If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?

Hello probably no one. This post is the tree falling in the forest of the internet, which no one will read because I've been incredibly negligent of this blog. I'm sorry. But this is a last ditch effort to post something because if everything goes according to *my* plan, and I manage to fight through Bolivian bureaucracy, I should be out of home internet within the next few hours. No worries though, I'll still check the net about 2 times a day by going to internet places, but I wont be uploading pictures so this is my chance.

So... What happened in the last, what, month and half or two months since I wrote a blog? Well, lots and nothing, as usual. The big thing that happened is that mom and Jacques came to visit for two weeks from October 20th to November 3rd. I was in charge of planning this trip which had to include a few must-sees from Bolivia and Peru. They took all the pictures but my mom sent me a few that I'll post although they might not all illustrate my narrative here...

One thing about coming here to visit is that you lose a bunch of days adjusting the the altitude and generally feeling like crap. And crap-feeling time was spent in La Paz. Then we went to Tiwanaku where the weirdest thing happened. In that village where there is usually no tourists whatsoever staying in the bunch of hotels available, we got there and everything was booked! There was a sculpture festival of some sort happening and all the sculptors had taken the rooms. But never fear, this is my town. I got a hold of Doña Delia and I got us to stay in the house where I usually stay while living in Tiwanaku! Not quite as plush and cosy as the hotel I had planned to put my parents in, but at least it was giving them a taste of my regular life here. Turns out, to my extreme surprise, that house is super warm in the spring!!! I couldn't believe it! I woke up in the middle of the night and walked about in my boxer shorts and t-shirt and felt totally fine. Usually it's close to freezing when I live there. And squatting at Doña Delia's house allowed my parents to have another taste of what my life is here usually: I got Aurora to cook quinua cakes for us! It's my favorite food that our cook (Aurora) makes! So it all turned out fine and apparently I gained some cred in Jacques' eyes by seeing the "conditions" in which I usually live in. I wish everyone could see it then so that people would stop thinking I get "vacations" just because I leave Montreal for months at a time to go to a different country...

Ok, after Tiwanaku, we got to go to Copacabana, a beautiful small town right by Lake Titicaca which is the spot to catch a boat and visit the Island of the Sun (an important place for Inka mythology). Only Jacques got to visit the Island because mom got sick that night and morning so I stayed with her. It's not like I wont get another chance to visit it, while Jacques wont do the trip another time. Instead I stayed at our nice hotel and read in the sun. That was great, and I payed for it later. Contrary to my belief, I *can* get sunburns. Must be getting old... Here's a picture of me and mom sitting at the hotel. In the background you can see a bit of the lake.
After Copacabana, the hellish portion of the trip started. It is a given that you can't go to the Andes without experiencing some sort of unplanable problems, likely related to political unrest. Our problem was that the road from Copacabana to Cuzco was blocked by protesters, and it's not like there's lots of detour roads in the middle of this gigantic mountain chain. We had to take a detour that transformed our supposedly 9 hour bus ride into a 21 hour bus ride... Thankfully, most of it happened at night so we couldn't see where the bus was going because once the sun got up I saw we were on tiny dirt roads transformed into mud because it was raining hard all night all on the edges of mountains with no safeguards on the side of the road to keep the gigantic bus from tumbling down... But we made it, and got to Cuzco and our super cozy and beautiful hotel.The hotel was a block away from Cuzco's main plaza (that you can see in this picture) and made it really easy for us to visit the historic (and pre-historic?) part of Cuzco. Cuzco was the Inka capital and a lot of its most important monuments have been integrated into the Spanish architecture which means you see Inka walls everywhere although you can't really see what the actual building looked like in Inka times. I love Cuzco. It feels like you are walking in hundreds of years of history, most likely because you are actually walking in hundreds of years of history...

Now, if you want to see actual Inka structures you have to leave the city, or go to its outskirts. First stop was Sacsayhuaman, the "Fortress" that isn't one. It's overlooking Cuzco and has GIGANTIC walls with some stones higher than me, and that's where the Inkas retreated to fight off the Spanish so it was thought by the Spanish to be a fortress. But it most likely wasn't. It was more a place of ritual, when the Inkas weren't under attack. Here's me and mom trying to look past century-ish in sepia tones in one of the many doorways of Sacsayhuaman.
We also toured the Sacred Valley where there are lots of old Inka domains you can visit, the most famous one being Machu Picchu. I had never visited the Sacred Valley before, in my last visit I went straight from Cuzco to Machu Picchu. The valley is beautiful and there are lots of amazing sites to visit. I may not have planned enough time to do them all though. My bad. We first stopped at Pisac which I knew was my supervisor's favorite Inka site so I was excited to visit it. What I did not know is that to visit it you needed to walk on narrow paths flanking the mountain with no hand rails to stop you from falling if you tripped. And my mom is terrified of heights. So that proved to be a bit challenging... Here's a picture of us on one of the trails.
Pisac is indeed beautiful, I have no pictures right now of the actual site, but basically you go through these paths and then suddenly you have a bunch of structures to visit, then you continue on the winding roads and hit another bunch of dwellings and such. But we were mostly focused on bringing my mom through it without her having a meltdown. She was a trooper though, and soldiered on even though it was clear she was terrified. I'm glad to report that in a conversation after that she did say that given the opportunity she would do it again and this time focus a bit more on what's around instead of mostly focussing on getting through it. That's what happens when you face your fears (and survive it, tee hee hee!), you realize that it wasn't so bad after all.

After this 2 hour walk through the site, we hopped back into our taxi and continued toward the town of Ollantaytambo. Again, I have no pictures of the town but it is AMAZING. Sadly we were tired from the Pisac adventure so we didn't explore as much as we would have liked to. Part of the town are still actual Inka streets, and there's water canals running through them. It kinda gives a glimpse of what regular folks living under the Inka rule lived like. And there's ruins of a bigger settlement that you can visit but again it flanks a mountain and we were too tired to climb. We did visit everything that was at our level though, which included fountains and just pretty ruins. We slept in a really nice cosy hotel there, right in the train station. There was a huge avocado tree right in front of our room, which made me crave avocadoes but none fell off... boo... We woke up at dawn and hopped on the train to Machu Picchu.

