A little alone time

I want to start out by apologizing. I friend of mine brought to my attention that there has been a large number of grammatical and spelling mistakes in my blog, I am sorry about that but you need to understand my dependence on spell check and the fact that my gramar is bad. I hope that you all can get past it and enjoy the content.
So after only a couple of weeks Umeir the photographer I was traveling with had to head back to the states so my time with the Democracy Center was over, but it was an amazing experience. I realized I had about 10 days before I was meeting up with a friend in Peru so I decided to head down south to the towns of Potosi and Sucre. I have never traveled alone before so this was a good experience for me. I took an overnight bus to Potosi, which the locals claim to be the highest city in the world at 4,070 m (a lot of feet). This town is famous for its mines.Hundreds of years ago it was one of the most important cities in the world, comparable to NYC and Paris. This is strange to think about because now it is simply a city of a little over 100,000 people. The first day there I just relaxed and met some amazing people from Germany and Israel. I am glad that I met some people because most of you know that I am not an alone kind of person, I like people and talking a lot. The second day I took a tour of an active mine. This was really important to me because mining is one of the most important elements of Bolivia culture and history. In this town alone there are 15,000 miners and thousands of others who work in processing plans and tourism whose job is directly related to the mines. This could lead to serious problems because experts claim that the mine has about 5-10 more years before it becomes unsafe (or even more unsafe, because lord knows it is not that safe right now.)The tour was enlightening and uncomfortable. We actually went through the mines and crawled through tiny tunnels in the horrible heat and filled our lungs with dust and chemicals. The job that these men do is unbelievable. I had trouble breathing just being in and walking through the mines let alone doing the hard labor that they do all day everyday. Overall it was a great experience and I got to hold active explosives and watch them explode, pretty cool.
From there I headed to the colonial town of Sucre. This was a cool experience because this town is totally different from most of the others. It was nice, white and clean and people drove SUVs. It was also interesting because this is where the other half of the capital sits. The first week I was here I went to the protest about the Sede no se Mueve (the people of the La Paz want to keep the capital). This town was covered in signs saying La Sede Si se Mueve. There was also a hunger strike to move the capital. Overall it was really interesting to see the other side of the debate. Although interesting I was not sad to leave Sucre back to the land of La Paz. I am going to be here for a couple of days and then I head to Peru to find a certain tall read head named Maggie and we are heading down to Chile, I am overly excited about it. Although it makes me sad that my time traveling is coming to a close I am really excited about the work that I am going to be doing in Paraguay in just 2 and half short weeks. I hope that everyones summer is finishing up nicely and you are all in my thoughts.

Even more cultural immersion

So if staying with a familiy on Isla del Sol was not enough we made the trek to Cochabamba and the fun just kept going. In Cochabamba we met the amazing staff of the Democracy Center. On our second night there we were treated to something very special, we got to participate in a Coia (I am not sure how to spell it). This is an offering made to the Pachamama (or mother earth) where you burn things and chew coca and we played traditional music. It was a really wonderful way to spend a night and a time to reflect. The next day we decided to go and visit a local town called Tarata because we were waiting on more host stays. This is a small colonial town with not much to do so we spent the majority of the day just wandering around. In this wandering we met a couple of women and they invited us to a party they were having. This was one of the silliest experiences that I have had in South America thus far. We went to the party and we were offered food and drink about every five minutes. I spent the majority of the time talking to these two old men and it was wonderful. I drank my first Chica (the drink this region is famous for) which was colored like a Bolivian Flag, it was pretty wonderful. Another one of those experiences that I will not forget any time soon. From there we were set up with another host stay not far from the city of Cochabamba. We stayed with an artist who is living in a comune and trying to live outside of the imperialist system. I had a really amazing conversation with her about education and literacy and I realized that there are a lot of people in the world who do not agree with the accepted development policy. It was a really hard conversation to have but it was really good at the same time.
From here we went directly to our last host stay which was in the Chapare region of Bolivia which is where the majority of the Coca is grown and which is deep in the jugle. We stayed with this young couple and their amazing children. The couple were 23 and 25 and had children who were 4 and 5 years old, kind of shocking. They own a bunch of land so during our stay we went up to their Coca field and helped them weed it and also down to the river to fish with nets. It was a great day spent learning a lot. The man is also the local "dirigenete" which is like a mayor. He is amazing and holds monthly meetings in order to properly understand the needs of his constituents, what if politicians did that in the US what a different country it might be. Overall it was another great experience. This was the end of my work with the Democracy Center which is too bad because it was really amazing. Now I fing myself in the small mining town of Potosi and I am starting some solo traveling which should be good but is a little scary because everyone knows how much I depend on the people in my life. But again this trip is all about learning and experiencing things. Would love to hear from you!!!!

