A vivid country

The ironic thing about not writing recently is that I’ve been in the ideal place for writing. I’m staying in a fabulous little room with a twin bed on the top floor of an immaculate white house in Sucre, Bolivia. My room overlooks the white city and surrounding mountains, granting me a glimpse of the most romantic scenery that exists in South America. I imagine it’s what Paris was before it became a big noisy city full of tourists.

I walk past a square and a lovely white church after climbing a steep hill with a view many townspeople and tourists cherish then turn down a sweet narrow cobblestone street to the house. To say it’s charming or elegant or romantic or beautiful would be an understatement.

When I go to my Spanish classes in a cold dark classroom in the city center, I long for my room in this little house. I want nothing more than to sit on the sun deck and read or at my desk in front of my own splendid window and write a novel. I want to cook big meals with the fresh vegetables and pasta from the hectic market and drink wine with the other guests -- three couples.

I so often am thinking of home and missing it and getting ready to go back. I am ready. I have just a little more than two weeks left now. And I’m eager to start up my life there. I look forward to seeing my friends and my family and I’m making plans and even applying for jobs. But this little place.

I find myself wishing for more time here. If I could go back to the beginning of my trip, I might change it all so I could have a greater piece of time here.

It’s peaceful, comfortable and clean. There’s no Internet, which has been a struggle. I haven’t been in contact with my loved ones as much as I would like. But it’s also woken me up a bit. I’m drumming up more ideas and the creative juices are flowing. This place seems to have that effect. My friends Deborah and Lee are also at work on some grand business ideas born here in this magical place.

I imagine one day having a book to write and coming here for a couple months to do it. I told Tonya, the owner of this little guesthouse, that and she said there was a woman who came here once. She was going to stay three days and stayed a month instead, writing a novel in German.

This place, its quiet and peace, is particularly phenomenal when contrasted with the vibrancy of Bolivia.

Someone just gave me a copy of Tom Robbins’ Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates. Robbins’ character describes South America as “vivid.” He illustrates what he means by describing a scene he witnessed: a naked parrot matching the weak steps of his hunched old lady owner.

I have also witnessed some vivid scenes here in Bolivia. It’s an amazing place full of sharp colors, memorable scenes and distinctive odors. There are always festivals or protests in Bolivia. I have run into a few big processions and celebrations in the streets of Bolivia and I’ve only been here two weeks. But when they aren’t celebrating, they’re protesting. The streets here are busy.

I went to the silver mine in Potosi the day Ronaldo left for Uyuni. I guess I should say it used to be a silver mine. Today, miners, about 4,000 of them struggle in the depths of this mountain to recover slivers of Zink, which have sunk in costs since the advent of lithium batteries, my guide told me.

He took me first to a store where I bought $30 bolivianos worth of coca leaves, coca leaf cigarettes, a small plastic bottle of 96 percent alcohol, a bag full of diesel-soaked pellets and a stick of plastic explosive. Gifts for the miners. The conversion of dollars to bolivianos is 7 to 1.

Then Daniel and I slithered into the mine, through an entry soaked in dried llama blood from a recent sacrifice, down a dark dusty hole to pay tribute to the Devil and his rather over-sized penis. The Devil is not, in fact, a devil or el Diablo. They call him Tio, which means uncle in Spanish. But these miners don’t all speak Spanish. Those who never went to school or didn’t finish probably never learned Spanish. They speak Quechua. When the Spanish came and explained god, or dios, to the people of Bolivia, the people had trouble pronouncing the “d” and called the diety instead Tio. The Spanish told the Bolivians that they had to work in the mine or the devil would kill them, the devil is the keeper of the underworld.

The religion evolved. And now the miners are permitted to believe what they want outside of the mine. Nearly all of them are catholic and attend mass regularly, praying to the Spanish god. But when they are in the mine, they worship the Tio. Every mine has a sculpture of a devil-like creature with red eyes and a large erect and flexible penis. The miners, upon entering the mine, offer the tio coca leaves, dropping them on his shoulders, head, at his feet and, of course, his engorged genitals. Then they offer the devil the alcohol and drink a bit themselves. They offer the tio a puff of their cigarette if not a whole one. And then they go into the darkness to work, hoping the tio will have mercy on them.