When we got there it was all foggy making it look kinda creepy and outerworldly.
Machu Picchu is huge and rather incredible too. And thankfully doesn't involve tiny paths over ravines. But sometimes, even though there's a wall, you are at the edge of a really steep fall. Mom had to look up, while I dared to look down (even though I do have a fear of heights, though I'm doing better since living in the Andes).
After our visit to Machu Picchu, we took the train back down to Cuzco where we arrived in a bizarre procession... No pictures again, but it made me giggle with glee as I love to randomly stumble upon weird things you'd never see in Canada. Here's what we saw trying to get to our hotel, oh and I should mention this was Halloween: although it was past 9pm, there was tons of kids in costumes, then tons of people all looking at a procession with a giant statue of... the Virgen?... and loud marching bands. Ok, it doesn't sound too crazy when I write this down, but the frenzied crowd and weird colors and lights were quite eery. Why would the Virgen need to come out on Halloween anyway?

So that's it. We relaxed and walked around Cuzco some more the rest of the time, and I splurged on a plane ticket home because I was not about to face the blockades again!

Since then, life has been rather boring. I analyse all day, and lately I've been trying to tie loose ends, and prepare for my departure. I need to do stuff like cut the internet service, pay the rent for the months I wont be there (which is a bitch with the canadian dollar going doooooown - my rent is in US$), stuff like that. And worry about the mountain of bones left to analyse. Summer is definitely here though, which is weird and nice. I don't need a coat out, and usually I'm colder in the apartment than outside so I need to take off some layers before going out. Most of the time it's really sunny and the sun doesn't go down before 7pm so that helps to keep motivated to do analysis - no darkness to make you feel tired. Sometimes though there are these incredible storms with wind, hail, and thunder and lightning. But they never last for long. Ok, when I'm left talking about the weather, I think it means I ran out of things to say and should go do something else.

Sorry for the late post folks!

Land of the grey

Sorry I haven't written in so long, but I've really felt I had nothing to report... Like my title suggests, everything's been kinda grey - but that's not all bad. Case in point, look at that picture from last night!

That's kinda how my life feels right now. A bit on the boring side, I do school work all day, grocery shop, pay the bills. But then again, I do all of that in Bolivia and there's always something interesting popping up (whenever I leave my pretty dungeon) in all the grey, like that pretty rainbow. Look! I'm a poet!

The last few weeks have been really quiet on all fronts. Politically, there seems to be nothing happening. La Paz is still quiet, there are still negotiations that one day are good, the other day bad. It's politics. In Spanish. I can't understand most of it, so I just stay on the look out for huge protests and so far that's been quiet. So, it's been grey. Can't rejoice in finally having peace, but can't really be worried about war. I have been chatting some with local people here who give me their opinion. One lady doing my nails was going on and on about how awesome Vladimir Putin is and how Bolivia and Evo should court him because he's a man of the people and he "looks so good"... I decided not to mention the whole case of Georgia, among others. Anyways, she was mentionning him because of the whole "kicking the US ambassador out" situation. She was quite happy with that. She wants a revolution, but I can't say she really knows what that would entail. On the other hand, the lady at the photocopy place was telling me all about how people in Santa Cruz are so much nicer and warmer than here... She was telling me about how lots of people, particularly business owners, think the referendum was rigged in La Paz because there's no way Evo would have gotten that high of a percentage, especially not in Zona Sur, the rich area of La Paz. I chatted for about 20 minutes with her, and I don't want to repeat everything she said, but it was the first time I met someone opposed to Evo here and it was definitely enlightening. Other than the "people being nicer in Santa Cruz" - she really meant like they say hi to you, not in any overtly racist way - she had good reasons to be against Evo that didn't sound like "we just want to keep our riches".

My daily life is really the most grey of it all, accompanied by the beginning of the rainy season. Looking at bones all day is just dull. I know it's my job, but can all of you say you love every morning waking up and working? So, this is how I feel too. I wish I could go out everyday and walk around and chat with people and buy stuff. But I can't. I have bones to look at. And it's not easy.

I do have social occasions once in a while. Last weekend I went to my friend Dennise's wedding. I was really excited to go to my first Bolivian wedding, but guess what? It's just like a North American wedding. The bride was beautiful and wore white, they got married in church (a catholic wedding which means I could "almost" remember what to say when but it was in spanish so that was an added difficulty), and then we went to the reception in a beautiful social club type of place. I didn't bring my bulky camera so I have no photos for now but my friends should send me theirs soon. One difference is that the food happen after the dancing. Or anyways, the reception was: waiting for bride and groom, montage of their life together (with fake pictures of Leo with the Dalai Lama and Dennise with George Clooney - I'm ashamed to say I was all impressed Leo had met the Dalai Lama...), their arrival followed immediately with their first dance (on Lady in Red), a huge number of toasts, then dancing. THEN, at 10:30pm they started serving the food. Then more dancing. Then cake. And... dancing. People here dance a lot. Everyone. It's quite pleasant actually. So that was one of the rainbow.

Another one will have to go in a next post, but basically, I found out Doña Delia (whose house we rent in Tiwanaku) has a knitting machine. Then found a place where they sell alpaca wool for cheap (comparatively to Canadian prices) in tons of beautiful colors. I got her to make me a shawl, hat, and cut gloves. I'll take pictures soon to show you.

Well, that saved me from looking at bones for about an hour. I should go look at them now...

A bit closer to home, literally

In my last post, I mentioned that La Paz was all nice and quiet even though Bolivia is facing a "political situation". Well today I got to be a little more into the action. As I went grocery shopping, I suddenly realised that right on the other side of the street was a demonstration blocking the street. I went on, wanting to be away from it as all consular memos tell you to. But as I came back from the grocery store about 45 minutes later (thinking they had moved on) I realised that they had only moved about 20 meters, to be on a dead stop in front of my building. They stopped because, right in front of my building, was about 30 cops from the riot police with the big shields. It's not quite a fun sight to see. But I have to say it was really peaceful. The people marching were mostly Aymaras asking for justice for the Pando massacre of a few days ago, but they didn't seem angry, just peacefully marching. And they spread out quickly without a fuss. Nonetheless, after being bombarded with bleak news stories about where Bolivia could be headed, it was a bit disconcerting to see this in front of my home. As an aside, I met a friend of mine at the grocery store who gave me an invitation to her wedding October 4th. It was really weird to hear myself say, totally seriously "Of course I'll go! Well, unless there's a civil war by then" and she answered, "Yeah, I don't think there will be one. I hope not, that would ruin the wedding". I think everyone is rather optimistic that this can be resolved through mediation and talks, which started yesterday and are apparently fruitful. But you only need one idiot to go kill someone and restart hostilities and I believe the proverbial shit will hit the fan... Anyways, I'm rather optimist too, but know that I also am preparing an exit strategy "just in case".

on the political side...

