Back in the country but still recovering

Either way, I was supposed to arrive at national Airport yesterday morning. But the line between point A and point B didn't end up being as straight and smooth as I had hoped.

I left Bolivia on Friday night. The plan was: La Paz through Santa Cruz (another city in Bolivia where all American Airlines flights pass through), to Miami, then spend Saturday day and night in Miami hanging out with my friends Katrina and TJ and my beautiful goddaughter, Sophia. Then continue on home on Sunday morning from Miami.

This, however, did not quite work the way it was supposed to.

(I am not, generally, a superstitious person, however I find it appropriate to point out that I commenced travel on Friday the 13th).

Flight one: La Paz to Santa Cruz. Friday night.

The flight was delayed for two hours, so it's good that I wasn't counting on a connecting flight in Miami right away. We arrived in Santa Cruz a little after midnight, and the plan was, to drop off and pick up more passengers and continue on to Miami.

On the tarmac in Santa Cruz, we were informed that there was a mechanical problem with the plane's landing gear and they had to call in a mechanic. After periodic updates for a little while, we were asked to de-plane and await further news. Another mechanic was woken up and called in, while we lined the hallway of the Santa Cruz terminal for about two hours. At about 3:30am, we were told that the flight had been cancelled and that we should get our luggage and proceed to the check in area for hotel vouchers. By the time all of our luggage came through (including my ridiculously large painting), and we got the vouchers, it was about 6am.

We got to the hotel at 6:30, and despite thin walls (enough to hear the next door neighbor taking a shower and the gathering of dudes hanging out with some weird car alarm/horn thing that sounded like the soundtrack to something like 2001: A Space Odyssey), we were able to don earplugs and sleep for 4 hours, until we had to go back to the airport.

Flight two: Santa Cruz to Miami

Luckily this one left on time, but because of all of this mess, I obviously did not make it to Miami to spend the day with Kat and TJ and to fill my Saturday night babysitting duties. This was the most disappointing part of the trip. We got to Miami around 11, and got checked into the Airport Marriott, got some food (and much needed alcohol!) and went to bed around 1am. I could complain about how poorly stocked the plane was with beverages from Santa Cruz to Miami, but that just seems so insignificant compared to anything else. At least there were decent movies.

Flight three: Miami to DC

We woke up at 5:30 to catch an 8:30 (or so) flight from Miami. This time, the plane left on time, but did not have enough blankets for everyone who wanted one. Luckily, my co-worker, with whom I was sharing this unfortunate adventure, had snagged one for me from someone else's seat before everyone had boarded.

Baggage Claim adventure DCA.

I should point out that this entire time, we had been hauling our luggage (which included 4 checked pieces, of which one was my oversized painting and one was my overweight rolling suitcase, for which I paid a total of $144 dollars additional just to get on the plane) to and from every airport and hotel we set foot in. Everything had successfully made it out of Bolivia. But somewhere between Miami and DC, my painting was lost. I travel enough that this was not the first time luggage had been lost/delayed/misplaced/whatever, but it was the most expensive piece that had ever been lost.

Luckily by Sunday night, it had apparently been located and was scheduled for delivery. Though it's Monday at 3pm and I'm still waiting. Though I talked to the delivery guy who assured me it woudl come maybe around 7pm tonight.

I wasn't planning on taking the whole day off today, but after trying to sleep in unsuccessfully and looking around at the disaster area that is my apartment, and realizing I had no clean clothes to wear to work and no food to eat, I decided it was worth taking a day to recover. I'm sure at some point in the future I will be able to look back at this experience and laugh, but I'm not there yet.

But at least I can breathe and not get winded walking up flights of stairs. And I just went on a produce buying binge at Whole Foods. And I'm in my comfy and familiar apartment, even if it does have crap lying all over, half unpacked. And I'm not at work. So life's not all bad. But I'll be much happier when my painting arrives.

Winter is here!

People kept telling me that it was going to be really cold when I was here, but up until this weekend, it hadn't been too bad. Last night it started to drizzle, and the temps went down pretty low. From the window of the apartment this morning, you could see white at teh higher altitudes. One of my co-workers just came in and told me that flights have been canceled because they got about 15 cm of snow in El Alto and they don't have any snow removing equipment. It's supposed to be rainy like this til Wednesday I think, so I will keep my fingers crossed that my flights don't get changed any for Friday night.

Taking full advantage of my last weekend...