The mine is old. Bolivians began toiling here, extracting tons of silver for the Spanish, in the 16th century. It’s now 12 levels deep, reaching something around 150 degrees at the deepest level. The town of Potosi is almost 13,000 feet in elevation. Only recent years have they had air pumped into the mines. Before that a miner’s life expectancy was less than 10 years from the day he started working. That’s a pretty tough figure when you hear that most start at age 12 or 14. Only men, of course.

Life expectancies are still low. There’s a lot of dust, few mechanized operations, lots of accidents and collapses. And now they let little tourists like me go in and watch! Crazy, eh?

The mine was incredible but I was eager to get out of Potosi. I took a bus. I was the only tourist. The smell is strong on buses here. The strongest was my trip with Lee and Deborah to Tarabuco, a traditional village about an hour from Sucre. We were stuffed with 12 other passengers into a minivan meant to hold far fewer. I rode backwards, but sat next to the window. I could see the smells on Lee and Deborah’s faces. It was quite a ride.

In the village, we were greeted with an array of amazing colors. Tarabuco is known for its textiles. And the colors were indeed “vivid.” It was a lively marketplace full of women and some men selling the weavings they’d slaved over for months, begging tourists to buy them.

This is an incredible place, Bolivia and especially Chuquisaka, this province of the country.

I almost didn’t make it to Bolivia on this trip because US citizens now need visas thanks to strained international relations. Gracias a Ronaldo, I’m here. And I am so happy I’ve been able to see these places and visit this part of the world.

Next I’m heading to the north of Argentina and the Cafayate wine region before a last week of classes in Buenos Aires.

Another two-week bite

I got into a rhythm on this trip. I got used to taking quick two-week journeys with friends and I haven't been able to change the beat. I went to visit Ronaldo in Sao Paulo after Illa left. I had a visa and a friend to stay with, so I figured, "why not?"

Then Ronaldo suggested traveling to Peru and Bolivia together. He's never been and didn't want to go alone. Again, why not? So we flew the 5.5 hours from Sao Paulo, close to the Pacific coast, to Lima, on the Atlantic coast. The long flight was a reminder that South America is a vast continent.

I met Ronaldo at Spanish school in Buenos Aires. He's about 5 feet 9 inches with perfectly coiffed brown hair. He spent over $800 pesos on hair products while we were in BA. He likes to walk arm in arm down the street so he can squeeze my hand when a "cutie" walks by, usually an attractive guy with blond hair and blue eyes.

I skipped Lima the last time I was in South America because I heard it was dirty and dangerous. Ronaldo, coming from Brazil, has always expected teh rest of South America to be a bit backwards--dirty and and dangerous.

We were both surprised and amazed in Lima. It was clean with fresh new roads, beautiful gardens and parks. The security guards outside the government palace even approached us to give us information usually provided by tour guides. They are proud and know what they're protecting.

We went paragliding over the Atantic and Lima. It was an amazing feeling, just like flying. My guide said he had the best office in town.

From Lima, we flew to Cuzco and jumped immediately in a van headed toward Macchu Pichu. The train has been out of commission since the floods a few months ago. The van took us to where the train started again and we road the rails for the last hour or so of the jouney, arriving in time to enjoy the thermal pools above the town.

We befriended two cousins from Sanfrancisco, Reena and Krina, and enjoyed dinner with them.

The next morning we got up at 3:30 a.m. to wait in line for the bus to Macchu Pichu. It was worth it, because we had it to ourselves when we arrived. Though I'd been there before, it was still a magical and spiritual experience. It was a lot more casual this time. And arriving with friends made me a little more realistic and a little less dreamy about the place than I remembered being the last time. None the less, I'm glad I got to see it again and would go yet again if the chance came up.