I realize that my posts are of a more personal nature. That's the point of this blog, give friends and family some news and pictures while I'm away for a long time. However, in the slight case that you guys have heard about Bolivia in the news recently (and not just about the US ambassador being kicked out), I guess I should address the recent political developments. There has been increasing violence and conflict in Bolivia, especially in the last week. All of this is happening in the eastern parts of the country where there are movements for autonomy of these provinces. So on a personal note, there is almost no repercussions here. As usual, I hear the noise of people marching outside for one reason or another (that's almost everyday here, and I kinda like to see that people aren't afraid to take the streets for their demands) so I'm assuming that lately it might be some pro-Evo rallies in this time of conflict. I live in Evo's stronghold, and he just received a huge 66% approval rate in the country, so democracy is on his side for now. One problem that could eventually affect me directly is that protesters in the south are blowing up natural gas pipelines or blocking gas transport so there will be (and apparently is right now) a gas shortage even in La Paz. But that doesn't worry me too much. All it will do is make me eat lots of sandwiches because I have a gas stove.

What is more worrisome for the future is if the conflict escalate further instead of running out of steam... It could potentially maybe lead to some sort of civil war. I think the leaders on both camps want to avoid that though, so it's just a matter of controlling the mobs. This obviously isn't a fun prospect, and quite frankly, I am not equipped to fully understand the situation and explaining it to you. Luckily, if you're interested in understanding it further like I am, there are great blogs available like http://gringotambo.wordpress.com/ and http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/index.htm . This is how I get my information about the whole situation. It is well contextualised so you don't need to have lived here for years to understand the ramifications of certain developments (I feel like I'm reading a "fill in the blanks" when I read local newspapers).

Happy (?) reading!

Update: the gringo tambo blog posted the link to this really interesting interview that discusses clearly and simply what are the issues in Bolivia. It's a great introductory course on Bolivia!

Bolivia is weird

As I'm writing here, I am being serenaded very loudly by Mariachis. I'm in my room, they are somewhere outside with microphones and speakers... I actually really enjoy the randomness of this! If they're still playing around midnight I might have to get violent.

This tops a really funny weird day for me. Not really that weird given I've been here often, but still. Today I went back to Tiwanaku because it was the opening of a weekend long festival (the most important one for Tiwanaku given the solstice is a national holiday rather than a local one), in honor of the Señor de la exaltacion which is another name for Jesus. Here he is, pretty similar to regular Jesus:

I went there alone assuming I would know some people. First people I knew I finally encountered were two Bolivian archaeologists that work within the site. However, they looked slightly different than usual...
In typical Tiwanaku fashion, the "entrada" (people dancing and making an entrance I guess) started 3 hours late, which meant I missed most of it. I wanted to leave around 5pm to make sure I could find a bus back and wouldn't be in La Paz too late. I did forget to pack some food and most of what was being sold was "street food" which isn't always to the peak of cleanliness standards. Although I never heard of "listeriose" here... Plus they don't give you cutlery so you have to eat with your hands.

I was going there mostly to see one of my favorite person in the world, our cook Aurora, dancing. Turns out her "help" Eli who has been working with us for two years and is a sweetheart was dancing too! And luckily, they were among the first groups to dance so I actually saw them before leaving. I figured I should introduce them to you since they are so important to me, my belly, and my expanded figure (I'm now going to the gym and eating less because what I cook isn't as good so none of you will see me in the expanded state). Although I wondering if I did post pictures of them before, and I can't go check right now. Anyways, they're good pictures too.

Here is Aurora:
And here's Eli:
On a side note, the mariachis are still playing...

Oh, and as far as introduction goes, I thought I should post a picture of Tiwanaku's mayor because I was shocked the first time I saw her. First of all, it's a "her". Second of all, I think she's my age. She's dressed up in the blue cholita outfit to the far left (although last time I saw her she was wearing jeans so she usually doesn't dress as a cholita). She was signing papers right before doing her walkabout in the plaza.As you may have noticed, I'm a bit tired and don't have much to say. I sort of prefer showing pictures right now, so I think I'll just end with a medley of weird pictures...

For that last picture, I just liked that it was written "coqueto" on the back of their costumes. I'm not sure what it means in spanish, but in french, coquet would be someone who's really careful about their appearances, on a vain and slightly effeminate tangent... Update: after talking with Machi and Tony, sounds like coqueto means pretty much the same thing in spanish although you need to add "flirty" to the list.

And speaking of liking their appearance. This guy asked me to take a picture of him. And he's pimp.

I love Bolivia! Did you know that?

I realize that my last three posts were focused on Peru, and really, given that my life is in Bolivia, I really should talk more about it, especially about La Paz. Well turns out that today I have a real genuine happy love for this country because it once again surprised me in an awesome way. This morning, as I was leaving the gym next to my house to go grocery shopping (at 8:30am, not to brag or anything), I saw that there was yet again some big commotion in the park at the corner. Last week was a huge festival with musicians on a stage for the "get your pet vaccinated" campaign. There has been some pro-Evo parties there too, and a Bolivian comic book fair. This time, it was a huge, gigantic, awesome farmer's market. As I'm going grocery shopping! One lady explained to me that they are commissioned by ... not sure... the government? the city? ... to go in different plazas and sell their really fresh produce at a lower price than the local markets. And they have everything there. I saw a lady selling brussel sprouts (not that I would buy any, but its rare here), there was a couple of fish stands and chicken ones, I bought fresh altiplano eggs (therefore not factory farms), olives, an eggplant, cereals. I swear they have everything there. I understand that it might not sound that awesome to some of you, but it's the surprise and spontaneity of it all that makes it awesome. You get to chat with the ladies, see the whole neighborhood and their dog (literally) shop around, there are toys for kids (although that's always there). It's just so festive as you are about to go do some boring errands like grocery shopping. Anyways, I just got there for the second time today, and this time I had a camera.

This first photo is a general view of the park, but most importantly, you can see my building in the background: it's the second one to the right of the picture, with some orangy brownish colors on it.
The second picture is of the carrousel (which is always there) and a few stalls with ladies selling stuff. Bear in mind that this place was really crowded, and I had my hands full of green onions, eggs, and avocadoes so I had to find a quiet, non-crowded place to put my stuff down and get my expensive camera out. I couldn't just whip it out in the middle of the action because that would be dumb and asking for trouble, so the photos are never quite as busy as they should be...

Here's a baby apparently selling a mountain of garlic (or is it onions?)

So there you have it, a slice of life in La Paz. Since we are on the subject of my life in La Paz, I figured I'd post a few pictures of our appartment, now that it is lived in and all.

