Saying Goodbye

I wasn't there in 1970 when Vaclav Havel was banned as a writer for his circulation of a petition of 10 points against Soviet politics.

I wasn't there in 1977 when Havel was jailed for nearly five years for his leadership in the Charter 77 organization that called for human rights guaranteed under the Helsinki Accords.

I wasn't there in 1989 when Havel helped orchestrate the Velvet Revolution with hundreds of thousands of Czechs taking to the streets to overturn Communist rule.

And I wasn't there in 1992 when he became the first president of the independent Czech Republic.

But on December 23, 2011, my last day of my European vacation, I was here in Prague. And even though, I missed all the critical events that made up the life of this influential man, I knew I couldn't sit out of his historic farewell.

So like thousands of Czechs, I headed to the Prague Castle at noon to stand outside of the gates to bear witness to his state funeral. The funeral mass was held inside the St. Vitus Cathedral, where the audience was limited to family, members of the ministry, and international political dignitaries, such as French president Nicolas Sarkozy, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, and the Clintons. However, organizers hung huge screens outside the castle walls to project for the people the entire service.

In some ways my experience of the funeral may have been more limited than my American friends who watched from home. They too had access to the same projections, and their versions probably came with subtitles. But standing there in the frigid morning air with all of those people offered an emotional perspective that TV can't capture.

I'm talking about the way the crowd remained silent and un-clapped after the speech given by Havel's political rival, and current president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus. It was the tears that streamed down people's faces as Karel Schwarzenberg spoke of Havel's belief that truth and love would always prevail. It was the spontaneous ringing of keys that erupted out of the crowd at the end of the funeral, re-enacting a 1989 revolution tradition.

Now there are those who say that Havel was a revolutionary and artist before a politician. There are those close to him who believed an exclusive state funeral was the exact opposite of what he would have wanted. And those people organized a different memorial event that night, to which my friend managed to get us tickets.

Held at the Lucerna Palace, a movie theater built by Havel's own grandfather, young people and old gathered to listen to bands on three stages from 8pm to midnight, in an ebullient celebration of a life. Artists who performed included dissident bands from the 1980s whose freedom to perform Havel fought for as well as famous artists from around the world (there was a particularly moving singalong to Suzanne Vega's a-cappella version of Tom's Diner).

We sang. We danced. We said goodbye.

A Tale of Two Museums

At the risk of becoming wildly unpopular, I have to admit that I kind of hate museums (with a few small exceptions). I've tried to like them. I swear, I have. Almost every person I have admired who is smart, interesting, and well-rounded has put "going to museums" on the list of their likes. I'm not sure if there is anyone out there who wants to love museums as much as I do. But I've coming to terms with the fact that I find them disconnected, sterile, and a bit boring, really.

But in Berlin, visiting museums is almost a non-negotiable. The city has been at the center of two horrifically oppressive times, and for those who live there, and for all of us on the outside, there is a need to make sense of those atrocities. There is need to understand the reason for the loss of so many lives.

So in one day, I visited two museums: Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the Mauer Museum at Checkpoint Charlie.



The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the first of the two I visited, is less of museum than a experience. To find the entrance, I had to work my way through the Field of Stelae, which is made up of 2711 concrete blocks that were erected to commemorate the Jewish lives lost in the Holocaust. Once inside, the museum ushers you through eight different rooms - revealing eight different ways of making the horrors that were inflicted on the Jews real, tangible and present for the visitor. It starts with a timeline that offers a big picture view of the main events that made up the national socialist terror policy between 1933 and 1945, but then all of the rooms that followed gave meaning to those facts.

I read the personal diaries and letters from victims,unable to know the future, navigating through changing laws, forced migration to the ghettos, rumors of concentration campus. I looked at genealogies of full, healthy families, ripped apart by the Holocaust. I heard the names of murdered and missing Jews from all over Europe. And I listened to the stories of survivors as they recounted each brutality they had to suffer.

It was intimate, and personal, and devastatingly emotional - an absolutely exceptional museum.

And then I went to the second museum...


I believe that the intent of the Mauer Museum was to document the cruelty of the Berlin Wall, memorialize those who died trying to escape East Berlin for West Berlin via Checkpoint Charlie, and highlight the successful attempts made to escape Communism.

In actuality, it was a jumbled, disjointed, incoherent, haphazard collection of stuff from the time period (and other time periods) translated into four different languages. Sure, there were parts that I enjoyed. Mostly, it was learning about escape techniques - the triumph of human ingenuity over oppression: cars with secret hiding spots in the trunk, tunnels that were dug, hot air balloons that went into flight, persons hidden between surf boards.

But finding those stories was like digging through my grandmother's attic, passing over objects unable to speak their memories for the tidbits that somehow already made sense to me.

BERLIN

I woke up this morning and took a five hour train ride to Berlin. The whole ride, I felt a little bit like I was in the first scene of Cabaret, sitting in my compartment with the ticket agents periodically coming in and asking me for my tickets in non-nonsense German. Of course, instead of sharing my space with a gregarious German who wanted to show me all around town, I was across from a sullen backpacker who typed away on his Apple computer the whole time.

But none of that mattered when I actually got to Berlin. Berlin! From the moment, I stepped in the train station, I knew that this is the type of city that can only be spoken about with exclamation points. Outside of New York, I have not been in a place before that pulsated like this. It is a kaleidoscope of cultures and languages and just plain stuff happening.

A walk down Oranienstrasse presented a bevy of stimulating things to see from quirky shops, hip bars & clubs, dynamic modern building, and cozy little coffee shops.

