D.W.E.

Now Hester is gone, and Clea has stopped through, Sarah and I are by ourselves (in terms of amigos de Neuva Zealanda). This means our dynamic has changed. The first big decision we have made in this new situation is to start a competition: Days Without English.

We decided to do this competition on the day of Clea leaving. Despite the sound principal behind this we were both had a lot of trepidation. To get leverage, and overcome our fears, we agreed on a penalty for losing. The penalty is both practicable and more vexing than not complying: the loser has to be the winners slave for seven days.

The first day of D.W.E. was exhausting and exasperating in that “first day of school in a new town” kind of way. Fear, awkwardness and lack of habituation made the experience highly un-enjoyable. Por suerte! The following day things started to flow a bit better. In our favour - usefully – when we went to watch Game One of the NBA Playoffs (finals) we were able to explain to our (fluent speaking) friend, Steph, that we were having a competition and therefore assuage the inconvenience of our limited vocabulary. In the end Steph was a big help with our Spanish. Who would have thunkit? This shit actually works.

The competition has also made us more involved in our tarea and we have both started reading juvenile literature in Spanish. I’ve picked up the very fly Watch Tower illustrated bible entitled Aprendamos Del Gran Maestro. My favourite chapter is titled ´¿Cómo abemos que el Armagedón está cerca?´ (literally: ´How Do We Know That Armageddon Is Close?´, ha-ha!). This combined with our bedroom wall - that is slowly being covered with verb and vocab charts - it has become a fun process.

I must say that having this frequency of Spanish speaking is making Bolivia a lot more interesting for us. It is also starting to make me feel a little agitated. It is, at times, disheartening to be expressing myself with such a limited vocabulary.

My limited vocabulary produces blunt and callow sounding assertions. It is quite funny at first. And then it is just isolating. This feeling of agitation and isolation is the next “brick wall” (thank you Randy Pausch) to circumvent. And in the meantime I am getting acutely in touch with body language, too. Where would we be without our bodies to communicate?

I look forward to finding out what other emotions and reactions I will assign to my life during this chapter. We have agreed that the competition will go for four weeks. After that we will continue to live our lives inside the Spanish language but allow ourselves the pleasure of speaking our native tongue with fellow volunteers and travellers.

Amen.

Prove me wrong

In short I have been a bit of a dick in regards to being a tourist. And while I have encountered more rancorous and petty souls than myself I must acknowledge up-front that - at times - I have been nonplussed by the Gringo Trail experience. Sometimes my rational brain gets over taken by my emotional brian: ‘Fuck Machu Pichu and Iguacu Falls and fuck Route 36 and fuck the Salar’. In a word I have secretly been (unfairly) a complete curmudgeon.

Last Saturday I did the mother of all tourist attractions in Bolivia: The World’s Most Dangerous Road. You also get a t-shirt for your trouble on this one. The name of this attraction irritates me a lot. Give me some statistics. How many people have died here? How many gringos have died here? There better be at least one a day. This whole thing of selling a mainstream activity as edgy and adventuress drives me crazy.

Before I arrived I thought that this attraction should be called The Disused Road That Was Dangerous But Now Is Just a Place Where Lazy Gringos Go To Fecklessly Fill a Hole Inside Their Vacant Souls. Personally I signed up to do this just so I wouldn’t get stuck at a party trying to explain why I didn’t do it and therefore run the risk of exposing my antipathy about backpacker culture (of which I am one).

Our mate Hesther claimed that she had a great time doing the Dangerous Road so I took my foot of the hater-pedal before we arrived in the morning. When we arrived at Luna Tours we met our two UK companions for the day, had a typical crap Bolivian breakfast and headed out. Our guide, Octavia, was a reassuringly friendly Bolivian dude who rattled through his banter in a practiced though earnest manner.

Economically as possible this was what proceeded:

ONE: Hours of 90s “rock” hits... like Nookie, Wonderwall, Between Angels and Insects, Boom and Zero. I am not being facetious when I say that this was wonderfully nostalgic even though I was not a fan of any of these songs in their day.


TWO: A myriad of climates... you start of in the freezing and windy Andes (about 3500 metres) and finish in the sweltering heat of the jungle surrounded by butterflies and swifts.


THREE: Amazing scenery... the mountains are larger than life on this ride, they swallow everything. Cars on the horizon looked like Tic-Tacs and people like small grains of quinoa.


FOUR: The Halo moment... the surrounds looked so grand, alien and perfect. The day was perfect and the sky was blue. Then a jet flew overhead, slowly edging across the sky leaving a massive vapour trial. It was a scene straight out of Halo. Amazing.


FIVE: The road actually turned out to be dangerous... OK, sure people had died here and that is not something to be trivialised one iota, but what was frightening for me was the 50 metre landslide that took out the road about halfway down. Possibly occurring earlier in the morning. As the guide transported the bikes across the slip small rocks (i.e. about the size of baseballs) were still falling from the cliff above. At one stage a bigger piece came down and scared the shit out of a guide who was heading across. He gingerly ran towards the other side barely hiding his (appropriate) fear.


SIX: Have I mentioned that this is a lazy activity for lazy gringos? It is downhill all the way so you don’t even have to peddle. While this was a criticism before I had done the ride I have absolutely changed my mind now. The exhilaration of being in this environment speeding down a hill is truly thrilling. No amount of cynicism could take that away from me this time.


SEVEN: A cute kitten at the end of the ride harassing the local tomcat and chickens on the main street.


EIGHT: A swim and a beer at the end of the ride. The pool at Esmeralda, Coroico was really nice and the weather was balmy. It was the perfect way to end the ride and because we went with a smaller tour company there were no other people there at the time. We had the whole place to ourselves.