Here's my messy room, although I did select the angle to show the less messy side... on the right of the picture, out of frame, is a huge pile of laundry:
Here's our living room with pretty flowers bought by Mary yesterday:
As for news, well first, most of you probably know that Wes left Bolivia last tuesday, leaving me here all aloooooooone for the next 4 months. And by alone I mean surrounded by friends, but you know, I like to be melodramatic. He told me to tell bye to people on the blog, not that any of his friends were ever warned this existed (not that I'm bitter) and my friends will, hopefully, continue to read it. But anyways, Wes says bye.

Also in the news, I am finally in the process of closing up the house and the lab in Tiwanaku and move my analysis to La Paz! I can't wait. Daily showers, access to the gym, internet whenever I want to, and surprise markets in the park. The big move is tuesday night. Then, the living room will look different because I'm bringing back another work table and a bookshelf so I'll guess this picture I just posted will be obsolete. Oups. Sorry.

And an update on the weather, it is now actually hot here. Not heat wave hot, but hot. T-shirt hot in the afternoon. When we got back from Arequipa and went to Tiwanaku, it actually snowed for two days... I'll wait while you laugh... ok? But Cesar and Delia, the couple who own the house we live in, told us it was good news because that meant that the cold was gone and the summer was starting soon. Kinda like when the groundhog sees (or doesn't see?) its shadow. We obviously didn't believe it as we were being attacked by snowflakes, but see? Two weeks later and it's really hot, even in Tiwanaku! It feels a little like spring in Montreal.

On that note, I'll leave to go have fun in the sun. Those of you in Montreal, please take care of my Wesley for me!

Nevermind, I'll tell you anyway...

I'm a little bummed out that no one tried to write funny captions to my pictures, but I'll go with the assumption that some of you at least tried to figure out what's what in your head.

The first picture is the "laundry room" of the nuns who have lived in the Santa Catalina convent, in Arequipa, since around 1540. The convent is one of the biggest attraction of Arequipa, in part because it is sooooo huge! It has 5 streets in it, with apartments that belonged to the daughters of some of the richest families of Spain and New Spain. Women were sent there with dowries that would be the equivalent of up to 50 000$ nowadays. They had servants that lived with them, but were cloistered from the rest of the world. The laundry room consists of a stream that you have to block with your hand for the water to rise and be funneled into those huge ceramic vessels cut in half. We heard a guide say that they would block the draining hole with carrots wrapped in fabric. Kinda funny. The rest of the convent is really beautiful and interesting. You get to walk in history pretty much. Like most south american architecture, it mostly consists of rooms around patios such as the one on our new profile picture and this one:
Here's a picture of the streets within the walled monastery:


The whole downtown area of Arequipa is a UNESCO protected site because it is all preserved colonial architecture. It is obviously beautiful. It is known as the "white city" because a lot of the building are built with sillar, a volcanic rock that is white. The whole Plaza de Armas is made of building of that material. The cathedral in the plaza the armas is the building behind Jonah's head in the second picture. Here's a clearer picture of it:


It is in that cathedral that we have encountered the devil. Yes, the devil is in the church, being crushed by the pulpit. That's picture number 3. Jonah and I were trying to make faces pretending to be scared of the devil, but to be honest, at least I wasn't faking it that much. That sculpture is great and really, really creepy.

Another good point about Arequipa, other than the architecture, is the weather. For people who have seen snow about a month ago, to be able to tan your legs is the most amazing feeling! And the surrounding landscape is beautiful. Basically you are warm and surrounded by palm trees, yet you can see snow peeked mountains and volcanoes in the distance. Here's the view from the roof of the monastery:

I don't have tons of stories to tell about our trip there because we mostly walked around, and drank beer and sangria on rooftop terraces. It was so great, I can't even tell you. We did take a little side trip to colder mountain areas to go see the Canyon del Colca. I had been there years before and knew it was worth a trip and feeling a little cold. Basically, it is a canyon in the mountain ranges nearby that is almost completely terraced. Terracing is the way most Andean people managed to improve agriculture in steep mountain environment by basically flattening one area and putting a buttress wall at the end so you end up having what looks like a giant staircase rather than a hill. Here's a picture of lots of terracing in the Canyon, I hope a picture explains it better than the rambling I wrote:


To get to the Canyon, we took a 3 hours bus ride from Arequipa to the town of Chivay, at the entrance of the Canyon. One of the main attraction in Chivay is the hot springs, that is, an outdoor pool filled with sulfuric super hot water. It's better than I make it sound. Basically, you get to freeze to death being outside in the mountains, in near freezing temperature, in your bikini. But then you run to the pool and get warmed up instantly. We even got to drink in the pool! Now, I'm a bit of a weirdo and never take baths because they bore me to death. After 30 minutes in the pool, I was bored to death. Yeah, it's pretty outside with the stars, and yeah it's nice to be warm when you've been so cold, but then what? Well then what is that, thankfully for me, the pool was closing.

The next day, we woke up early-ish (around 7am) and had breakfast, then went to the bus station where we had to make a decision. The ultimate goal of this vacation was to visit the archaeological site where our friend Tony was working, in the Canyon del Colca. However, when we got to Arequipa we realized that they were done excavating and did mostly analysis in Arequipa. When we went to the Canyon del Colca, we thought we might try to find the site ourselves and go visit it but no one we met in Chivay knew where the tiny town closest to it was, and we were told by Tony that to find it we'd have to 1) rent a cab for about 60 soles (20$), make the cabbie wait for us while we take a 30 minutes walk into nothingness to find this site, and then walk back 30 minutes and get our taxi back to Chivay. At 8:30am in the bus station, we decided it was so much easier to just take a bus to the Cruz del Condor (cross of the condors) and do some sightseeing instead. The bus ride is about 2 hours, and stunning. But when we got there, there was not the huge amount of tourists we expected. Instead, we were told by the ladies selling stuff there that we were too late, condors only show up around 8 am so we would have needed to take a 6am bus or something like that. Quite frankly, I didn't care that much, I'd much rather sleep. As I said to the lady, at least the Canyon is still here. I mean, it's really pretty there, and that's picture number 4 on the last blog. I did put that one picture there because I thought it was funny/weird how Wes was holding my arm. I really can't remember why he was doing that. Anyways, turns out that after taking a million pictures of the canyon, as we're preparing to go, we hear all the ladies screaming "Condor! Condor!", and there you had it, a young condor was just cruising over our head, as you can see here:

They said it was a young one because it was brown, unlike the black and white adults, and because it was small. It was probably about one meter wide, and yes, that was small. We were impressed nonetheless.