Now I would be completely shallow to not mention that a lot of what is thrilling about Berlin is due to its complicated and devastating history. Multiculturalism stemmed out of years of occupation by various countries. The sleek, jaw-dropping architecture grew out of a need to rebuild post-war.

But Berlin is not a city that hides from its past. It looks it square in the face and keeps on moving on.

Architecture

It's no secret that I am no architecture whiz.

In a city like Prague, that offers a dazzling array of architectural delights, this lack of skill is a major handicap. Sure, I can easily suss out the difference between Soviet architecture and everything else, but other than that I'm a bit at a loss.

This is what I do know.

The old town of Prague is like a sketch stolen out of a fairy tale. I can't tell you what century the cute shops and homes were built in, what era the Prague Castle or the Charles Bridge hail from, but when I think of "once upon of time," this is the setting that I imagine.

I also know that films like Amadeus and others that depict early days in Vienna or Berlin are often filmed in Prague as the city has managed to preserve its most historic creations through years of war and modernization.



I know that the new town of Prague has breathtaking examples of art nouveau and art deco architecture. As well as some post-modern buildings, like the Dancing House by starchitect Frank Gehry.

And when I went to the symphony this evening to hear the Czech Christmas Mass, even though I didn't have the vocabulary to talk about it, I was swept away by the grand staircases, the high arched ceilings, the matted drawings on the wall, and the general Old World glamour of it all.

Slices of Life

Today was my first exploration into the city of Prague. Here are a few impressions that stood out to me.

*Prague is an incredibly homogenous society. And yet, not a single person stared at me.

*Czechs, on average, are larger than me. Thus, door knobs were often too high; doors too heavy.

*Christmas markets are lovely outdoor activities. Yes, they sell cheesy gifts that I would never buy but they also have festive decorations and serve hot wine and roasted chestnuts (actual roasted chestnuts!)

*People of Prague believe that beer helps with digestion. I have no scientific evidence to prove or disprove this, so in the interim I had my fair share of samplings over the week.

*Public transport system is somewhat baffling to me. From what I can tell, it is mainly based on the honor system.

*Pickled camembert cheese is considered pub grub. Seriously.

End of an Era

Sitting in a restaurant in a small South Bohemian town, my friend looks down at the phone. A text message has come through: Vaclav Havel died.

Fragmented memories flood my mind, but I can't piece together a coherent image of the man. I read this New York Times article to help connect the dots.

A dissident. A playwright. A movie-maker. The first president of the Czech Republic. The moral leader of a people coming out of occupation.

I look up at my friend, and while I realize what for me is an impressive biography of a fully lived life, for all those around me, it was bigger than that. It was the death of their Kennedy. It was an end of an era.

We jumped back in the car and drove the two hours to Prague. Back in the capital, we went to the places that made sense: the places where the people of Prague gather in times of trouble and joy; the places that are the soul of the country.

At both Wenceslas Square and the Prague Castle, images of Havel were on display. Flags were at half mast or swapped out with black cloth. Air was cold but thick with grief. I stood at the fringes of the monuments, an outsider to this collective mourning. And I watched as person after person came up to light up a candle for the man who gave light to so many others.

La Vie Boheme

Taking advantage of the weekend (and my friend's car) we decided to spend my second day outside of the city. We headed to an area of the Czech Republic called Bohemia, which is dotted with small, quaint towns, built around a town square.

I had first imagined that all of the towns in Bohemia would be artistic and hippie-ish, like tons of mini-versions of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. In my mind, this was the only plausible explanation of why we refer to hippies as "bohemians" and that the big dance number in Rent was "La Vie Boheme."

So I was a little more than surprised when we arrived in the first town of Tabor and its main attractions were a church, a castle and an analog clock that displayed the full 24 hours. Certainly interesting, but not the mecca of creativity I expected.

As it turns out,the real deal behind Bohemia's rep is much more complicated. Tabor and some of its neighboring cities in the 15th Century were strongholds for a radical religious movement that was a departure from Catholicism that pre-dated even Lutherism. This put Bohemia at odds with the Catholic monarchy that was ruling in Prague. The king, realizing his weakness in being able to rule the areas outside of Prague, decided to disempower Bohemia by playing what amounts to a massive practical joke.

You see, the Romas (commonly known as gypsies in the States), are a nomadic group of people who have strong connections to dance and song. Knowing that Romas were a disliked group within Europe (who have historically suffered discrimination), the king used his legislative power to issue Romas travel papers indicating that they were from Bohemia.

In this way, he created a PR nightmare for the people of Bohemia. From then, and apparently for centuries afterward, everyone came to associate the people of Bohemia with gypsies.

The Tourist Paradox

As an avid tourist, I always struggle with the same goal whenever I step out of the U.S.: what can I do here that doesn't make me feel like a tourist?

We all understand that there are two types of things to do in any given place. The things that tourists do and the things that locals do. Tourist activities include, going to museums, eating at over-priced and underwhelming restaurants, bartering for kitsch that you don't need, and of course, hanging out with other tourists.

Now figuring out what locals do is a little more elusive. You can thumb through the fine print of the latest edition of the Lonely Planet or grab a local nightlife daily , but generally this is a hopeless endeavor. The real way to get on the inside is to visit a local, and even then that has some major pitfalls.

My first night in Prague was luckily an immediate walk to the inside of local culture. A dear friend picked me up at the airport and we quickly readied ourselves for a Christmas party. I mean, you can't get any more local than a house party. Side-stepping the packed city center and all of its beautiful, breath-taking attractions, we went to the outskirts of town - the suburbs if you will.

