Todos Santos

Todos Santos (All Saints) is a Bolivian holiday celebrated around the same time as Halloween in the States. It´s my favorite Bolivian holiday (so far) and was the best bonding experience I´ve had with my host family thus far. There´s a few elements that I would like to take with me and incorporate into Halloween when I´m back in the States. Mainly, it´s just taking time to remember and (most importantly) celebrate the lives of the dead. I think it´s really nice to just set one day aside and remember people... because otherwise they can be too easily forgotten.

It reminds me a lot of Dia de los Muertos in Mexico. Basically, people take a day, or two, to remember and celebrate the dead. In my host family the day before Todos Santos we cooked a big meal making specific dishes that recently departed ones had liked and set a special place for them at the table. Then on the day of Todos Santos we had a delicious parillada (bbq) and headed over to the local cemetery to hang out and pay our respects.

This is the Cruz de los Viejos (Cross of the Old Ones) that greets you at the entrance of the cemetery and symbolizes all the ancestors that became before us. There must have been about a thousand candles lit underneath this brightly decorated cross.

This is my host mom Doña Ana and my niece Adriana, a real cutie. They are holding up pictures of Doña Ana´s son Rafa (passed away about two years ago) and her husband (five years). They were apparently both really into horses. Rafa was quite a popular, accomplished rider in Bermejo. He actually died in a tragic horse riding accident that I´ve talked about on here before.

This is Rafa´s and Doña Ana´s husband´s grave site. One of the prettier graves in the cemetery. I asked to go with them to the cemetery to see the graves. I was a little worried that Doña Ana might get emotional because I heard that she gets pretty emotional whenever talking about Rafa and I´m really not good in dealing with situations like that. But we just sat there in contemplative silence while other people would come up and pay their respects and Doña Ana would show them her pictures. The overall feeling at the cemetery was humm... how can I describe it? It was neither somber or overly festive. But it felt positive. Like people were genuinely remembering their loved ones, but happy to be there all the same.

I stopped to take a picture of the relatively more simple grave sites and this woman saw me and invited me to a drink which I was instructed to first pour some onto the grave as an offering to the decest. She told me about how the elderly woman in the grave didn´t have family when she became ill and that she took care of her during her last year and now she was the only one to visit her. I was touched by how this woman so openly shared her story with me. Definitely one of the most significant and personal cross cultural experiences I´ve had thus far.

Tupiza to Copacabana

Ok... wanted to elaborate on the vacation more, but I think I may have broken my finger playing football after turkey dinner (yes I am an idiot). So typing isn´t working out too well right now. This will have to do for now.

Just got back from my first real vacation! (I do not count a weekend in Salta as a real vacation) A whirl wind tour through western Bolivia. My friends from Brown, Dawn and David, came down and meet me in Tarija. From there we made a brief visit to Bermejo and then it was off to Tupiza, via el norte de Argentina and the absolutely gorgeous Quebrada Hamahuaca. For anyone headed to Tupiza I highly recommend traveling this route rather than through southern Bolivia. Not only are Argentinean buses clean and comfortable and the roads paved, but the scenery is sooo pretty.

Just outside of Tarija.

From Tupiza we set off on a four day/ three night jeep tour through the desolate south western corner of Bolivia and the Salar de Uyuni (the world´s biggest salt flat). It was basically four days of straight driving through some of the most remote, but beautiful territory in Bolivia. We passed by extinct volcanoes, colored lagoons, deserts... all around 4000m or more. We saw a lot of wildlife.... about a million llamas (although they´re not so wild anymore), vicuñas (like llamas but smaller), vischacas (like a chinchilla), lots of flamingos and a fox. No condors though... that was a bummer.

This is the Isla de Pesca (Fish Island) in the middle of the Salar. A cactus covered island in a sea of salt.

We came across some pretty impressive ruins. An abandoned village said to be about 1500 years old (not sure if I quite believe it), still in great condition. The first ruins I have visited thus far in Bolivia. The town was huge relative to all the other more ¨modern¨, still occupied, towns around it. The people apparently made a living mining silver, but like so many others were robed by the Spanish then victim to a subsequent plague.

Some minor technical difficulties. The break was stuck on the rear tire. Solution... take it off. You don´t really need all of your breaks anyway, right? The kid... oops I mean full grown man in the red jacket was our guide and driver. We didn´t realize how tiny he was until he got out of the jeep. We shared the jeep with a really cool Irish couple (there the one´s in black. Some of the most well traveled people I´ve ever meet. So now I´ve got a place to crash in Ireland ;)

The beautiful Laguna Verde. Green because of arsenic and other nasty chemicals. We took a cue from the flamingos and stayed away from this lagoon.

So cheesy.... but we couldn´t help ourselves. This is one in about a million dorky photos we took on the Salar.

Infamous Potosi. Once the richest city in the World. The mountain is still mined to this day under very harsh, some may say cruel and inhumane, conditions.

El Cemetario. One of the most tranquil places in the other wise chaotic city of La Paz. This huge cemetery is a nice retreat from the smog filled noisy streets of La Paz. I almost had a heart attack climbing up the almost vertical streets to get there. But it was well worth it. La Paz is just nuts. It´s a huge city in the middle of a relatively small valley surrounded by dramatic snow capped mountains. You can see in the picture how the buildings crawl up every inch of the valley seemingly defying gravity. It´s the weirdest contrast between ugly urban sprawl and natural beauty. At night on the Prado, in the middle of the valley, you´re surrounded by lights on the valley walls all around you. A very bizarre feeling.

These fine items are for sale in the witch´s market (more like a few random stands than an actual market). Well... I´m not exactly sure what the armadillo is for, but the dried llama fetuses (yes that´s what they are) are buried under new houses and other buildings to please Pacha Mama (Earth Mother) and bring good fortune. No... the fetuses were not killed for this particular purpose. They were found in previously slaughtered llamas used for food purposes.

El Centro. I think this picture gives a pretty good idea of the chaos of La Paz.

The totally chill (definitely more my pace) Copacabana. It´s really weird feeling like you´re at a beach town while looking at snow caped mountains in the background. The countryside surrounding Lago Titicaca is soo pretty. This is the largest body of water I have seen in 10 months! There´s some thing very calming about water.

The even more tranquilo Isla del Sol (Sun Island). The birth place of the sun in Incan legend. Turns out the birth place of the sun wasn´t so sunny. We actually got a hail storm while on the island. We had to hike up ¨an easy 2km of stairs¨ (hostel description) at over 4,000 m with our packs to get to our hostel at the top of the hill. I felt like I might die as local kids carrying other peoples packs (almost as big as themselves) were waltzing up the hill. But it was all worth it. Once my vision came back into focus... I could appreciate the absolutely amazing view of Isla de la Luna (Moon Island), the lake and the snow capped mountains behind it. As you can see from the photo every inch of this island is terraced. It´s pretty impressive what people will do to make a living.

Glad I wasn´t on that bus (we decided to take the lower route). This is the reason why the length of bus rides are given in time ranges and not precise hours. Ya never know what you´re going to run into. Who knows how long these poor people were stuck in the middle of nowhere while the drivers shoveled dirt futily under the tires.