Thank you The World’s Most Beautiful Road That Is Mostly Disused And Also Quite Dangerous In Some Parts. It was nice to be proved wrong so thoroughly (Walter Benjamin-type criticisms aside). Amongst that beauty I shed a tear I was so amazed. That is no lie.

Dear Diary 3.0 (a couple of days in La Paz)

Jaded Sunday. We all got home late. I spend the day watching:

• Flashforward
• Designstar
• Crusaders versus The Bulls

Such a surprise to see rugby on the television let alone a Crusaders game. Later India Star again for dinner and then more TV. I am a vegetable after a night on the town. Felt like death in the AM but have managed to regather a bit of my humanity by the evening.

Dear Diary 2.0 (a couple of days in La Paz)

I woke up early after going to bed late, ate a piece of bread, drank coffee and read my book in the cold and dim breakfast bar. Went and sorted some stuff for next week and took a whole bunch of photos of stencils around La Paz. Generally speaking everyone (Sarah, Hester and Clea) is feeling average. They all stay in.

When I finally get back from the excursion and we headed to the very compact but edutaining Coca Museo. "Feeling tired? Drink Coke!" slogan in the exhibition made me realize how we have come full circle with energy drinks. There must be something about modernity and wanting to "feel right" all the time without having to worry so much about food and rest. The pigeons in the courtyard of the museum drove me crazy with their constant fluttering but the sun streaming down through the tree above and the canopy of birds was some sight.

Everyone crashed afterward so I headed to Oliver´s Travels to watch Bayern Munich and Internazionale. It was full and the thought of standing-room-only for ninety minutes (alone) made me feel like a tool so I headed elsewhere and paid eighteen Bolivianos for Personal size Huari! The game is good and Milito´s goals are classy. In the end Internazionale were far to dynamic on attack and solid in defence but for my money Bayern play a nicer style of football.

When I got back and everyone is still in bed so I started thinking about another beer for the late afternoon. No one suggests buying Coke to get beyond the altitude induced lethargy.

Dear Diary 1.1 (a couple of days in La Paz)

Our first day, Friday, ended with me accepting my place in La Paz. I ate a curry at Indian Star claiming to be world-class-hot and got a appropriately shameful t-shirt that said as much.

Later Hester and I went to Oliver´s Travel´s for a quiet. Oliver´s Travel´s is well known to visitors for it´s "humour" and candid dislike of Israelis. The bartender told me that the owner "Olly" also wants to put an Israeli flag on the front door with the words "FREE PALESTINE" underneath it and another sign for Easter which says "We cannot open right now because on this day the Jews murdered Jesus".

Earlier in the night our mate Clea got to La Paz with no problems. We are now set for a big Saturday. And perhaps a quiet Sunday.

Dear Diary 1.0 (a couple of days in La Paz)

We are in La Paz to see Hester off. While we have been here a few times before we have not spent any real time in the city. Time to explore a bit.


In the morning we sourced a sound hostel followed by some average food and coffee then hit the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Plaza which was OK. The gallery had changed little over the last four months but I still enjoyed revisiting the work of Mario Conde. Great palette, tight use of water colour and unique juxtaposition of Bolivian, religious and communist motifs. I will try to buy a piece of his before I leave this country.


Later in the day we had more coffee and checked out the very excellent Museo Nacional de Arte. A mix of contemporary and religious national works. The contemporary work had pedigree which was refreshing. I especially liked the mixed-media piece (La Mina) by Walter Solón Romero. La Mina had great composition and stylised line work (though actually a wood cut). Later we consumed a bunch of stuff from the art shop and headed home.

On the way home we, grabbed a pomelo juice, waved at a baby and encountered the teachers protest which was very peaceful. They are getting a hefty five percent increase to their wage. The problem is that their wage is slim and it only equates to about 30 bolivianos extra per month. It also made me realise that the front page of La Razon was of Miss Santa Cruz. Boobs and smiles are popular here, too.

Anyway. It was a really nice day getting to La Paz and looking at art. Oil, water and acrylic, I love it all. And it recalled the enjoyment had the other day at Palacio de los Portales.

¡¡¡Yo soy materialista!!! (#2)

One of my favourite purchases in South America. It makes me feel like a boy scout, is compact, manual, austere and does what it says on the packet. The lack of sophistication in the design means that there is almost nothing that can go wrong with it. Or perhaps that is a sign of sophistication?

Sarah and I used one of these first in Jujuy, Argentina. We had to ask for it at the front counter of the hostel we were staying at. It didn’t live in the kitchen with the rest of the obligatory kitchen utensils. A sign of its pilfer-ibility. Subsequently, we walked around for two days looking and eventually found one in a shop front cluttered with a thousand other items. The surly shop lady stopped us from purchasing it then and there*. Later that day we picked one up from a supermarket.

If you cannot reliably open a can when you are on the road your dinner eating experience is greatly diminished. Enough people have asked to borrow this little baby, with comforting monotony, to remind us of this fact.

Last week, on 13th May 2010, Sarah and I celebrated six months of being out of New Zealand. To salute this milestone Hester, Sarah and I went out for sushi at Zhou with our friends Stephanie and Allan. When I got home I wondered what I would write about this development. Outlining another dinner with friends felt fallow or at least unsuitable. Instead I thought of el abrelatas. What a good role model for the next six months. Or a representation of how I would like to preceding months to be: functional, reliable, common place and exceptional in its simplicity.

* a sympathetic reminder that - today - our Spanish has actually improved.