Except the suburbs of Prague aren't like the suburbs in the States. They were created when the population of Prague doubled under Communism. So while the city center feels like a romantic European city, the outskirts are a heavy, hulking reminder that this place was once under Soviet control. The soul-less housing project is made up of several high-rise buildings that are identically built with incredibly functional and fully uninteresting cookie-cutter layouts inside. The type of construction where the sound of your heel echoes through the building and the walls are eerily cold and drab.

There was, however, a lot more warmth inside the apartment of this friend of a friends. They had splashed the walls with brilliant colors and decorated with IKEA-ish furniture trying to counteract the very nature of the apartment architecture itself. They filled my glass first with mulled wine (and later with mead), as it was a Christmas party after all. A variety of savoury and sweet snacks littered the table, my favorite being a puff pastry filled with sauerkraut and blue cheese. The apartment was also filled with American blues music - as with this being the second week of December - the guests had already overdosed on traditional Christmas fare.

So there I was, really doing it. First day out and I was in a decidedly non-tourist position. An early success!

But wait, the night had just begun. And the tragedy of the tourist paradox came to light: I don't speak any Czech, nor do I know anything about Czech pop culture. I sat silently for a bit, awkwardly smiling while I had no idea what was going on in the party conversations. Occasionally, someone would take pity on me and ask a few questions about my plans in Prague in halting English. This was usually followed by a generous recommendation - how about I visit so-and-so tourist attraction while I'm here. It can't be missed.

Final Day

Today was my final day in La Paz, and my main plan was to have my first actual Bolivian meal.

After my friend conferred with her Bolivian boyfriend for potential eateries, they came to the unfortunate conclusion that vegetarian Bolivian food was basically just a bowl of rice.

Sadly, due to the altitude in La Paz, the rice is notoriously bad. Another French meal, it is!

I must give the Bolivians some credit though. They beat out the Paraguayans in veg options. The best Paraguay could do was chirpa, but that only counts if one chooses to ignore that one main ingredient is pig fat. Bolivia at least offers empanadas with cheese fillings. But vegetarians be forewarned: the cheese is pretty raw and pungent in the region. As my friends and I like to say, it tastes like it`s straight from the teat.

Border Crossings

I woke up in Argentina, had to ride across the country of Paraguay (stopping in Caagenzhu to pick up my luggage), and wind up back in Bolivia by the end of the day.

What seemed like a insane agenda, turned into an interesting people-watching exercise. You learn a whole lot about a country when you take multiple buses to ride from one end of it another.

Here's what I've got:

There are two main types of buses in Paraguay. The first are fancy schmancy Coach-style buses for long-distance travel; they recline easily and have built-in footrests, but require you to suffer through a lot of Paraguayan music. The second type are local buses that have harder and stiffer seats, but the positive trade-off is no music. Unlike Bolivia, neither of these buses have assigned seating, so they are subject to overcrowding at times and many people standing in the aisles.

When a bus driver shakes his finger at you, he's not admonishing you like a small child. It's just the Paraguayan equivalent of shaking your head to say "no." As in, "no, this bus will not stop at the airport."

Buses that have different routes may be assigned the same bus number. Also, buses may go off their assigned routes to try to pick up additional fares. Both of these practices are confusing.

There are many ways to say "hello." To a stranger, particularly a young one, a thumbs-up sign will suffice. Between female acquaintainces, one kiss on each cheeks. Between male acquaintances, a handshake. Between males and females, the female decides: if she doesn't lean in for the kiss, it's a handshake all the way.

A wide variety of people will enter the bus, speaking various amalgamations of Spanish and Guarani (the indigenous Paraguayan language). 20-something women wearing all spandex outfits a la Paraguayan pop stars. Blond-hair youth who are possibly part of the Mennonite population or are children of Germans who fled after WWII. Indigenous children, leaving their make-shift homes of tarps and sticks, in search of food and opportunities in larger cities. Older women selling chirpa (in a bagel shape instead of the corn dog shape) up and down the aisles, while salespeople of both sexes may try to sell items like necklaces and combs that one can easily get at a local store (and yet, they seem to make a killing on these items anyway).

The bicentennial for Paraguay was a big deal. Looking out the window, town after town displays proudly the national colors. In some towns, trees are painted white with red and blue ribbon wrapped around.

Caution should be exercised when exiting the bus. Full stops are not guaranteed.

The Fall(s)

The U.S. government warns against travel to Ciudad Del Este, the second largest city in Paraguay. The main concern is that this city, which lies at the meeting point of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina, may be a safe haven for Al Quaeda due to the porous borders between the three countries.

Ironically, it was exactly because of these porous borders that it became necessary that I travel there. You see, Paraguay used to be home to one of the most incredible waterfalls in the world - Igauzu Falls. This was back in the day when Paraguay was a major political and economic player in South America and had the hubris to take on both Brazil and Argentina in wars. Paraguay lost in the end, and with that defeat, came the devastating loss of the falls (not to mention a dimished status in the region).

It is said that now the falls are best seen from Brazil and experienced from Argentina. The problem for this American traveler is that there is a $200 visa requirement to visit Brazil, and while there is no visa required for Argentina, I would need a multiple entry visa to get back into Paraguay. I, of course, had only a single entry.

Therefore, I had to get a bit creative about how I crossed the border, which is what brought me to Ciudad Del Este.

From Ciudad Del Este, one can grab a bus that drives through Brazil-without stopping at any checkpoints- and into Argentina, where one's passport gets stamped at the border. On the way out, one's passport gets stamped at Argentina again and then the bus goes through Brazil and into Paraguay without any additional security measures.

This seemed like a perfect solution, right?