After this trip we went back to Arequipa, and Wes and I moved from our decent but boring youth hostel to a fancy shmancy hotel in front of the monastery! We enjoyed the use of the tv, ate in their nice sunny green patio, and just marveled at the colonial architecture again. Then on sunday we needed to go back to Bolivia, meaning long bus rides with loud annoying music and crying children. We did get to use our passports with our shiny new bolivian resident visa though! Which meant we had to pay 91 bs to get out of the country, but whatever, we're residents.

We are now staying in La Paz until thursday because wednesday is Bolivia day and we want to see the celebrations. We will then go to Tiwanaku and spend the weekend there. On sunday, there is some really important elections going on including a confidence vote for the president which could out him. The shit may potentially hit the fan as they say. We think Tiwanaku will be a safer place to wait it out than La Paz where protests could go on. But that's only if the president get outed which I doubt will happen. Anyways, we have friends everywhere here so we're not worried. We are just aware and ready.

Oh, and the last picture I took was of some kids dressed up for the preparations of Peru Day. It was just cute, but not an everyday occurrence as far as I can tell.

C'est l'fun les vacances!

We are now back from our one week vacation in Arequipa and it was awesome!

Sadly, we need to run out to Tiwanaku this morning so I thought I'd put up a few pictures. You can imagine funny stories that go with them, and next weekend I'll give you a run down of what happened for real and you can compare notes.

1) insert caption: ...

2) insert caption: ...


3) insert caption:...
4) insert caption: ...
5) insert caption: ...

Have fun!

Sun, terraces, and refreshing drinks. We're not in Bolivia anymore!

Hello friends!

I'm sorry we haven't written in a while, Tiwanaku is still without internet and sunday morning we escaped the cold to go for a one week vacation to Arequipa, Peru. I am presently wearning a skirt and a tank top (no, it's not Wes writing) and got some sun! This is very exciting after spending a few months in winter on the altiplano. Sadly, we leave sunday morning. So far we've had lots of fun and took tons of photos, but I can't find a decent internet place to upload photos so you'll have to wait until sunday night or monday morning to get more news and see pictures. In the meantime, I guess you guys can google Arequipa and the Canyon del Colca to see what we saw!

Finally, internet back!

After two weekends without working internet in the house - confined to go to internet cafés - we now have internet back and I can waste time checking out gossip, funny pictures of cats, and upload stuff on my (our - although Wes doesn't even read what I write, he "trusts" me) blog. Last weekend was really short. We had to go back to Tiwanaku for lunch sunday because it was the San Pedro festival, some saint's day that is important to the town and our workers. We went there and danced and drank, and it was a dance contest between the different communities that form the greater Tiwanaku and, as far as we understood, Wankollo (our community of workers with whom we danced) won 2nd place! For this day, I did dress up as a cholita again and the whole community applauded me when I entered the patio where they were all eating! I guess they like it when gringas dress as cholitas. They kept on telling me to be careful because someone would try to steal me as I was so lovely... I look about 70 pounds heavier and, well, that hat... it ain't really flattering...

But as a good sport I'll now post a few pictures. Sadly, I also had a video to post but I let it upload all night and it still wasn't uploaded this morning so I'm abandoning this idea for now... I'll also post pictures of us actually working so you don't think all we do is dance and drink. We don't, I swear. Now, lucky for me I did find a picture of me working, but I have yet to find one of Wes working... And given that I work in the lab and he "works" in the field, it is possible that all this time he told me he worked he was really just dancing a drinking...

This is like Where's Waldo (Où est Charlie), I'm dressed in yellow.
I am holding the awesome 2nd place trophy they gave us. Please note it has a beer can as a body...

And here's me working, this is my fascinating world of archaeology. Just like Indiana Jones, isn't it?!

some pics

Just a quick note to say a) we are alive and well, and b) we probably wont be back to La Paz for two weeks so no need to worry. Also, here are some pictures of when I dressed up as a cholita (although next saturday I am going to wear it again to a fiesta with the cholita shoes and the cholita hat!). One of the pictures I have a kitten on my lap.

@*!?&?!!!&/"@**!

It snowed wednesday. Enough said.







Ok, I'll say more. It snowed and it was cold and wet while it was hot in Quebec and Georgia. On other days, life in Tiwanaku isn't too bad. It's fine, just the same old. We started excavating so there is more action. The food is still delicious. And the weather, when it doesn't freaking snow, is hot during the day and freezes at night. Usual again. Wes and I had to stay for 10 days in Tiwanaku and I was pretty ready to go back home to La Paz. Although I don't want to sound too whiny, I like Tiwanaku. I just also like showering in warm environments, wearing nice clothes, and having access to the internet. Not that I had any comments to read on my blog, *hint hint*.

Oh, visa-wise, everything should be fine this week. Technically, last time I went to immigration I gave them a new letter and they approved it and said our visas would be ready on June 17th. We'll just see if it's ready in time. Actually, we will most likely give them a few days extra just to play on the safe side.

As for funny stories, I guess we have two, although they are not quite hilarious... Yesterday Wes, Giles, Randi and I went to the house of one of our worker during lunch break because she wanted to show us the different artifacts she's found around Tiwanaku through the years. She had actually pretty neat stuff. Anyways, funny part of the story is when we left her house, as she closed the door she realised she had left her keys on the table inside, and she lives alone and that's her only set of keys. So she asked Wes to jump over a wall into a vacant lot, then climb up the wall to her house, slide on the roof and drop into her patio where the keys were. It was so high that Giles had to go in too to help him up. Also, once Wes was on the roof she was yelling at him to say "Chocolate" which is the name of her dog so the dog wouldn't attack poor Wes... It was a funny sight to see, Wes already scared he was going to just go through the flimsy plastic roof she had, trying to sweet talk Chocolate in spanish and then just slide out of view. He did save the day.

The same day, I found the old clothing bag of a friend that wont be coming to Bolivia for a while, and she had donated the content of the bag to me. In it was everything you need to dress like a cholita (see pictures in last post) except for the hat. I decided to try the things on while I was still working at the lab. I am the sort of grand supervisor of the lab so I have to walk outside a lot to go talk with our workers (people that wash artifacts and number them). So I decided to just go out of the lab casually, as if I'm not suddenly dressed as a cholita. Needless to say, the workers thought that was one of the most hilarious thing they had seen. I kept the outfit on for a while, creating lots of look of surprise. Wes didn't seem really enthusiastic about the outfit... But I did have to pose for a number of pictures. As soon as someone gives me one I'll post it. No, I have no shame.

I believe that's it for now. We're good, healthy, happy, a bit cold but that's to be expected.