It’s Sunday and I have had a very full weekend, which is good because it’s my last weekend here. Here’s the run down of activities…

Friday night: Destination: Peña Marka Tambo

Peñas are best described (by Lonely Planet, of course) as traditional Folk Music venues, but they can definitely come to resemble variety shows of sorts. We met a former staff member and his wife and son at the Peña Marka Tambo which is on Calle Jaen, a really pretty and well-preserved colonial street near the Plaza Murillo. I didn’t stay until the end, but got a good cross-section of the entertainment. First there was a woman with a guitar who sang some traditional folk songs. She had an amazing voice and was a brilliant guitarist. Interspersed were some numbers by a folk dance troupe, which was also pretty interesting. Then there was a guy who was a (very funny) comedian, who seemed to be pretty well known by the audience. I left with a colleague before the headliner – Pepe Murillo – which was too bad, but it was already late and we were exhausted. Maybe next time.

Saturday: Destination: Tiahuanaco

Tiahuanaco is still considered to be a very important Aymara religious ceremonial center. It’s about 1 ½ hours drive from La Paz. We basically hired a taxi to drive us there, wait, and then drive us home. Not a bad deal. The ruins themselves aren’t as impressive as I had thought, but after the fact, someone told me that it is much better seen with a guide, because the history you get with a guide makes it much more interesting. I can see how that would be the case. I think the most impressive thing about the ruins was the size of some of the rocks that were used to carve figures and gateways. One of these pieces, the Gateway of the Sun, is said to weigh at least 44 tons. That’s a lot of rock to be hauling around. As in the case of most pre-Columbian ruins I have seen, the engineering that went into building these structures seems pretty amazing and advanced. You can see pictures on my flickr page, and hopefully in the next day or two I can upload them to the kodakgallery page for those of you who prefer that.

Saturday night: Destination: Mongo's Bar.

I joined our administrative assistant and her best friend to go to Mongo's, which is known as a big ex-pat hang-out, which is probably why I didn't like it too much. The bar itself is cool. The music is eclectic (when have you ever been in a bar that played J-Jo, Pink Floyd, and that song by the bloodhound gang about "you and me baby, we ain't nothin' but mammals so let'd do it like they do on the discovery channel..." not to mention endless trance-euro-techno stuff all in the same night?), but the crowd just seemed like an odd mix of people, and not as friendly a feel as other places I've been to. But it was definitely a popular place to go.

Sunday: Elizabeth (colleague) and I went to have an american style breakfast at Alexander's coffee shop and now I'm back at the apartment getting ready to do some work. This afternoon we will take a break and go with another colleague to hang out in the Zona Sur. Not that I need another shopping opportunity, but there's a big market there on the weekends apparently. Looks like the Fighting Cholitas won't happen this trip. Too bad, but I think I have fit in a good amount of activities to tide me over for a while.

Local Art, of the snooty variety

I bought the most expensive souvenir I have ever purchased for myself today.

I bought art.

This art was meant to be mine. I saw this painting on the wall in the Maya MacLean Casa in San Miguel seven months ago when I was here. I contemplated buying it. I even had a dream about it. I went back to see it again, but the price tag was speaking too loudly to me at that point.

To an art connoisseur – which I am not – this painting might be unimpressive. I believe it’s an oil painting, thickly coated with brilliant reds, yellows and oranges. It’s maybe about 5x5ft. big. It’s by a Bolivian artist who was trained in the US named Keiko Gonzales.

But when I found out I was coming back to Bolivia, I thought about this shop and I thought, if that painting is still there, I should buy it.

And there it was...

I didn’t have to buy it. I certainly would have survived without it. It was an investment that will cut back my food budget for the next few months (which is okay. I need to lose some weight anyway!).

But I have a big blank white wall in my apartment that has been screaming for a piece of art to be hung for many, many months, and it will make my little home feel a little more complete. And it will remind me of a place I have visited. And no one will have the same piece of art in their house, anywhere. All those reasons are good enough for me.

Now the big question is, how am I going to get it home...

Happy Fourth of July

Wish I were there eating burgers and hot dogs and potato salad and beans, etc... with everyone. But alas, here I am at work, while you guys are all probably preparing to go to picnics or the pool, or you are still asleep, or getting ready for fireworks. Poor me. ;-)

Enjoy the festivities today!

If you are an ex-pat like me (at least currently), I hope you are having a lovely day at the office!