On the way in, everything went according to plan. The travel time was long - more than 4 hours from Caaguazú - but even just getting a glimpse of the falls was worth the hassle. The falls extend far beyond the lens of any layman's camera. It is miles of water gushing over a precipice into what can most accurately described as a green isle encased in fog. But really, it seemed more like a scene cut out from a page of some fairy tale, especially when at one point a rainbow appeared, completing the picture that had already felt like magic.



Drunk from the spectacle, I wanted to see more. As the park was closing, I jumped over "closed signs," climbed under chain-linked barriers, ran under water-drenched canopies, to take in the view from ever-different angles. Eventually a run-in with a park ranger, put a stop to this Indiana Jonesing, and I had to resign myself to going back to Paraguay.



I was told the bus ran every 40 minutes with the last bus to Ciudad Del Este leaving at 7pm, and so when I arrived at the bus stop a few minutes before six, I thought I was making pretty good time. It wasn't until somewhere between 6:15 and 6:30 that I became worried. Questioning the other people waiting for buses did not ease my concern; the general consensus was that the last bus left for Paraguay at 5pm. By 6:45, I was forced to believe them.

I began weighing my other options. Option A: I could take a bus to Brazil and walk across the border. Fail: Putting myself between two countries in which I didn't have proper documentation didn't seem like the best idea. Option B: I could take a cab across the Paraguyan border. Fail: I would most definitely get stopped at the border, and I was not confident enough in my sweet talking skills to get through. Option C: I could stay overnight in Argentina and take the first bus out in the morning.

Option C was not ideal. The next day, I had to catch a 5pm flight out of Asuncion (approx 8 hours from Ciudad Del Este), which I hadn't actually purchased a ticket for yet.

Looking at the options, I knew there was only one thing I could do. But with withering hope, I stood at the sad little bus stop until 7, singing to myself, "Don't cry for me Argentina..."

Do It Yourself

During my time in Paraguay, I am based mostly out of Caaguazú, a mid-sized city of about 63,000 people, where the wood industry dominates. In large cities, it is easy to let the excitement of the crowds, the various restaurants, activities and attraction sweep you away as you devise complicated agendas to make sure that you don't miss a thing.

In places like Caaguazu, you have to develop a more do-it-yourself attitude.

Two of my favorite things to do is practice yoga and dance. Both of which are tricky to do in Caaguazu. Before moving on, let me be clear about the context, Caaguazu is not like the urban areas you might typically imagine - there are no skyscrapers, or building over three stories really; there are few traffic lights and paved roads; chickens, stray dogs and other animals wander about; and while it's big enough that you don't know every person who passes by, it's small enough that you say hola (or tranquilo) to everyone anyway.

Yoga was surprisingly easy to find. My friend passed a sign several weeks ago that advertised yoga/pilates classes. The big questions were: who in Caaguazu would actually attend a yoga class and where would this teacher have come from in the first place?

The answer to the first question was immediately apparent. No one yet attends these classes in Caaguazu. Even though my friend and I showed up at the completely wrong time for class (due a slight mis-remembering mistake on our end), the teacher was so excited to have people in attendance, she offered to just have the class for the two of us anyway.

As for the teacher, now what she lacked in actual skill in teaching yoga, she made up for in enthusiasm. She was a small, round, older woman with small squinty eyes and a big smile. In Spanish, she would exclaim "how beautiful," "so flexible!," "so strong!," as she would offer us a patchwork of poses in no apparent order that she may not have seen real people actually embody before that moment. At the end, this tiny woman, who could have been my grandma, had us come to sit and led us in a closing three OMs. Neither of us expected, the guttural sound that escaped from this woman's body. It had a passion, volume and earnestness to it that filled up the entire room, rocking us out of the moment and despite our best efforts, into fits of laughter.

With the yoga class as a minor success under our belts, we moved on to dancing. We knew for a fact that there was not a club or dance hall open in Caaguazu during the week, so we went with the next best alternative. We hosted a dance party in my friend's house. With a "if you build it, they will come" attitude, I spent the rest of the day blowing up balloons and making decorations, while he spread the word to foreign volunteers, his English students, and even the people whole worked at the chipa store.

By 9pm, we had a motley crew gathered for a mix of Paraguayan and American music. Early on a party-goer mentioned that when it comes to dancing, Parguay isn't really a Latin country. As we lined up, boys across from girls, and began doing the two-step, I fully understood what she meant.

A Sketch of Paraguay

This may seem like a no-brainer, but Paraguay is definitely not Bolivia.



Even though Paraguay can boast having the first railway in South America and being the biggest exporter of beef to Argentina and Brazil, it doesn't really have any tourist attractions to speak of.

Not like having a robust tourist industry is a must-have for a country. It's just that what I write here about my time in Paraguay will be less about what I do and more about what I experience. Because in the next five days, I doubt anything monumental will happen but instead there will be a series of small observations and seemingly unmemorable moments, which when pieced together will create a panoramic picture of what I will forever know to be Paraguay.

Here are a few snippets to start:
1. If you're black, you will be stared at. Most likely people will think you're Brazilian. Sadly, my Portuguese is worse than my Spanish.

2. Even in big cities, you can have small town moments. Like walking to the corner store for chipa (a food sort of like the crust of the corn dog sans the hot dog), and sitting outside with the shopkeepers, helping them roll the dough onto long wooden rods and place them over the charcoal to cook until they are crispy on the outside and warm and doughy on the inside.

3. The best variety of Paraguayan takeout food can be found at supermarkets. Much like at Whole Foods, you load your selections onto a plate and are charged by the pound. Unlike Whole Foods, most of the salads use mayonnaise as its dressing and at the end of line is a microwave in case you need a little nuke.