Dancing and running in circles

The last few weeks have been way more busy then the first few weeks. The visa stuff were still taking a lot of our time, plus I got put in charge of organizing all that was needed for the coming project of my supervisor (of which me and Wes are a part of) so there was lots of running around, and calling around. However, we did manage to have fun too!

One of the most fun I've had in Bolivia was at the Gran Poder, a giant parade of somewhere between 40 000 and 60 000 people all dancing in different traditional costumes and followed by marching bands. I was told to go early to get seats, so at 10:30am we were there and ready! That was a bit early, but we did score the best seats where the parade turns to a side street so they would march/dance straight toward us and then turn right in front of us. No side views. It was really impressive. Here's a few pictures:
These women are dressed pretty much like any Aymara woman is dressed everyday, but a bit more fancy and, obviously, all with the same color outfit. I think there was a thousand of them, that's what made this so impressive.
Here's one of the marching band, with a scantily dressed dancer. That's one thing about Bolivia, they are so demure and Christian (Gran Poder is a celebration of the Great Power of Jesus) yet when festivities start they have the skimpiest outfits, especially for young girls...
Now that's another interesting outfit, with black men masks with great beards and pipes, dressed in some sort of tin can outfit...
Here's a condor and a bunch of little devils with big eyeballs.
Those are men in a contraption made to look like they are riding bulls - which technically they are because some, like in this photo, were actually real bull skins.

We watched these from 10:30am to 2pm and then were completely exhausted by the sun. I got the worst farmer's tan on my arms. The parade continued until 10pm that night so I know we missed a lot of the fun costumes. Oh well, we'll try again next year!

Like I mentioned in the previous post, we had friends over for a few days and so our days became filled with running errands for the visa in the morning then showing La Paz in the afternoon. It was great fun though, I do like showing off La Paz. I'm glad to report that Drew and Erin liked La Paz even though they are usually more of the outdoors type because La Paz is so unique. It's a huge city with all the amenities of big cities, but the people living in it and what they sell and do is still really foreign to our eyes.

Then on friday we had to go set up house in Tiwanaku. We realised that being in Tiwanaku with no project work to occupy us can be quite boring though... Thankfully, Drew and Erin came for 2 days so we passed the time showing them around the site and museums. Good refresher course for us anyway. Since then more people showed up for the project but Wes and I had to come back to La Paz to pick up the last of our certificate needed to get a visa. They told us to come monday at 3pm and when we showed up, obviously, it wasn't ready. They told us to come back again tuesday afternoon. We got there around 3:30 aaaannnddd.... it wasn't ready. BUT, the guy we now know there told us it would be ready in about an hour. Surprisingly, it actually was ready when we came back and at 4:50pm we proceeded to rush down to immigration to finally apply for the visa. Once there, the guy who had given us information before left with Wes' application and disappeared for about 10 minutes. When he came back, he told us that the chief of the foreigners' section said that the letter we had from the Bolivian Institute here (a letter this one guy had approved of a month ago) would not work. We needed a different letter AND the signature of the vice-minister of culture as opposed to a signature of the head of archaeology. We were so shocked and disappointed, but I decided this made no sense at all and we needed to plea our case. We asked for an appointment with the chief of foreigners' section, and surprisingly we got to meet her after a wait of about 15 minutes. By that time it's 5:45pm and the place closes at 6pm. We met with her and she was really really nice and accepted to take our visa application in and start the process on the condition that we bring her a different letter within the next 2 weeks. Which is why I'm still in La Paz this morning while Wes went to work in Tiwanaku really early. I will go ask for a new letter and then go back to Tiwanaku. If all goes well, we should be back to La Paz (and to internet access) on sunday, and pick up the letter on monday.

And that is our exhausting but fun life in La Paz.

Sorry!

The last week or so we have been rather busy and didn't write anything... We had company, friends of my friends Ben and Casey, who are on a trip around the world. Yeah, their life sucks ;) Then we moved friday to Tiwanaku where there is no internet. Wes and I are in La Paz today for visa purposes, again. We were told to pick up something yesterday, and it wasn't ready (surprise, surprise), so we have to get it right about now! Hopefully that will be the end of the visa problems... I told Wes we need to write something more substantial tonight, but I figured I'd post this first in case we never write anything else. Today is Wes' birthday so we are going back to the Argentinian restaurant.

In the meantime, I am leaving the link to Drew and Erin's blog about their stay in Bolivia where you can see pictures of us and know we are alive! http://drewanderin.blogspot.com/2008/06/bolivia.html

Pale Blue Dot

Wes Says:

Happy Mother's Day. Wikipedia claims that this Carl Sagan made his famous "Pale Blue Dot" speech in a commencement address on this day in 1996. I can't actually find that verified anywhere else, but I'll run with it and pretend its an anniversary. Just to confuse the issue more, the picture that I put up isn't even the picture he was talking about; Sagan was discussing a picture of Earth from the Voyager 1 probe, from 4 billion miles away. The picture below is from the Mars Global Surveyor satellite and was taken in 2003, after Sagan had already died. I think its a bit more evocative. Enjoy, and don't forget the one mother we all share. Oh god, I'm a tool for saying that.

Winter is coming... again...

Hey folks!

Let me start by wishing all our friends and families that are mothers a Happy Mother's Day!!!

On this cloudy gray sunday morning, I figured I should write a blog because it's been a while and the last one was a quick one... But I still kinda feel like we have nothing to say. But we probably do. So I'll start on rambling about anything that comes to my mind and that might spark some interesting anecdotes.

Well first, on the subject of this blog, for the last 3 or 4 days there has been a complete sudden change in the weather and yeah, that means that winter is coming. Obviously, just coming from Montreal's winter, I'm not so thrilled about it. You know that winter is coming because it's cloudier, it never gets as warm in the afternoon even when there is sun, and at night there has been some pretty strong storm (scary for a chicken like me) with heavy rain and super strong winds. The thing with living on the 16th floor of a building in a city shaped like a bowl is that there is no other building to shield your apartment from the wind. You can hear it howl, which then sparks catastrophic scenarios in my head where the windows explode and we are being sucked out of the apartment like in a plane. Because I'm insane and am also afraid of heights so I combine the two together. I'm learning to deal, especially given that it hasn't happened yet so I realise it might not be as common as I thought...

The rest of our days have been occupied by all sorts of bureaucratic steps, related to us trying to get a visa to stay, trying to get internet, etc. For the internet, in the last post I said that they would come by to install it within 15 days. Well in an unexpected turn of events, they showed up after only 4 days!!! And it works! I mentioned too how maddening the visa stuff was, but I really want to share the experience with you guys so I'll give you a step by step description of the day we went to Interpol and the police...

