Castle Competition 2010

Sarah and I are getting a few things in our lives sorted out before our return to New Zealand. The biggest area to be tidied up is pressing, to say the least. Today we have taken steps to ameliorate this part of our relationship that has, for so long, held us back. The issue at hand, “who is the better sand castle technician?”

We are now harnessing the power of social networking sites and calling on you to clear this up for us. Let democracy and the voices of the masses reign. I think it is pretty obvious whose castle is better but for the sake of objectivity we have not provided you with the creator of each edifice.

If you could please take the time to have a look at photos of The City of Sand (top photo) and The Grand Castle of Punta del Diablo (bottom photo) and then vote via the poll in the top right of the widget column we would be most grateful.

To the victor the spoils and, to Sarah and Bevan, a happy-ever-after.

Much later (out of Bolivia)

Bolivia

We finally got out of Bolivia and since then my experience has been surprisingly similar to when we first arrived in South America. Now on the road there seems to be saturation of experiences and amongst all that what is to say? Life is really fun but also becomes a big list; meeting those people, going there, drinking that and eating this, “notice that different use of Spanish?” and, “the ethnicities of the city?”

Blah blah.

When I started travelling I thought my response was due to a lack of experience but now I actually think it is just an intrinsic part of travelling. Perhaps the real reason you travel instead just reading travel books your whole life.

As it was we left Cochabamba with a swag of generous goodbyes and dinners and left for Santa Cruz. In some ways Santa Cruz was the perfect place to exit though we did not know it at the time. Santa Cruz is very mestizo in comparison to the rest of Bolivia and, generally, a lot more modern. This was a good ‘climate’ to transition into the southern countries of this continent.

In Santa Cruz we drank beer, swam in the pool, commented on the humidity, met some really cool backpackers, watched the sunset and went to the Mariposario (which was so bizarre in its size and Club Med type styling, was I really in Bolivia?) as well as seeing a very excellent art exhibition that was put on for the 200 anniversary of the city. The art exhibition was made of a lot artists working in a lot of different mediums and they were well executed.

The most interesting was an installation called Estacion de Lluvia by Ricardo Lanzarini. He had painted a high ceilinged roof white and then drawn tiny grotesqueries in lead pencil all around the room. To observe the pieces better the artist included two magnifying glasses.

After all this we said our final farewells and tried to leave Bolivia through Paraguay. This did not work out. This is a long story which I will not bore anyone with but involved getting ripped off and put on a very uncomfortable bus to Asuncion which we eventually exited before we got ourselves into an unwanted situation. Later we, somehow, got our money back from the bus company and decided to go to Buenos Aires instead of seeing a new country.

Argentina

Getting out of Argentina was a hassle at first but a total pleasure in the end. After the Bolivian border we were stopped three times within half an hour to have our bags and bus searched. I was getting pretty wound up by the third stop but after that it was clean sailing and we had a really relaxing 42 hour ride which I just loved; we had full-cama and I was reading The Ninja. I almost did not want to get off at the other end.

Overall BA was a total breeze and almost felt too easy. And massive. After being in Bolivia for ten months it was almost like being in the city for the first time again. Only better. I could not believe how big and modern it seemed and how Caucasian everything [sic] seemed. It was a big surprise to be seeing things this way to both Sarah and I.

We stayed here for a few days, checked Malba and drank in the afternoons in Plaza Dorrego. At this stage we had totally embraced the tourist lifestyle and after our “attempt to go to Paraguay” loved feeling at ease. In fact, we had a few laughs going through the city and seeing what parts of the city we had thought looked dangerous before Bolivia.

Uruguay

Getting to Uruguay was a lot of fun. It was a day that included a subway, a bus, a train, a taxi and a boat. The border crossing was almost perfunctory and everyone in Uruguay was polite. The first thing I saw when we landed in Carmelo was an alfajoreres advertisement with Diego Forlán. I am not sure what a better introduction to this country could be.

Since then we have been to Montevideo. I have listen to Up on the Catwalk by Simple Minds, walked around the city, watched working class football teams play on a field next to the sea, stayed at a nice hostel and been charmed by the locals (one of which stopped us in the supermarket, had a chat to us and then invited us to dinner!). I also have to say that though the accent here is the same as in Argentina - thankfully - the Uruguayan Spanish is much easier to understand, “¡¡¡SiiiiIIIIIIIIII!!!”

Now we are in Punta del Diablo staying in a beach side cottage which is ridiculously nice. We are having a great time taking on a ‘vacation’ type mentality and having the sound of the sea wakes us up in the mornings.

Handmade

Some people might try and tell you that they volunteer to make a difference in people’s lives and make the world a better place. That might sound nice but the real reason you do it is so that you can do fun stuff that you would not usually get to do in your "real" career.

At Performing Life I have had the opportunity to use my professional skills to create some content for their website and write two grants; I once again found myself sitting in front of a computer typing away in Word. It would be disingenuous for me to say that it was not fun to do this. It did actually feel like I was doing something of worth. At the same time I was still just sitting in front of computer trying to meet a deadline and a set of guidelines. It was work that got a tick in both the productive and boring columns.

