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.