4. The signature Paraguayan drink is terere. It's made by putting tea leaves in a special mug that has a strainer to hold the leaves and a built-in straw to reach the liquid below. Cold water is poured over the leaves and the first sip goes to Saint Thomas (which is to say, the cup is placed at an empty setting and everyone waits a few moments before serving continues). Then going clockwise from the host, or the youngest family member, a person is offered the cup and sips until it is empty. The host then refills the cup and passes it to the next person in the circle, serving himself/herself last. During this whole process, I only thought about Hepatitis B once.

Race and Politics

People have written whole books - dedicated their entire careers - to the issue of race and politics in Bolivia. The interplay between the two is so complex and has such a long history that I can't possibly do it justice here. And yet, I can't not write about it, because even being here for only a week, I can see how it's so visceral in the day-to-day life of Bolivians.

Here's the short story. There's a thinly-veiled rivalry between La Paz and Santa Cruz- the highlands and the lowlands. La Paz is the legislative center of the country and the largest city in the highlands. The people who live there are short, dark-skinned and mainly indigenous. Santa Cruz is the economic powerhouse of the country and is the largest city in the lowlands. The people who live there are paler, taller and mainly part of a white elite. Ask someone from La Paz and they will probably tell you that people in Santa Cruz are racist and less cosmopolitan. Ask someone from Santa Cruz and they will probably tell you that people in La Paz are backwards and uneducated.

The longer story (to the best of my understanding): For about 400 years, Bolivia was ruled by a small white elite. Even though the government is located in La Paz, those who lived in the mostly white Santa Cruz had enough political clout ito get money and resouces funneled to the then 30,000 person city. Somehow in the 1990s, the population as well as the economic capacity of Santa Cruz exploded and now the city totals 3 million, including some people from the highlands who have moved down there to take advantage of the economic growth.

Fast forward ten years, and in the early 2000s, a strong political movement arousefrom the indigenous majority of Bolivia (totaling more than 80% of the population) about their lack of representation in government. They fought back against their history of white, elitist rule, and in 2005, celebrated a serious victory by electing Bolivia's first indigenous president.

And that's when things got complicated. Santa Cruz suddenly felt like they had their legs cut out from under them. With a non-white president based in La Paz, they argued that the interests of the lowlands were not being fully considered by the government. They started lobbying for regional autonomy, arguing that the size of the region and its economic import necessitated local rule (the most extreme fringes of the party even talked about cessation from Bolivia). In attempts to curry more support for their cause, the Santa Cruz political machine pit indigenous groups against each other- pointing out that the president and the new migrants from the highlands taking local jobs did not look like the same as the lowland indigenous people.

How will these divisions among regions and race resolve themselves? Well that's anyone's guess. But in the present, it affects almost every conversation you have with Bolivians. Even ones that seem as innocous as: where else should I visit while I'm here?

A Layover in Santa Cruz

It takes about 2 and 1/2 hours to get to Ascuncion in Paraguay from La Paz. However, due to the various flight schedules, it's impossible to get from one city to the other without having a long layover in either Santa Cruz or Cochabamba. Given that I have a friend in Santa Cruz, I decided to have my 7 hour wait there and take advantage of the opportunity to explore a new place.

My friend studies public participation in the budgeting process in local governments in Bolivia and Venezuela. He had a few meetings in the morning, but we made plans to and have lunch around 11am, which left me three hours in the early morning to walk around on my own.

I meandered around the city center for a bit, taking in the scenery. Santa Cruz is notably different from La Paz. Flatter, hotter, more humid. I began shedding layers from my La Paz standard outfit. First losing the zip-up hoodie and scarf. Then the long-sleeved t-shirt. Finally, I rolled up the bottoms of my jeans. It was the kind of humidity that reminded me of summers in New Jersey - the pressure cooker heat that will eventually give way to a merciful downpour.

Overheated and sweaty, I stopped to take a breather in the Plaza de 24 Septiembre with the many Bolivians who were resting on benches, chatting with friends, or playing chess against new and old opponents. As I sat, I saw a group of people congregate. It started with a few but quickly grew larger. Maybe to about a hundred bodies. A hundred bodies holding signs and chanting. They walked around the border of the Plaza but soon turned down the street 24 de Septiembre toward what I would later find out was the Mayor's office. I didn't think much of it at first. In fact, I got up and popped into a call center to confirm my plans with my friend.

When I walked out of the call center, I immediately saw the uniformed men. All with higlighter yellow vests over their black clothes, helmets on their heads with clear visors attached to protect their faces. They held their guns closely to their bodies and jogged in unison in the direction that the protestors had marched just 10 minutes before.

No one in the plaza seemed to notice when the first shots were fired. Their dispositions were so calm - their routines so unchanged - I doubted that I had heard them myself. Maybe it was a car backfiring. Or firecrackers for some Bolivian holiday that I had no knowledge of.

But then the cars on 24 de Septiembre started reversing. Cars backtracking one or two blocks so as to turn off this main street. The shouts got louder. The sound of shots got rounder and more hollow. And all of a sudden the sky opened up, and it began to rain.

I retreated, with many of the other Plaza dwellers, to an awning nearby a church. The rain muted the voices and blinded me from the nearby protest. The air took on this earthy smell, like the familar scent of my hometown in June. Except this clearly wasn't home. And I really didn't know what was going on or what I was supposed to do.
So I stood there. And waited. Waited for my friend as if we could still simply just have lunch.

A Vacation From My Vacation

I just came back from two days in Coroico, a small mountain town three hours outside of La Paz. On the ride there, my ears popped as it was the first time since being here that I have descended below 3400 meters.

