Southern Hemisphere Spring Break

Wellcome of my blog!

During my absence from blogging, I have been exploring Inca ruins, planning adventures, and learning to play the ukulele! Sorry for my lack of presence in your lives, but I assure that I have been very present in my own!

So, in the time away from the internet, a lot of life has happened (weird how it works that way) -- Brace yourself for a long (but entertaining – don’t quit yet!) one folks!

La Frontera

 The first of our many adventures during the trip nearly ended our voyage before it had begun. Well, my voyage at least. Fun fact about Bolivia #1: Americans (and only Americans) have to pay a $135 tax in order to be able to enter the country. This makes for a more hectic border crossing than most, since the border officials tend to be picky about which bills they’ll accept, frequently causing the American tourists to take so long at the border that their bus leaves without them.

What happens is you buy a bus from wherever in Peru, to wherever else in Bolivia, and when the bus gets to the border crossing it stops and gives you 20 minutes to go through all of the customs stations and fill out all of the paperwork. Which is great and everything if you’re a European and can get through no questions asked, but not so great if you’re an American and have to wait in line to pay. Especially when you’re Hannah and are the last person waiting in line to pay.

And this is how our bus crossed Lake Titicaca... Seems legit.

So I was calmly waiting in line, knowing that freaking out and thinking about all of the stories of Americans getting left behind would do me immensely more harm than good. I had all of my nice, crisp bills ready to go and all of my paperwork appropriately filled out. It was down to me and two other people, and I could see the bus out the window so I figured I was probably going to be okay. One person goes, the next person goes, now it’s my turn. As I stood there, patiently waiting for the man to check and double check the validity of my cash, I glanced out the window to see my bus slowly (but surely) starting to pick up speed. With all six of my friends on it.

It was focus time. As soon as the man FINALLY determined that I was not trying to jip the Bolivian government, he gave me my papers and told me to go onto the next station. I ran over, basically threw my passport at the customs official to be stamped, grabbed it back out of his hands, and took off running with all 3758 of my necessary papers in hand, sprinting towards the bus. To my surprise (and to the surprise of many onlookers sitting comfortably on the bus) my subpar sprinting skills got me to the door just soon enough for the driver to notice the crazy girl running beside the bus making lots of desperate hand gestures and he stopped long enough to open the door for me to get in. Bienvenidos a Bolivia!

La Ciudad

The first stop on our Southern hemisphere spring break took us to the crazy city of La Paz, the capitol of Bolivia. As we summited the peaks on the outskirts of the city and the bus began taking us down the slope into the bowl of La Paz, I was amazed at how enormous it is.  The landscape is incredible – essentially the city was founded in a circular valley with 15,000 foot mountains surrounding it on all sides. WAY bigger than Cusco and not at all what I was expecting, which just added to my astonishment.

We got off at the bus stop, where we found a very friendly man willing to give us directions to our hostel. We asked how far it was and if we should take a taxi, but he said it was “muy cerca” (very close) so we took off walking with our giant backpacks in tow. A mere 40 minutes later, we had wandered around the city enough to finally encounter our destination: Wild Rover Hostel, La Paz.

Night out in La Paz

The Walking Tour – Gratis!

One of the more noteworthy activities that we did in La Paz (travel agent Hannah highly recommends it) was the walking tour of the city. We met up with two crazy Bolivians with an incredible knowledge of the city who led us tourists around for three hours, providing lots of entertaining anecdotes along the way.

The tour began outside of one of the craziest social experiments that I’ve ever heard of: San Pedro prison. This is a place where they throw any kind of criminal, from tax fraud to murder, and then essentially just let them do their own thing. They aren’t allowed to come or go, but other than that their freedom is endless, including being able to bring their families in to live with them. The guards don’t go in, the prisoners don’t go out, no questions asked.

So basically they’ve developed their own code of ethics, their own government (including their own form of capital punishment), and their own economy. They have one to five star residences, which they can pay for depending on the amount of money they  had before entering prison. The one star residences are basically just shacks, but the five star residences have their own personal bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. Pretty ritzy, if you ask me. They make money on the inside through starting their own little businesses. Either they smuggle things in to sell, or they provide a service of some kind, including (until the guards started to catch wind of it) tourism.

Check out those cute, fuzzy llama fetuses!

Essentially, tourists visiting La Paz would hear about this crazy place, and they would ask around until they found someone who could smuggle them in. Once inside, they could see how the prison worked and wander around. Dangerous? Sure, but also quite cool. During my stay at the hostel I met three guys who were trying to get in to see what went on inside. I saw them leave the hostel, but never noticed them return… yikes? Call me a nerd, but the psychology student inside of me couldn’t stop thinking about the endless research opportunities inside a place like that. Quite loco.