Well luckily for me I am working with John. One day he came in and was talking about possible performance ideas for the group and the next day I was reviewing an online guide for building stilts and sketching out a basic design. We bought some wood, debated what other materials to use and where we could find them, got stuck on the shin-guard but eventually came up with a solution.

Once we had those matters taken care of we made a prototype which was structurally sound but had two right feet instead of one of each. A small oversight and easily fixed in proceeding sets. The stilt project is a perfect example of why I have enjoyed volunteering. This work was a perfect mix of craftsmanship and invention. The creative aspect of researching and designing stilts and then getting splinters in my hands and the smell of burning wood up my nose from the power drill was the most refreshing working experience I have had in long time.

And then yesterday we finished the last pair and took them to the afternoon class. Did I mention that we ignored conventional wisdom and made the stilts really high? I was skeptical of whether or not the kids would use them or not in the first place. But adding the peril of height to mix made my expectations very low. How wrong I was. The kids were really into them and were used the entire time that afternoon. Making something with my hands, making something that actually worked and having the kids use them has been very satisfying.

This morning

My coffee is black

Outside the day is quite hot

and I need to work

A fugitive from a killer. A remote outpost. A fight to the death.

One of Evo’s unpopular new laws was the ban on imported cars from Japan that are over five years old. Reports suggest that previous unregulated car importation has transformed access to public transport throughout the country. More cars, more rides. But also more traffic, more pollution. Meanwhile, there are micros which continue to thrive in Cochabamba, and most other major cities in Bolivia, that look as though they have been around since the seventies.

It is very possible that these were imported from overseas as a hand-me-downs but I cannot find any articles to confirm this. These vehicles recall the yellow school buses from the United States but have stylized paint work and elaborate hood ornaments like the Jeepney in the Philippines.

The paint jobs are all the same and only vary in terms of color scheme; blue-red, green, blue and orange-red. When you get on the bus you can always tell were the owner is from as the front windscreens are covered in stickers of Bolivian football teams (usually Bolivar).

To individualize the buses the owners also add their own personal touches. A lot of buses have images of Freddy Krueger or wolves painted on the back of the bus. My favorite personalization is the Legionnaire themed bus I saw a couple of weeks ago. Why throw-back to the 80s with Freddy Krueger when you could throw-back to a late 90s, Claude Van Damme, straight-to-video classic like this? The best part is the guy must have had this costom made. Today the colors are sun faded, but the quest for freedom continues.

I've never seen a Prime Minister of New Zealand

This week was the 200 year anniversary of Cochabamba. So not surprisingly we were treated to more marching bands and more public holidays. The event did provide us with one unique opportunity. Evo Morales acknowledged the day by gracing the Cochabambinos with his presence. This was a stroke of luck for me because I really wanted to see him in the flesh and I thought it would never happen. I felt especially lucky about this when I heard he had declined to attend the Santa Cruz annual event.

It is likely that this was because Santa Cruz is part of the Media Luna region which does not have a lot of affection for El Preseidente. In fact they hate him, more or less, in those parts. Evo is busy representing an indigenous majority meanwhile people in Santa Cruz, who are predominately mestizo and progressive/modern, do not agree with his policies.

That is not to say people love him in Cochabamba. There is plenty of graffiti about the town that says "Evo Cabron", "Evo Culo", "Asesino Evo" and "Vota NO". These comments are routinely supported by locals that we chat with. While they do not want to kill him they do not rate him and are looking forward to the day he is out of office. This is also supported by Facebook Data Mining that gives me suggestions to join groups like You Do Not Know HOW MUCH I hate Evo Morales. This surely reflects the inclinations of (the everyday, normal) Bolivians who I am connected to on that site.

Me personally, I can't get with that. There is no doubt he is an average politician and has made mistakes but he has also done some cool stuff. Like the new Constitution that acknowledges the indigenous diversity (plurinational) of the country and more recently the work he is doing to change the media's practice of describing campesinos in defamatory ways. On this latter point I am a little strident. Surely the fact that he needs to pass this law reflects the everydayness of racism here and highlights why people in Santa Cruz fail to connect with his position.

Whatever the case it was really fun to see the president march through Cochabamba this week. It was a really hot day and it must have been hard work walking the streets. The other thing that was great was the support Evo got on his march. Everyone was running up the street cheering for him and chanting his name. I had a big cheesy grin on my face and skipped up through the crowd trying to get a decent photo of the man. It was so refreshing to be around Bolivians actually supporting their president. The reality is that I have not seen Bolivians outwardly supporting him in all my travels. As such I now have a small, but important, bit of context on Bolivia. There are some people living in a city that like who they have running the country.

20 photos to and from work: Saturday 11 September

Walking to and from Performing Life

On my walks this week I have taken a some of photos in an attempt to capture the everydayness of life for Sarah and I. Absent here are a couple of subjects I wanted to shoot but couldn't. The first is the Potosi beggars (grandmothers with their grandchildren). The second was an image of an older man sitting in a park throwing popcorn to the pigeons. I am still not comfortable shooting the former (and there are enough photos on the Internet anyway) and on the latter... well, I wish I had but at the time did not want to abuse his privacy.

The one thing I have not been able to capture - that I wanted to - is the bird life in Cochabamba. At the moment there appears to be a migration happening due to the change of season. Sadly my camera and my ability as a photographer have not allowed me to frame this part of the city.