A major plus to a lower altitude was much warmer weather and the ability to see other living things that depend on oxygen again, like birds and squirrels (and less fortunately, mosquitoes and gnats).



We stayed at a cute eco-lodge called Sol y Luna. We sat by the pool, hiked, practiced yoga, read novels. A nice getaway before the more basic leg of my trip.

Salar de Uyani

Do you know that moment, when you're standing at the edge of a beach and you look out into the ocean as far as you can see and the water just seems to stretch out into infinity?

Now imagine that every drop of that water receded, that somehow it got sucked up from the Earth, and all that remained to prove it was ever there was a bed of salt that it left behind.

That, in a nutshell, is the Salar: a sea turned into a desert of salt.



When we started the tour in Uyani, seven strangers and a driver, it was all fun in games. We left the ghost town to explore the first Bolivian railway. In a way that would never happen in the US because it would be considered a liability, we climbed in, on top of and around the abandoned railway cars, snapping pictures the whole time.




That playful mood continued when we got back in the jeep, but slowly winded down as we got closer to the Salar. It was like the Earth was flat and we had just driven to the end of it. In all directions, it was a complete white out.



While the long view, seemed static, the upclose view was more robust. In some areas the salt was in mounds, drying out under the sun before the locals could scoop it up and bring it to town to sell. In other areas, the salt arranged itself to form strange hexagonal shapes. At times , the salt looked like small balls of snow skating across ice. At other times, it looked like ground up cornmeal. There was even a hotel made completely of salt: tables and chairs carved out of it, the floor mainly a dusting of the mineral.



And, of course, no desert would be complete without an oasis. And it was like a mirage that this small island of cacti emerged from the completely white scenery. It had apparently been an Incan prayer ground, with the cacti dating back more than a thousand years.

Excursion to Uyani (Or, Reasons Why I Hate Tours)

Traveling Rule # 31: If six tour operators tell you something is not possible, but then the seventh one tells you it is possible, chances are the seventh one is lying.

Even though I hate tours, I decided to book one to the Salar de Uyani, Bolivia's famous salt flats. A tour is preferable because in order to visit the Salar you need a heavy-duty jeep and intense navigational knowledge. Besides, I only need to be told once that it is not uncommon for locals to enter the Salar, get lost, and never be found again to hand over my bolivianos to a guide.

Two days was my ideal tour length (one day was too short; three days bumped up against my flight to Paraguay). The tour operators I first encountered told me it was impossible to do two days due to recent rainfall and that I could only book a one-day or a three-day tour.

Well... I am not a girl who easily takes "no" for an answer, so I continued on from tour shop to tour shop until I met a man who said that two-day tour would not be a problem. The plan was that I would board an 8pm bus in La Paz, arrive at 7am the next morning in Uyani and the tour guide would pick me up at the bus station for the tour.
Fast forward to 7:30 pm that night. I am at the bus station gate and go to hand the bus operator my ticket when he passes me a phone. A phone call? For me? Oh yes, it's the tour operator I booked with. He says that a two-day tour is impossible; he can only do one day or three days.

I could have killed him.

At this point, it's 30 minutes before my bus leaves, and I am fresh out of options. So I agree to the one day tour, but I am not happy about it. The bus was underbooked, so I grumpily laid out as best I could across two seats, placed the sleeping bag under my head as a buffer against the bumpy road, threw an Alpaca blanket over me and did my best to sleep for the next 11 hours.

We reached Uyani at pretty much the same time as daylight. The bus driver pulls to a stop, and it might have been my terrible Spanish, but I think he tells us that we can't leave the bus until our tour operators come to get us. Suddenly, I feel less like a consumer of a tour and mor e like a prisoner of war.

My tour operator finally comes and calls my name. And like I've won the lottery , I gather up all of my things and hustle out of the bus. The morning is hazy; it is frigid outside; and the streets look so bare that if I would have had to guess, I would have said no one had lived in that town for 20 years. I look to my "guide" and instead of walking me to the tour office, he hastily gives me walking directions.




I walk these five blocks alone, pack on my back, my down jacket zipped all the way up, feeling like the main character in a post-apocalyptic novel. And I can't help but think to myself...yeah...i'm going to need to get my money back once I return to La Paz.

One hour task = 1/2 day

I remember someone once telling me that when you travel to India, you have to plan your days differently. That instead of expecting to complete a long list of tasks, maybe your task list would consist of just one thing, and maybe that one thing was "eating lunch."

Now, that was never my experience in India. La Paz, on the other hand...

I woke up this morning knowing that I wanted to buy a ticket to Paraguay and book a tour to the salt fields of Uyuni in Bolivia. I figured I'd spend the rest of the day shopping or visiting museums or relaxing.

My friend and I left the house at 10am and by 2:15pm, we'd only managed to cross two things off our to-do list (well, really, one and half as I could only successfully get a one-way ticket to Paraguay).

Here are some of the barriers to getting things done in Bolivia.

Protests: It's hard to go a week without their being a protest in Bolivia. I think this week I've already seen two. The protests tend to be around real issues that affect real people - the price of sugar and oil, rights for miners and indigenous peoples. The problem is, so far as I can tell, is that many of the protests are reactive with no clear overall vision for change. So while a compromise might be brokered in the short-term, there is nothing to prevent the government from similar actions next week or next month. Anyway, the numerous protests cause streets to be blocked off and lead to the next major problem.