I have a bit of a cold and convinced Ronaldo to stay a day in Cuzco instead of getting up early for a third day in a row to travel to Lake Titikaka. We wandered around the city and Ronaldo took many pictures of the colonial architecture. We also had a rather sentimental tour guide who whispered in reverey when telling us, very emotionally, about the Incan ruins. Since the tour was in Spanish, I had little patience for his weepy style and we ditched the tour half way through.

The next day, we were on an early bus through the Andes and incredible mountain scenery to Puno, Peru on the shore of Lake Titikakka.

This is why I love letting the trip decide for me where to go. This is why I was so happy to tag along with Ronaldo. We went to see the Uros, a group of 60 man-made floating islands in the highest navigable lake in the world. It was amazing.

They have to move their homes every six months to stack fresh reeds underneath them. The island we visited was 11 years old, but the islands themselves have existed since before the Incas. They were constructed so that the people who lived on them could pull up the anchors and float away if there were any threats.

The people on the island showed us how they create the islands using porous roots and reeds. It was the most amazing thing and I'm so happy I got to see it.

From Puno, we bussed to La Paz and discovered that we once again were arriving just in time for a big celebration. El Gran Poder is one of South America's biggest festivals. The parade went on all day and all night. It was amazing. The costumes were rich and elegant. The music was impressive. The people peeing in the street were innumerable.

La Paz is a dirty city. It has a smell. And the altitude is killer. At about 12,000 feet above sea level, it's the highest city in the world. The altitude has been punishing for us. We crawl up the hills here and Ronaldo had a bout of altitude sickness the day we left for Bolivia. Coca tea was his savior.

La Paz is an amazing city though. Planted in a valley, surrounded by mountains, it's beauty is unmatched. The people wear traditional dress and the streets are filled with people selling things ranging from underwear and light bulbs to plastic washers for your sink and dried llama carcasses.

It's been amazing trip so far. Today, we're off by plane to Sucre. Ronaldo and I will part in a few days and I'll go back to Spanish school.

La lingua

Today, I went with Ronaldo to the Portuguese language museum in a beautiful train station near downtown.

The museum was amazing and modern and a wet dream for grammar nerds. It features interactive exhibits about accents, common phrases, cliches, grammar and the evolution of the language. There's also a phenomenal video presentation in a room where the video surrounds visitors on all sides.

I couldn't understand all of the poetry and only a fraction of the exhibits I saw, but it was impressive all the same. I found the exhibit about the evolution of the language especially interesting.

It's crazy to me that this is a completely separate language and that when I hear it without listening to it, it almost sounds Asian, yet I'm able to understand so much of it. It's not just a cousin, but more like a brother to Spanish.

Before the museum, Ronaldo and I went to the Sao Paulo governor's palace and had a tour. Our guide took us and a Colombian man through the marble halls. She spoke only Portuguese, yet the Colombian man never seemed to have trouble following what she told us and I only had to ask Ronaldo for clarification a few times.

So many of the words are the same, though many are different. The way they're said, however, is different enough to make me feel like I'm on the other side of a mirror trying to make sense of backward Spanish.

I usually turn into a seemingly stupid mute any time I think I might be asked to communicate here.

When I was in Santiago, I had a week of incredibly interesting Spanish classes with Hernan, who talked to me about the evolution of language. He explained that the emperor of the territory that would later be known as Spain gave Portugal to his younger son as a wedding gift in 1100. The older son maintained control of the rest of the territory. That physical division, Hernan told me, would solidify the division in the language. He added that Spain is actually home to several different languages and you can't call it Spanish there without getting in trouble. It's Castellano, he said.

The museum today didn't argue that Spanish and Portuguese are any more closely related than Spanish and French.

I've enjoyed my time in Sao Paulo and I've seen it from angles I don't think most people do. Ronaldo took me around by car, by subway and by foot. He's seen several places during my visit that he'd never been to before. It's a huge, huge, sprawling city.

The food is great. I've had coxinha, a batter and fried chicken in soft dough, and pao de quejo, cheese bread. They are two of my favorites, along with acai (ah-say-ee), a sorbet made from a sort of dusty-tasting red fruit that Ronaldo said he's never seen in fruit form.

