to describe it, and it’s been quite the challenge.

This may be one of those instances where photos, even though they don’t quite do everything justice, will have to be worth a thousand words instead.

In Paracas, I was shocked at the juxtaposition of a gorgeous, turquoise ocean and vast fields of hilly, goldenrod sand. In Huacachina, just an hour and a half south of Paracas, the sand dunes literally look like the opening scenes from Aladin — enormous hills with seemingly-sharp tops and edges; perfect, half-moon shaped mounds that are completely untouched, molded only by the wind. As you stand on the edge of gigantic dunes, there is not a single thing in sight but millions and millions of tiny grains of soft sand that stick to every surface of your body as soon as you take a single step.

Yesterday morning we took a two hour boat tour of the Isla Ballestas. The islands are protected and you can’t disembark on them, so the boats just drive around the rocky coasts and through the massive archways carved out by the oceans — close enough to the “shore” that you can practically touch the gorgeous birds and adorable sea lions basking in the sun. After the boat tour, we took a tour of the northern part of the Paracas National Reserve, where we saw more of the beautiful, sandy coastlines.

I was, admittedly, relatively terrified to go sand-boarding today and I considered skipping it altogether, but I’m so glad I went because I actually had a complete blast. Our group was great and we had a ton of fun posing for photos and encouraging each other as we went tumbling – literally – down the dunes.

Clearly, I’m a pro.

Huacachino is a town based around a small lagoon in a massive dessert — it really is a stunning landscape, and I’m glad I made the last minute decision to stop here instead of going directly to Nazca. That, and my hostel here is great: tons of hammocks, a miniature pool, delicious food, and two adorable pugs.

And now, a million photos. Be thankful for these, they took ages to upload!

Solo Pisco, no Paracas

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I’m more than sure my very nice, new Peruvian friend Daniel had no intentions of steering me in the wrong direction when he suggested I take the Soyez bus line instead of Cruz del Sur — the tourist-oriented, but expensive, bus line that runs throughout Peru.

“You can take Soyez directly to Paracas,” he told me yesterday, explaining that those buses leave every few minutes and are much cheaper.

Well, he was right — the busses do leave every 20 minutes and are half the price — but they only go to Pisco, the town adjacent to Paracas, aka 30 minutes away by taxi.

You can imagine my surprise when the bus assistant (in South America, all buses have a driver and an “assistant” — on the fancy buses this means the ticket taker, meal and drink server, and helpful attendant when you have questions. On the cheap buses, they simply collect your ticket money) told me we were in Pisco, and that this was my stop.

No señor, yo necesito Paracas. No Paracas. Solo Pisco. Tu salida aquí. Pero yo pago por a boleta a Paracas. No, tu boleta es por Pisco.

Turns out, he was right. My ticket was, indeed, marked Pisco. Total fail, because in my attempt to save myself 30 soles (about $12) I failed miserably, because I then had to fork over 25 soles to take a cab from Pisco to my hostel in Paracas. Why on earth the lady at the ticket counter let me believe I was buying a ticket to Paracas I will never know. You live and you learn right?

I’m relatively sure at some point my taxi driver was trying to convince me to go out to the discoteques tomorrow night with him (after, of course, he told me he has two young children) but regardless he was very nice, and we had a wonderful Spanish conversation, of which I understood approximately 85% of. It’s amazing, I always thought my comprehension would be much better than my ability to speak, but then people throw out vocabulary I just have never heard before, and I stumble pathetically trying to understand what they’re asking me or telling me.

Anyways, I’m safely at my Paracas hostel, slightly poorer, but in the end, no major harm done.

I spent the last 2 and a half days in Lima, wandering the city and making new friends in my hostel. I hadn’t heard such great things about Lima, and I’m learning that this trip and seeing new cities is all about managing expectations. I think because I expected to hate Lima in the same way I hated Quito, I was actually pleasantly surprised with the city, and didn’t find myself repulsed in the least.

Sure, it’s a major city with massive intersections and smog and insane drivers, but the city itself, especially the suburb of Miraflores where I stayed, definitely has some charm, and I enjoyed spending time walking around and taking it all in.

Of course, Miraflores is a wealthy neighborhood, and I didn’t spend any time in the poorer sections of the city, so I will admit to having a bit of a skewed perception. But the Miraflores cliffs overlooking the ocean (pictured), the Barranco neighborhood, also in the south, and the old city center are all great areas with beautiful architecture, and plenty of green parks. The city is very walkable, and the public transportation was easy to manage and understand (and exponentially cheaper than taking cabs everywhere!)

Unfortunately, Lima has a constant marine layer over it, so it was overcast and grey my entire time there, sans two or three hours on my second day when the sun made a brief appearance before slipping back behind the fog.

On day two in Lima, our hostel got a nice surprise: a gigantic Venezuelan middle- and high-school-aged badminton team (I couldn’t make this up if i tried) checked into the hostel. Incredibly young and very noisy, you can imagine myself and my fellow backpackers were less than thrilled (to put it nicely) with our sudden new bunkmates. Luckily I was only there for one more night, but the others chose to vacate to a new hostel to avoid the children. So bizarre!

South America may be a big continent, but it’s still a small world down here: in the last two days I managed to bump into Chloe, who was the first other gringa I met when I first got to Ecuador, on the beach in Huanchaco. Turns out we were on the same overnight bus down to Lima. And my first morning in Lima, I woke up in my shared hostel room after a quick nap to Milou’s voice — another girl I studied with in Montanita! Who knew we’d all randomly be reuniting several hundred kilometeres south.

Other than all that randomness, I’ve had 3 very relaxing, low key days. It’s crazy to think I’m almost halfway through my time in Peru: at this time next week I expect to be crossing the Bolivian border! Next on the agenda? A boat tour (I know, I swore I wouldn’t get on another vehicle in the water this trip, but I just can’t resist) of the Isla Ballestas, flying over the Naza lines, checking out Arequipa, and hiking through one of the deepest canyons in the world. Not a bad itinerary!