The traffic: The traffic in Bolivia is no pretty thing, and the multiple traffic circles around the city don't help much either. Apparently, pedestrians used to be a bit terrorized as they tried to use the zebra crossings (aka crosswalks, for all the Americans out there).This has eased a little due to the work by a non-profit that hires at-risk youth to dress up in zebra costumes and dance in the crosswalks during red lights. It's an entertaining reminder to drivers that this is the time to let others use the crosswalk.

A general lack of urgency: So people from the northeast of the US are notorious for being a toe-tapping, quick-moving bunch, and in my experience, we find that pretty much everyone else in the world moves too slowly for us. So I am willing to admit that my perceptions are very much colored by what I am used to back home. That being said, I saw more than one eye-brow raised when I requested a tour that left tonight for the salt fields (as if, I wasn't at a travel agent in the most touristy place in the city and they didn't get requests like this all of the time). We had about six travel agents tell us that it couldn't be done until...well...it became clear that it could be.

Isla del Sol

When I know I am going on a hike, there are a few basic things that I would make sure that I had: two bottle of water, thick hiking socks, a hiking partner or at least a cell phone, a map and something energizing to eat.

The trick about yesterday was that I didn't realize I was going on a hike, and so had packed with me...none of those things. My pack consisted of two half-filled bottles of carbonated beverages that I hadn't finished because I thought they tasted like metallic, ankle socks, a cell phone with no charge, a sketch of the island from my guidebook, and four granola bars.

Disaster.


How'd I get here? Let's rewind a bit. To get to Isla del Sol, you have to take a one and half hour boat ride from Copacabana, which leaves only twice a day: at 8:00 am and 1:30 pm. On route to Copacabana, I had met two English-speaking, middle-aged Bolivian men, who I couldn't quite decide whether they were kind old guys taking pity on the American girl with broken Spanish or hardened criminals ready to rob then murder me at any minute (hey, you can take the girl out of Newark...).

Anyway, with only one route to Isla del Sol, I couldn't lose these guys. We had lunch together (fresh trout from Lake Titicaca), took the ferry to Isla del Sol together, hiked to the peak of the mountain together, got neighboring rooms in the same hostel together, had dinner together. You get the drift.



(In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit here, that if I didn't slightly suspect that this was an elaborate scam to take advantage of an American tourist, my time with the Bolivians would have been wholly pleasant. These men told me stories about ancient Incas, like how the Isla del Sol was predominately inhabited by men and Isla del luna - which was about an hour away - was populated by woman, and archeologists still can't quite figure out how Incas traveled between them. They also told me about how the sorry Bolivian soccer team managed to topple the mighty Argentinians because it was a home game and at this altitude the opposing team literally ran out of breath. They also told me of how they both lived illegally in New York for years and how they cried on September 11th when they saw the towers fall.)

Despite how interesting and kind these men seemed, I had to ditch them. So I got up around 7am the next morning (which wasn't so hard given that now that I am older I have developed more sophisticated fears of sleeping in hostels...bed bugs, fleas, lice), checked out, and decided to take what I thought was a gingerly 2 hour walk across the island and then grab the 10:30 ferry back to Copacabana.



The trail was clearly visible, but because it was so early, the only people on it were me and farmers herding either mules, sheep, and in one instance, wild hogs. At first I enjoyed the quiet of the walk. The stillness and expansiveness of the blue waters, the sounds of the rocks under my feet, the stunning view of the Cordilla Real in the background. But as I walked I realized that I was getting farther and farther away from the docks where the ferries were. Being the map-less optimist that I am, I thought that if I continued forward there might be some shortcut that looped me back to the docks. And maybe there was. But as I got very near to what appeared to be the most northern tip of the island, I was chased off the trail by a small pack of yapping stray dogs.

To make, an already long story short, I ended up at the docks at around noon, parched, tired, and hungry, with blistered feet and four hours of waiting time till the next ferry. But as I laid on the sun-soaked grass and looked out across the waters, I can't say that I wasn't happy.

The Road to Lake Titicaca

I have to be honest, I wasn't pumped about going to Lake Titicaca. It's listed as a must-see in most Bolivian (and Peruvian) guidebooks, but I couldn't really figure out what the big deal was. It's just a lake, right?

But after two days of city living, I was easily convinced that a trip to the lake and then a night on the island of Isla del Sol would satisfy the taste of the outdoors that I needed. With the help of my trusted taxi driver, Arturo, at 8am I boarded a mini-bus for the 4 hour journey to Copacabana, the closest city to the lake.

The most important thing to know about the road to Lake Titicaca is that there is a huge body of water that falls right in the middle of it. For some, this would seem like a difficult obstacle. They might drive around the body of water adding hours to the trip, or maybe some industrious organization or government department would build a bridge to link the capital city to this important site. But no, a entirely different system has been rigged up.

All four wheel transport stops at the edge of the strait and the passengers disembark to buy a modestly-priced ticket to be ferried across the river by one of the many 16-20 person boats docked there. Then the cars, vans, buses, or whatever, are then precariously perched onto these large floating wooden flats, which are slowly pulled across the water.

On the ferry, you are able to easily spot your mode of transport (most likely still holding your backpack and other large valuables in it), teetering along. Cap-sizing is not an uncommon occurrence.

To make matters a bit worse, apparently if anyone is to fall into this body of water, none of the fisherman will jump in to save you. Its perceived as an offering to the river god. Which I must admit, is one thing I wish I hadn't read in the guidebook before going on this trip.

La Paz

From up above, La Paz is a beautiful city. It looks like it was dropped into a giant punch bowl, except that punch bowl is made up of dramatic red mountains. At the edge of the mountains, your eyes can take in the full energy and expanse of the capital.