Another fun tidbit that we picked up on during our tour was the Bolivian equivalent of facebook relationship statuses: the women’s hats. Apparently a few centuries ago some European hat maker thought it would be a good business decision to ship thousands of hats across the pond to sell to Bolivian men. Unfortunately, the hats were way too small for the men to wear. However, being the ingenious businessman that this guy was, he decided to start marketing to the women instead. A few hundreds of years later, these women’s felt hats are their greatest pride and joy.

These hats can cost up to a few hundred dollars, which is the equivalent of a Bolivian fortune, but these women keep buying them. They sit perched atop of the women’s heads, a bit small for them as well, but a fashion statement nonetheless. But back to the relationship status part. Apparently if they wear their hats sitting straight on top of their heads, they’re married or taken. However, if they wear them tilted slightly to the side, it means that they’re single and looking for a mate. Who needs pheromones when you have old felt hats? Honestly.

After witnessing the flirtatiously tilted hats at the food market, we continued on to visit the “witch market.” Here, you can buy anything from love potions, to voodoo dolls, to… dead llama fetuses! A little something for everyone! It was here where our guides informed us of the rituals one MUST carry out before constructing a building unless you want said building to be forever cursed. There are two types of rituals, depending on the grandness of the building:

Love potions for Alex... because he needs them.

Ordinary buildings, including skyscrapers, apartment complexes, houses, businesses, etc.: For these buildings, one must buy a llama fetus and carry out a three day ritual with lots of alcohol before burying the fetus beneath the building. During this ritual, it is essential that all construction workers be provided with endless drinks. If said ritual is not carried out, the construction workers will refuse to build the structure on the grounds that one of them will surely be harmed in the process. Mhmmm… I see what you did there.

2.       This category is reserved exclusively for mansions and any other ritzy sort of structure: In order to ensure that this type of building remains free from harm, you need all of the above mentioned things except in exchange for a llama fetus, you need to bury a live human being beneath the foundation. That’s normal, right? So apparently what the people do who take this seriously do is wander the streets at night until the find a homeless looking drunk person, give them a drink with some sort of drug in it (the Bolivian version of roofies) and throw them in the trunk of their car. They then drive them up to the construction site and toss the body in the foundation, bury them alive, and cement over the top to conceal the evidence and seal their fate. Moral of the story: don’t wander around Bolivia at night while drunk off your ass.

After learning about all of these quaint Bolivian traditions, we returned to the hostel to meet up with a few friends who are studying abroad in Chile AND my good friend Simon who had just come back from a jungle trek! (for those of you who have read my past blogs, you’ll remember that this is the guy from London who I survived a tarantula attack with – friends for life, obviously). Erin, Logan, and Rob all hail from DU as well, so seeing a few familiar faces was a nice treat.

Blame it on the Altitude

The next couple of days were spent exploring La Paz, witnessing one of the most bizarre forms of wrestling in the entire world (google “cholitas wrestling” if you’re curious and looking to further procrastinate – it won’t let you down), and trying to shove coca tea down Erin’s throat to help with her severe altitude sickness. Look at me, becoming a real Peruvian.

Death Road

After our days of rest, we set off to ride mountain bikes down the most dangerous road on earth. If you don’t believe me, take another procrastination break and google “death road bus crashes.” We left our hostel bright and early, took a bus up to the very tippy top of the Andes, and began outfitting ourselves for the descent. After donning elbow pads, knee pads, and a full face helmet, we were ready to test our luck.

One of the views from Death Road

We began by cruising through the switchbacks of the Andes Mountains on a paved highway before we got to the actual Death Road portion of our adventure.  Once we got to the death road part, we were casually informed that due to a landslide on a different road that day, Death Road (which is usually no longer used for actual cars) was open for business. So in addition to the 12,000 foot cliffs that we’d be avoiding all day, we’d also be dodging oncoming traffic! Fun!

Biking 40km down that thing was honestly probably one of the most fun things I’ve done in a long time. We went under waterfalls and through rivers, all the while flying down as quickly as our confidence would let us. One awesome thing about the company that we chose is that our guide didn’t hold back at all. (Mother advisory: Please continue at the end of the paragraph). He went as fast as he wanted, and let us go as fast as we wanted, which while maybe possibly being a wee tad of a bit dangerous, was way too fun to put into words. Rob, Logan and Alex all managed to more or less keep up with him, and surprisingly I wasn’t close behind! Every time they stopped I would pull in a few seconds later and Alex would look at me with an entirely surprised look on his face and give me a high five. He later told me that he was pretty sure I had grown a pair of balls that day… not quite sure whether to take that as a compliment or not, but I’ll roll with it.  

At the beginning of the day we were at such a high elevation that we were surrounded by clouds, but as we got lower and lower we were able to actually see the dizzying cliffs that we were biking next to -- helloooo adrenaline.  And low and behold, we all made it down in once piece! Even Erin, who probably doesn’t remember most of the day she was so sick, was a trooper and made it down without a single complaint.

After a little rest and relaxation in some hammocks at base camp, we all piled back in the bus to drive three hours home to La Paz where Alex and I had to catch a night bus to the Uyuni salt flats.