We leave early tomorrow morning on a flight to Lima, Peru with plans to see Machu Picchu and Bolivia. Yet another two-week bite out of this adventure.

I've loved my time here and my Portuguese experiment, but I do so look forward to again feeling competent and intelligent in a place where I can speak the language with relative confidence.

Off the beaten path

I have spent the last week going where few backpackers do.

Illa and I began her visit to South America with three days in one of the continent's most popular and awe-inspiring destinations -- Iguazu Falls. And then we left all of the other tourists in our dust.

We took a 10-hour overnight bus to Resestincia, Argentina, where Lonely Planet promised we would see hundreds of brilliant statutes nestled into a tiny little town and where we would be able to travel to a national park and ride horses through the marshlands to see caimans and colorful birds.

But alas, our faith in Lonely Planet should have waned the moment we drove into the city, which was not a tiny little town at all. We went to one of the hotels suggested in the book. It had changed its name to the Hotel Scrum. Again, we should have known better. We checked in, filling in our passport numbers at the hotel desk. Then we were taken up a dark stairwell with peeling paint and handed the keys to a dark little room with two bunk beds that took up so much of the space we couldn't really both be in the room at the same time unless one of us was in bed.

Just as Illa was about to take her clothes off for a shower, I looked over and spotted what looked like a herd of dead bugs laying on the white sheets. I had my shoes back on and tied before I'd finished saying we had to leave. I explained that I thought they were probably bed bugs and that we would look like lepers if we stayed. Illa agreed and we started readying our things. But then the complacent Americans in us said, "oh maybe they're not bed bugs. Maybe it's just dirt." There's something in us that hates to make a stink.

We examined the pile of bugs on my sheets then pulled back the covers on Illa's top bunk. As she squished something into the covers and said she wasn't sure if it was a dead bug or just dirt, something crawled past. But it was "just" a spider. "I think this is a bug," she said, smearing the dusty carcass of an insect into the sheet, "but I'm not sure if it's a bed bug."

Finally, we took a breath and realized that we were crazy. It didn't really matter what the nasty dirt/dead bugs were or if it was "just" a spider crawling through the bed, the place was terrible. The lady at the front desk didn't even protest when I told her we couldn't stay because of the bugs.

We showered under a dribble of hot water at our next hotel before setting out to see the sculptures. There are over 500 in the city, they told us at tourist information. They have a competition every four years where sculptors come from around the world to create works, which then stay in the city.

There's a red line we could follow through the city center for about two hours and see 150 statues. The line, however, faded in and out and we got lost here and there. Some of the sculptures were impressive and many were very artistic and interesting. Several depicted the beloved dog, Fernando.

Fernando, the dog, is credited as being one of the founding fathers of the town. He attended all of the most important events and meetings during the development of the area and was adored by all.

The city shuttered its windows and locked its doors every day from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. when everyone settled in for a siesta.

We got up before the sun on our second day in town because we wanted to explore the Chaco National Park, known, according to Lonely Planet, for its wildlife. The bus ride took about an hour longer than expected -- three in total. When we arrived, the man at the park administration building said there were no horses at all allowed in the park and that the only way to get to the isolated place was to walk another 5 kilometers or hire a taxi. Since we'd bought bus tickets to another town for that night, it turned out there was only one bus we could take back to town and it would leave two hours after we arrived.

We went across the street to a tiny grocery store where we bought the only premade thing they had, a roll filled half with ham and cheese and half with dulce de leche.

So we took a taxi (a 1980-something black car that shook while sitting still driven by a teenage boy)and walked around the longest trail in the park, which took 45 minutes. Before we set out, we opened the roll we bought at the store. It turned out to be a foam-like roll of dough without any of the filling pictured on the wrapper or listed in what turned out to be ingredients for recipes. Then we got back in the "taxi" and waited for the bus.

The same driver who dropped us off, picked us up again.