We had already gone to both places to ask for instructions, i.e. what do we need to get the piece of papers we need. Interpol were really nice. The police station was just a little more confusing... It is built like most Andean structures: you get in through the main door and you're faced with an outside parking lot/patio. It's really confusing. You expect a roof, with desks and people behind the desk to help you with stuff. After standing there for about 30 seconds all confused we started looking around and noticed stairs on the right side, with a thing that said INFORMATION at the top of them. That directed us to one flight of stairs up to a posted list of everything we need for our 2 documents. It's a loooooong list.

So we show up again at least ready for the interpol form and it took about an hour and a half total to get our prints and ask us questions about our parents, where we live, etc. By the end of it it was 11:30 and I was famished so we decided to have quick lunch close by then go up to the police station because we realised there was a lot of stuff we didn't understand from their spanish instructions. The lunch place we went to only opened at noon, so we bummed around a bit. Then around 1pm we were out and ready to go to the police, but I suddenly got suspicious... "Do you think they close the police station for lunch here? It can't be, I mean, they're the police and crime happens at lunch too..." Ah, the innocence... Of course the police station closes for lunch! From noon to 2pm!!! So we went to an internet place and waited. At exactly 2pm we are at the 2nd floor where we need to be and there's a line up of people waiting for it to open. We asked our questions (one of them being do we need witnesses to which the guy said no but since the secretary at the Archaeology Institute swears we do need them) and then left. But we knew one of the thing we needed was a letter from a lawyer and during all our waiting time we had noticed how there was tons of lawyer offices right next to the police. We went in to see one and got our letters (2 each) really quickly for about 3.50$ each letter. That's cheaper than I thought for hiring a lawyer! Then the lawyer swears that with this letter and our passport photocopies, we can apply for one of the two things we need from the police for our visa... So we decide to go back again... Oh my...

We get to the 2nd floor, say what we want, show our stuff. The guy says we still need our Interpol certificate (which we will only have 13 days later) but we show the receipts we got from Interpol so he tells us that will do but we need to go up one flight of stairs and have it authorized or something like that. Bear in mind all this is in spanish and we understand some but not all. We go up one flight of stairs and obviously there is about 10 doors and the guy never said where we needed to go. By some incredible luck, just walking around and looking at titles on doors we found the right one straight away. The nice lady there tells us what she really needs is a photocopy of our Interpol receipt. So we go down 3 flights of stairs, cross the street, photocopy it, go back up 3 flights of stairs, and get here to certify our photocopy of receipt. We can now go back down one flight of stairs, wait back in line to talk to the first guy who gives information. We give him our stuff and they start painting our fingers black again for more fingerprints! And they only have an ink-filled rag to help you clean up afterwards. We think we are done then the guy looks at our stuff again and says "this is for local and not international? Then you have to go at the desk at the back of the room". Now the "room" is a corridor with one desk next to the other, no way to form a line up. "The desk at the end" are multiple desks and we don't know which one we need. We just go "in line" at one, hoping it's the right one. It's really long because the one guy works at 2 of the desks (I guess lunch time wasn't long enough, someone still didn't show up). Because it's long I send Wes to ask some other guy where we should go and the old man says we need to go back to the front of the corridor. So we do. And it was wrong. We really needed to be at the desk where we were waiting and now lost our spot. We wait some more until we get to give our stuff. Now, we were told that was the easiest paper to get, and the fastest - one guy even said it's 5 days for Canadians. We were there May 1st and the guy tells us that 1) we need to go back there to give him the Interpol paper on May 13th when we'll receive it, and 2) it will be ready May 26th. MAY 26TH!!! Oh, and by the way, my visa to stay here expired today (May 11th). And I can't get another one, I need the one we are working on right now. Now, I'm not doing anything illegal, the guys at immigration told me once I show up with all my things I will only pay a fee per day I didn't have a visa - and it's a rather small fee. Also, that was the easy piece of paper to get at the police, we still have to get the complicated one where we need to provide a copy of our landlord's passport (?!), the Interpol thing obviously, and all sorts of fun little details... I promise I wont write you a detailed account of how it happened, that would be way too long.

ok, fun tidbits now! The day we took possession of our apartment we were crossing the park in front of our building and noticed a lot of people and some really weird all wood bicycles. I noticed a lot of the people around them looked like the rich gortex-wearing tourist we see and/or the Discovery Channel crew that worked with us last year. Then I noticed it: a yellow signed that said "U-Turn" with a yellow and red flag on it... It was The Amazing Race!!!!! (It's a fun reality show, google it if you don't know what it is) I was sooooooo excited! I was torn between staying there until contestants showed up or going into our apartment. Given Wes' lack of enthusiasm I decided to go back home. But hey, next Amazing Race they will be showing our building and our park!

ok, not so fun tidbit but not too bad, last monday at noon all our electric appliances stopped working. We went to the administration of the building and found out that the last renter didn't pay her electricity bill for the last 3 months so they cut us (Electropaz, not the administration). I am so happy to have the administration to help us with all sorts of things here (although we do pay them a monthly fee). The lady called our landlord and she figured out from old records how much was due and he went and paid it. Just to make this more stressful and annoying that's the day the internet people called to say they'd show up the next day. I was so afraid we'd still be out of electricity so that they wouldn't be able to install the modem! But the administration lady swore to me that they usually put it back the same day at 7pm if it gets paid. Because I didn't want to be flicking the light switches on and off every two minutes to check if electricity was back, we decided to go see Iron Man. It rocked. And when we came back, electricity was back too. And I'm out.

just a quickie

Hey friends!

Sorry we haven't written in so long, but we have now moved into our apartment but we don't have internet there yet... We have signed a contract with a company (turns out it's more difficult than we thought, they have to see if there are "lines" available in our area, and one company anyway didn't have any lines for us, but we found one that had). We signed saturday so they should come install it within the next 15 days(!!!!).

Other than that, we have been busy with getting our visas too stay here. Turns out we can't do it the easy way that immigration suggested at first, so we have to do it the complicated way. And no joke, it's complicated. We had our finger prints taken twice the same day, we had to find a lawyer to write us official letters, we have to present about 20 photocopies of our passport to basically anyone who talks to us. We now have to go get a physical at a specific hospital, and wait, wait and WAIT for some of our things to be processed so we can bring them to continue on with the visa processes... It's annoying but we are keeping our spirits high.

We are still very happy with the apartment, it's very sunny and thus warm! The weather here has been great. We have been buying tons of DVDs for 1$ each - we don't have a tv so movies are our best friends.