Salar de Uyuni

Paz.

After an incredibly bumpy but surprisingly restful 12 hour night bus to Uyuni, Alex, our travel buddy Patrick and I were ready to see the biggest salt flats in the world first hand. Ever since I had read about them in my little Aventuras Spanish book at DU, and before I had any clue where I was going to study abroad, I knew that I wanted to visit the salt flats someday. And now I was finally there. Look at me achieving my dreams and stuff!

To be entirely honest, words aren’t capable of describing the absolute immensity of the Salar de Uyuni. It’s similar to looking out at the ocean because of the vastness, but the fact that it’s white and sterile adds a surreal nature to it. It’s peaceful, honestly. It’s a kind of nothingness that I had never previously witnessed and being in the middle of such emptiness had a sort of calming effect. I think especially coming from Cusco and La Paz, both fairly chaotic cities, I needed that sense of spaciousness and tranquility. ‘Twas nice.

Sunset/Moonrise

The first night of our tour we slept in a hostel at the base of a (thankfully) inactive volcano. We gathered our bags from the jeep and walked into our room to find three perfectly made beds complete with Barbie and Hannah Montana REVERSIBLE bedspreads! I mean, I was pretty sold by the whole getting to see the salt flats thing, but really without those bedspreads I think I would have felt like something was missing. Truly the cherry on top of our trip. And, of course, in typical make-fun-of-Hannah fashion, the boys requested (demanded) that I sleep in the bed with Hannah Montana staring up from it with all-knowing eyes. Silly me, thinking that as soon as I left the states all jokes about Miley Cyrus would cease. Not only did I get to sleep next to her that night, but my host family likes to call me Hannah Montana as well. Seriously, all of this globalization crap has got to end. Soon.

But anyway, after the boys had made several hundred too many Hannah Montana jokes, we decided to go out to see the sunset from the edge of the salt flats. And it was incredible. Almost incredible enough to rival my bus bathroom sunset that you may have read about in my previous blog. Yeah, that good. But instead of trying to be all poetic and shit and describe it, I’m going to spare a few hundred words and a few minutes of your time. Just take a look at the picture.

Definitely worth the early wake-up.

The next morning, Alex and I got up disgustingly early to go see if the sunrise would rival the beauty of its evening counterpart. Let’s just say we weren’t disappointed. Please reference the skillfully photographed picture to the right of the page. Photo cred: yours truly. Prints will be sold for $125 apiece, and I’d really advise that you call now because I’ve already had quite a few inquiries.

During the rest of the day we chilled with some mummies, sang Puff the Magic Dragon on top of a volcano, and ate a shit ton of food, and visited an island inhabited solely by cactuses (cacti?). Day well spent.

Volvemos a La Paz

From there, we returned to the town of Uyuni to catch another night bus back to La Paz and ended up running into Claire, Morgan, and some friends who we made in La Paz. They had plans to stay another night in Bolivia, so instead of going back to Cusco to Alex I split off and went with them instead. Because I could! We ended up exploring La Paz one last time and celebrating our friend’s birthday before catching the bus home the next day.

And that was the real beauty of it all. We decided we wanted to stay another day, so we did. We wanted to visit the salt flats, so we did. It was a sort of self-assured freedom that I’m not sure I had ever experienced before that trip. We came and went as we pleased, meeting all sorts of incredible personalities along the way. For me, during that 10 day period, we were the very description of free spirits and I think once you experience that kind of spontaneity it’s even harder than usual to be pinned down to a routine. However, humans live in such a way that often times we don’t have much of a choice.

The best travel buddy a girl could ask for.

So I think what I realized during the hours and hours of time that I had to think on the buses is that it’s quite possible to compromise; it’s possible to live with a routine but also live with spontaneity. The trick, I think, is to open your mind each day to an experience that’s new to you. Even if it’s slightly uncomfortable or awkward, we truly live when we see something in a way that we’ve never seen it before.

I think that’s what makes some of the travelers I’ve met such special people. They live each day with uncertainty: not knowing where they’re going or when, but always knowing that wherever they go, they’ll find something that they’ve never before seen. Something new and special every day. And yes, of course it’s easy to get restless after experiencing such easy freedom, but with just a little extra work each one of us is

capable of experiencing it during our every day, seemingly monotonous lives. Here’s what I wrote in my journal on the bus when I first had this realization:

Welcome back to Peru!!!

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my explorations, it’s to live each day with new eyes. To make sure that even on the most mundane of days, I allow myself to see, learn, or experience something unique. To ensure that every day I’m able to understand once more what it’s like to truly feel alive.”

So my challenge to myself, and to you, is this: open your eyes. Allow yourself to see the moment that presents itself every day where you can choose to be awake. Say “yes” more times than you say “no.” CARPE DIEM, if you will.

And in other news, if you all haven’t listened to the new The Head and the Heart album, you should really get on it ahorita (that means right now). 

Chau!

Hannah