But down on the ground,it's a bit harder to make sense of La Paz with its windy roads, traffic-filled streets, and unmemorable architecture.



While I may struggle with where I am, I am always clear on who I am with. Outfits are very telling.

There are the professionals in business suits nearly sprinting towards work.

Police in green uniforms that remind me of 1960s TV series like I dream of Jeanie or Wonder Woman. The policemen in laced up commando boots, the policewomen in high heels, both heavily armed.

The kids - at the least ones you see in the late afternoon - are all in school uniforms, and the men hunched over with the baseball caps on their heads and the ski masks over their faces are just protecting themselves from the chemicals they use to shine residents' shoes.

There are the tourists, of course, most hailing from Nordic countries or Israel. The newly arrived (and ill-prepared for Bolivian nights) are wearing shorts and flip flops, while the more seasoned sport these draw-stringed stripped pants, which are sold cheaply at numerous local shops but I have never seen a local wear.

The indigenous women swish through the streets with their long, bright, bell-shaped skirts. To keep warm, they wear socks up to to their knees, and have a knitted triangle shaped shawl (most likely made of alpaca), draped over their shoulders and pinned in the front. The outfit is made complete by a derby-style hat that sits a bit bit tilted ontop their heads.

But I'd say the overwhelming majority have on some sort of casual wear, consisting of fitted, stone-washed jeans, converse sneakers, and cropped jackets.

And what about me, you ask? Well I managed to break my purse on day one, and so I couldn't look any more American walking around with my fanny pack buckled around my waist.

Planning for the Day

Now that I have acclimated a bit to the altitiude, I can put behind me the Garfield-style vacation (sleep, eat, sleep eat...). Both of my friends are off to work for most of the morning, which leaves me on my own to spend the next six or so hours as I want. Planning my day is one of my favorite things to do on vacation. It's always a bit of challenge in finding the balance between having some sort of destination but the freedom to change directions if I unexpectedly disover something far more interesting. Then there's figuring out the things that I normally do - that are so habitual that I don't even think about them anymore - that I will have to adjust because I can't really do them in this new environment. For example:

Taking it slow: It is obvious to me that I won't be running around trying to hit site after site today as the act of inhaling is hard enough at the moment. Also, forget practicing yoga today or going for a short hike; I got winded when I got up to go the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Figuring out the map, fast: I'm usually a bit casual about directions. I'm not overly concerned about getting lost. In my opinion, if I get a little bit off track, I'll have the opportunity to see something new and then can grab a taxi and have them figure out how to get me home. However, last night at dinner, there was a lot of talk about a series of taxi kidnappings.: people held hostage for days being forced to take out their daily limit from the ATM each day; women gang raped; and most horrifyingly, a woman who had her insulin pump stolen from inside her body. I'm packing two maps for the day.

Wearing every article of clothing that I packed at all times: I was aware that it was winter in Bolivia, but it being so close to the equator,I figured it couldn't get much colder than 60 degrees. What is kind of right during the day, but at these elevations the air holds no heat when the sun isn't out. So my jacket, scarf and long underwear aren't really just in case items anymore but are instead a featured part of both my daytime and night-time attire.

Remembering not to throw the toilet paper in the toilet: Putting toilet paper in the toilet has been a big no-no in every South American country I've visited. Most of the times it doesn't flush, which is a good thing, because the alternative is that it does and gets stuck in the pipes clogging up the whole system. And yet, I seem to have trouble holding this information in my mind. To avoid being the worst houseguest ever, I've already staged two MacGyver-like rescues of the soggy wads of paper and placed them appropriately in the garbage receptacle that can be reliably found next to all household and public toilets. This, of course, has been followed up by the most rigorous handwashing regimen that the world has ever seen.

Winded

When I saw the pretty blonde girl sprawled on the floor of the customs area of the Bolivian airport, I should have realized that I might have a problem. She laid there, her head propped up with a rolled up sweatshirt, her knees pulled in closely to her chest. Her boyfriend, or at least that's who I assumed he was, looked a bit more dignified - he managed to maintain a seated position with his hiking boots pushed firmly into the floor and had the capabilities of actually filling out the various forms needed to officially enter in Bolivia.

These were the signs of classic altitude sickness. La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia, is at the highest elevation of any capital in the world. And for those not used to the thin air, the oxygen deprivation can have pretty extreme effects: loss of balance, splitting headaches, fainting, tingling in the extremeties, drowsiness, inability to sleep, lucid dreams, nausea.

But I thought I was too hearty of a traveler for all that. I had been to both Peru and Ecuador and the main side effects I experienced was a need to take it slower as a hiked up to even higher elevations. But I dutifully took the precautionary measures: I popped an altitude sickness pill, drank a week's worth of water in about 2 hours, consumed some cacao tea (a local remedy to help adjust to the altitude), and even took a nap between my plane landing and lunch.

So when the headache started mid-afternoon, I was caught a bit off guard. It began with a feeling like a mild head cold. And then I realized that I was having trouble following lunch conversation (granted I was eating lunch with three Americans who were deeply immersed in Bolivian politics and so even on my best days, I would have had trouble keeping track of the roster of names that came rolling off their tongues). By the time the food arrived, the dull fog in my brain became a searing headache - like something deep in the core of my mind was doubling in size by the second and was ready to bust out of my skull.

I closed my eyes, and my lunchmates noted that my color wasn't so good. When I got up to stand, I had to admit to myself - and others- that I felt awful. My friends walked me back to the apartment where I am staying. One of them - a tall, friend from college- gave me his arm to hold onto as we walked. And like the good friend he is, he sweetly massaged my damaged ego, by retelling all of his fainting stories.