Oh, and some of you might have heard about the protests and mayhem happening in Santa Cruz yesterday? Well no worries, we barely knew anything happened. There was just a little bit more cops around and more firecracker' noises. But that's it. The trouble was in Santa Cruz.

That's it for now, we still have tons of errands to run! We do check the internet about once a day so feel free to email and/or comment!

On the relativity of awesomeness in Bolivia

As some of you now know, we found ourselves an apartment in La Paz - moving in tuesday. I have not shied away from calling the place "awesome" on Facebook, but now that I have some pictures to post, I feel I should explain the relativity of awesomeness while in Bolivia. You see, while looking around I saw an apartment that had no space for a fridge and stove in the kitchen and was located above the garage of an old lady with tiny barking dogs and a life-time supply of junk. Or a nice apartment but with tiny bedrooms and wall to wall brown carpeting - no furnitures at all - for the same price I will now pay for our apartment. The awesomeness of the apartment lies in the fact that the kitchen sink pours hot and cold water from the same tap, that all 3 bedrooms are good sizes, that it includes some furniture, and that it is located by a really nice plaza in the neighborhood we like, in a really fancy secure building on the 16th floor with an amazing view of La Paz. Views like this:
and this:
Now the inside is a little funny looking. Comfortable but not quite up to my decor standard. For my québécois friends who have seen the movie Québec-Montréal, I present to you our "beautiful" chamoiré wall which fits perfectly well with the chamoiré kitchen table!
and for a final photo, here is the living room area within the same room as the chamoiré wall:
That's it for now! I will post pictures once we've moved in and made the place look a little more homelike.

One week in

As promised, I will now give a few details on our first week living in Bolivia. But I warn you, and apologize in advance, it wasn't exciting at all...

We arrived tuesday morning after an overnight flight and obviously went straight to bed. Not only was it necessary to get some rest after trying to sleep on a plane but it is also the best cure for altitude sickness. Or so I thought. Altitude gives you bad headaches, and absolutely no energy. Another key element to fight it other than rest is coca. As in the coca leaf, not coca-cola. You have to drink coca tea and really, I don't like it. It tastes like leaves. Which it is. Try boiling some dried fall leaves and that's probably what it tastes like to me. So you're tired and headachy and you have to force yourself to drink dried leaves.

Friday, I thought we were doing much better, so I decided it was time to go run important errands: get a phone and a post office box (there is no home post here, you need to buy a box). We got to the post office and the scene was really weird... I could see there were people in, but all the glass doors were locked with huge chains from inside. Then we noticed handmade signs on the doors that apologized profusely to the customers but that the workers wanted to get rid of the general management and thus were on their 9th day of hunger strike. HUNGER STRIKE. Bolivians never protest the half-ass way. So we just stood there wondering what to do next and judging ourselves for our complete lack of social commitment. We decided to go get a cell phone. That ain't easy either - to get a line that will work in Tiwanaku we learned that we need to find ourselves a cell phone (used one) and then go to the place where they'll hook us up with a line. We went to bed instead, at like 8pm.

Saturday we went on our quest to find 1) a cell phone, and 2) a router to get wireless in the house. These should be found in the same area of La Paz, the Oyustus market, or the "Black market" as I've heard it being referred to. That is a stretch of about 10 blocks by 10 blocks, all organized by "areas" and, obviously being in La Paz, going way up and way down, then up and down, to make sure it is utterly exhausting for out of breath gringos. The way the place is organized in areas means that if you need something like a cell phone, there is a 2 block by 2 block area of just cell phone stuff. One vendor after another sells the same thing and you are assured you will never stumble upon a router too. It's something I still haven't figured out about Bolivia, why do people gather together to sell the exact same stuff instead of spreading around. All I know is that once the cell was bought, we were told to hike up past the pig meat area, then walk down into the kitchen implements area, then up into the computer area. I don't know how we did this but we eventually found a router and called it a day. But after that day we were exhausted and frankly, I realise after the fact that this was a really REALLY stupid thing to do when you have only been in a high altitude area for 2 days...

That night, Wes got the worst case of altitude sickness I've ever seen. He was shaking like a leaf (his shaking actually woke me up), and had a high fever, and started puking like there's no tomorrow. I tried to be the best girlfriend I could, being reassuring and all, but really I was totally worried. I did get up to google the symptoms to find out it was indeed altitude sickness and not some crazy flu bug. Next day I got up and bought altitude sickness pills that I have to say are miraculous. Within 2 hours his really high fever had broken and the shaking stopped almost immediately. Obviously this ordeal wasn't enough to test our patience with Bolivia, we were both sent an extra case of the "tourist stomach problems". Hey, at least we now both have Hollywood-worthy bodies with tired dead eyes that make us look like heroine junkies. How cool is that! In your face, Kate Moss and Pete Doherty!

Since then, we've started again running necessary errands for newcomers. Got a phone line, went to immigration to ask what I need to stay here for 9 months (it'll be either really simple or REALLY complicated...), went to Tiwanaku to say hi to people I know and check on the status of a llama skeleton I ordered last year. It was good to see the site again, although you can see there is a definite effort to make the town more appealing to gringos. I'm not saying it's bad or anything, it's just interesting. Newly painted buildings, totora (reed) benches near the museum, a new not-yet-finished huge hotel. I also had to go visit the Canadian consulate in my neighborhood of La Paz and stumbled upon a beautiful park with the most amazing views of La Paz. I can't believe I didn't know it existed! I promise next time I go I will take pictures and post them. I'm not blazé of that place yet.

That's it for now. Tomorrow La Paz organizes a "night of the museums" where ALL the museums of La Paz are free from 8pm to 1 am and there's tons of music playing. Should be fun!

For the love of trout

Trout, or trucha in spanish, is farmed in the Lake Titicaca and is delicious.

Lucha Libre is the type of Mexican wrestling popularized by the movie Nacho Libre. Basically it involves big man in colorful costumes with masks and capes. Who doesn't love that?

Trucha libre? Well, I guess if you were to put capes and masks on trouts it would be most entertaining.




yeah... so... I figured we should have a blog here, inspired by my friends' Ben and Casey's awesome blog on their life in Malaysia. I love reading their posts, and hope that my friends (and Wes' friends too if they are not as cynical about blogs as he is) will at least like it a little. I'll try to post pictures - given it's my 3rd time and Wes' 4th time here we haven't been trigger happy yet... For now, I just want to see what this looks like, send the link to all our friends and family, and then I'll post something about our life here. But here's a spoiler: we're doing fine.