We finished the day with milanesa and ice cream before boarding a bus to Mercedes, Argentina in the state of Corrientes. We arrived to a hostel at about 11 p.m. We made arrangements with Graciela the next morning to take a trip into the Esteros del Iberá, a provincial park known for its exotic wildlife. Few travelers have ever heard of the park, which was created only 20 years ago.

We took a long rocky bus ride down a dirt road at 1 p.m. and arrived in the tiny town of Carlos Pelegrini. The roads through the town and around the edges of its central square were a soft red sand, giving the impression that one might be able to rub out the border of the park with a strong breeze.

We settled into one of the rooms at a house turned hotel, stuffed with five beds, and then set out on our first sightseeing excursion in the park. Ricardo guided a German girl named Theresa, Illa and me through the marshlands shortly before sunset.

It was an amazing boat ride. Ricardo slowed once we reached the grassy banks of one of the area's floating islands and pointed out a big black caiman. Once she knew what she was looking for, Illa pointed out dozens of others soaking up the sunlight and sitting still, just waiting for prey to pass within snapping distance. They conserve energy in the winter, moving little, Ricardo explained.

A few minutes later, we came upon a marsh deer moving smoothly through the grass in perfect late afternoon light. And just when we thought it couldn't get any better, we found a family of capybaras, the world's largest rodents. They're like rats twice the size of large dogs.

As we sped back toward shore, we all took turns snapping each others pictures in front of the brilliant purple sunset.

Ricardo explained that the town and the park hadn't been prepared for tourists. It was just a dusty little town in the middle of the blank planes of northeastern Argentina. There was nothing around for miles and miles and miles. But people had hunted the animals to near extinction and a group decided the area needed to be preserved and established a provincial park. It's Corrientes' only state park. Slowly, tourists have trickled in. Every year there are more and more people, Ricardo said.

The state sent tourism professionals and instructors to the town to train the 600 people living there to be guides and hotel owners and chefs and waiters, Ricardo said.

That night we walked up the sand street to another house turned restaurant and ordered from the oldest son/waiter. His mother prepared the food for us, we paid and went back to our room to read and go to bed early.

The next day, David took us on a walking tour through the jungle area, pointing out monkeys in the trees. There are 12 different types of monkeys in the area, he said.

And, at last we got to ride horses. Illa and I trotted through the grass lands outside of the town, looking at colorful birds and giant ant hills. Our guide, Carlos, said the ants dig up the earth to get to the nutrient rich soil below, serving as natural rototillers. The field was once used to grow rice, which is what his father did for a living--worked in the rice fields outside of town. Carlos had worked there too. But there hadn't been much rice production in the area in recent years because prices were too low.

But prices have risen and he said the people will probably plant new rice fields again this year. In the meantime, the town had changed. He is only 24, but remembers that since he started working there was no work for women in the town. And now that the tourists are coming, there's more work for women than there is for men.

After our horse ride, we showered and then loaded into Hugo's truck. Hugo provides transportation for tourists and had taken us all over town already. Now he carried Maider from California, Illa and me two and a half hours down dirt roads to Virasoro where we would catch a night bus back to Iguazu.

We had to arrive before 8 p.m. to get our tickets though the bus didn't leave until 1:30 a.m. We wandered around the town and stopped at the cultural center. We asked if there was anything interesting there for tourists and Maria walked us down the street and opened the town's little history museum just for us. She gave a us a private tour of the tiny space, showing us relics from the Guarani people. She opened a glass case, picked up a hatchet and handed it to us to hold. It came from about 1100 BC, she said.

The Guarani are the only prehistoric civilization still thriving. There are many Guarani in northern Argentina and Paraguay.

We finished our long layover with an exquisite Argentinian barbecue.

I left Illa at the airport in Iguazu and boarded a bus to Sao Paulo, Brazil. I was the only backpacker on the bus.

Now I'm exploring this city with my friend Ronaldo who lives here. We met in Buenos Aires and he invited me. It's an incredibly huge city with buildings and buildings as far as the eye can see. But it's still not a common tourist destination.

We're off to Peru together on Friday.