Cultural Immersion Part I

So after I did the tourist thing for a couple of weeks I started doing some work for an organization in Cochabamba Bolivia called the Democracy Center. The "work" that I did was travel around with a photographer and conduct interviews regarding the Constitutional Assembly for a magazine that they are writing. Overall this was an amazing experience and got me to a lot of places that I never would have been able to go and meet people some amazing people. The first place that we went was Lake Titicaca. Of course I arrived to the small town of Copacabana on their independence day and the day Peruvians celebrate the town saint so it was total madness. One thing that I have learned about South American festivals is that they seem to center around the selling of everyday things like CDs and jeans, it was really wild. Towards sunset we walked up this huge hill to a cemetary where the real celebrating was occuring. There were hundreds of people burning candles and performing rituals for the saint of Copacabana. It was really amazing to be a part of that and it was totally sensor overload. There was music, colors, smells and every other emotion that you could think of. The next day we went to Isla del Sol to find Don Ernesto and hopefully stay with his family.
This was an exprience that pushed my comfort level a lot. We were told to go to this island and ask for a guy who hosted a friend of the Center four years ago. So we hoped a little boat to his community and then walked around for a while and finally ran into him. Instantly he was receptive and so welcoming. They invited us into their home and we just started talking. We talked about everything from Aymara spirtual beliefs to Bolivian governtment to cultural tourism. It was really cool to be able to sit down and talk to someone with such different beliefs and life experiences. Another really important element of this trip was that the majority of the people in the town did not speak Spanish but only Aymara. I have never traveled to a place where I did not speak the language so this was a really cool experience. I spent most of an afternoon playing cards and wandering around the beach with a ten year old girl that spoke very limited spanish so we conversed purely through looks and pointing. It was an experience that I needed to have and I think will be really good for me in the end. We were only able to stay with them for a little over a day but I learned more than I have in weeks it was amazing. Little did I know that it was just the beginning of my cultural immersion.

To Peru and back

After Lake Titicaca I headed over to Peru with the amazing Cuykendall sister and my time there was full of ups and downs. It started on a relatively bad note. We tried to buy a bus ticket from Copacabana Bolivia directly to Cuzco Peru, but when we showed up in the morning there was no bus. The woman at the agency claimed that it was full from La Paz and therefore did not come, simply not true. In the end we made our way to Cuzco because of kind hearted Peruvians which was amazing. But it was the first real scam that I have run into so it hit me kind of hard. Situations like that make me think why people want to treat eachother badly. I understand the annoyance that can come with tourism but we are just trying to better understand their culture and see their natural beauties. But in the end I got over and loved the town of Cuzco. The spanish influence can be seen everywhere. It is full of old churches and a lot of colonial architecture. We also stayed at an amazing hostal called Marlins Travels, stay there if you find yourself in Cuzco in the near future. We decided to sign up for a 5 day trek that ended at Machu Picchu. We headed out on the first day and it was totally amazing. It was physically difficult but in a really good way. Then about half and hour before lunch I got this really strange pain in my back, it hurt whenever I inhaled or exhaled. It was really weird because I had been doing harder higher climbing the last couple of weeks. In the end I decided to head back to Cuzco instead of continuing with the trek. It was one of the hardest decisions I have made in a long time but if I had stayed I think I would have been miserable. Then my cab driver back to Cuzo spent the four hour car ride trying to convince me to go out with him and friends, ahhh sleezy men really bother me sometimes. Back in Cuzco I met a bunch of wonderful Spaniards and spent a lot of time with them. I also went on a day long trip through the sacred valley. It was really beautiful and I learned a lot about the Inca culture. They were really smart and creative people that built amazing structures high in the mountains. Also throughout that day I was adopted by a family from Lima and it was really fun, I might go and visit them at the end of the month. Finally I went up to Aguas Calientes to meet up with my hiking group and to see Machu Picchu. Of course there were complications meeting up with them because I was told the wrong hostal ect. ect. The bottom line is that nothing is easy in South America but it always seems to work out. The day that I spent at Machu Picchu made up for any inconvience or back pain that I may have experienced. It was recently named of the seven wonders of the world and I can see why. It is hard to express its beauty but it is this huge complex of amazing ruins on the top of a mountain in the middle of the jungle. That is really all I can say. We spent the day wandering around and thanks to Lauren taking in every inch of its beauty. I am going to try and get pictures up as soon as I am in a place with a little bit faster internet. So that was my experience in Peru in a nutshell. Now I am back in Bolivia for a couple of weeks starting my work for the Democracy Center and then we will see where the wind takes me. Miss you all more than you know and hope that everyone´s summer is wrapping up nicely.