12 hours to see a bunch of salt

Over the weekend, I traveled through the southern Altiplano (highlands) to Uyuni. This is what the Lonely Planet guide has to say about this area:

“Stretching southward from La Paz to the Chilean and Argentine frontiers is a harsh, sparsely populated wilderness of scrubby windswept basins, lonely peaks, and almost lifeless salt deserts. …The moment the sun sets – or even passes behind a cloud – you’ll realize this air has teeth… Those who live on the Altiplano are among the world’s hardiest souls, existing on the edge of human endurance…. They deserve a great deal of respect for their accomplishments.”

I personally feel like I, too, deserve a great deal of respect for going there and surviving for just a weekend. To get to Uyuni, one travels 3 ½ hours in bus from La Paz to Oruro. Then it’s a further 7 hours in a dusty and cold train to Uyuni. The miserableness of the train travel was compounded by the fact that the DVD player (or maybe DVDs?) were not fully functional, so during the trip, I watched from ½ to ¾ of three different movies, dubbed in Spanish, none of which I would have ever bothered to watch in the US. I sat next to a slightly melancholy Italian woman who seemed to think her blend of some Spanish and mostly Italian was enough to have a variety of small conversations with me during the trip. She meant well. I smiled and nodded a lot.

I was met at the train station by someone from one of the various travel agencies that arranged this trip (as a team, I guess), and taken to the hotel. He showed me to my room and turned on the “heater.” The heater didn’t do much, and the hotel was made from adobe (mud walls, basically), and it was very, very cold. Let me describe how cold it was. I had three blankets on my bed, which I doubled because it was a queen or full sized bed. I also wore to bed my pants, my running lycra pants under them, two pairs of socks, alpaca wool leg warmers, a long sleeved tee shirt, two sweaters, my hat, and earmuffs. Oh, and my scarf and gloves. I managed to sleep okay.

I mucked around in town for about an hour or so before the day trip to the Salar (salt flats) left and bought a few souvenirs. I ended up on a tour with a very nice group of people: a Swiss packpacker traveling alone, a very cute Canadian couple, and a mom and daughter team of Brazilians, the daughter being a theater actress living in Sucre and mom being a visitor. All very nice.

Our first stop was the Train Graveyard. Interesting, but not much of a story behind it. Then we drove to the small town that’s right at the entrance to the Salar. I did my fair share of supporting the local economy, based almost entirely on salt and alpaca products. Then we drove out to the flats. It was very cool. I mean, yes, in a temperature sense, but also in a sense of being really neat, awe-inspiring, other-worldly. For as far as the eye could see, it was white. We stopped in a few places on the flats and then drove to Isla Incahuasi or Isla de los Pescadores – Island of the Fisherman. It’s literally an island (one of several dozen) that was left behind when the salt water sea evaporated into the flats, and managed to sustain life in the form of mostly cacti and other scrubby, desert plants. The rock formations on the island were actually coral at one point when the area was covered in water. We hiked around on the island for a while and then started driving back, stopping a few more places along the way.

At that point, I was feeling like the trip had been worthwhile.

We got back to Uyuni around 6, and I made plans to meet the Canadian couple for dinner at 7. We found our way to Minuteman Pizza, inexplicably good pizza, inexplicably owned by a dude from Amhert, Massachusetts. Then we, along with another Canadian couple, went to the Arco Iris restaurant/pub for a drink or two before we all went our separate ways and I headed to the train station around 11pm to catch my midnight train back to Oruro.

The train was even colder than the hotel. The conductor handed out blankets. I was wearing the same amount of layers that I had worn the night before, except this time I was wearing an additional alpaca wool hat that I had purchased, along with three pairs of legwarmers (one pair on my legs, one pair on my feet and one pair on my arms). I did not sleep at all. We got to Oruro and luckily I didn’t have long to wait til the bus came. But with the bus came another bad American movie dubbed into Spanish that only worked until about 2/3 of the way through when a cable seemed to become disconnected, and no one bothered to tell the driver to do something about it.

I got home around noon on Sunday, took the hottest shower I could possibly stand, and slept for 4 hours. I felt like a new woman after that.

So the to and fro were horrible and uncomfortable, but hopefully the pictures speak for themselves about how incredible this place was once I actually got there. Definitely a unique experience that I will probably not have again. But, if the chance does come up, I’ll be bringing a sleeping bag. No doubt about it.