Goodbye to Bolivia on the Sun Island (isla del sol)

i am in peru, for the moment alone  -   all the friends have gone on a trip to trhe Colca canon. After two months of travel i cannot be moved too much by another canon, nor a laguna nor some volcano. It is a rare moment this, of being alone,   since i started travelling alone i have met always wonderful people.

I will go to Cuzco today, tonight. The road is one of the most dangerous,    so i am happy in the darkness i am not going to see anything. I was thinking to leave out machu pichu, it is expensive and very touristy. However, it feels like soem kind of obligation, and i am sure it is beautiful but i am starting to be tired to see wonderfuk things. Anyway i will go. And afterwards i will have to find my was through the jungle to the coast of Brasil to catch my flight back to europe. I am so releaved i have my ticket back! Can you imagine that you are wandering around here, with precolombian internet facilities and you dont know when and from where you will  arrive back to your continent? Yes, it is  not anice feeling.

Arequipa, the so called white city  is nice. It is white because the Misti volcano, apart from having destroyed the city with earthquakes and eruptions every once in a while, also provided the so called sillar material, volcanis stones. They are grey in the evening, and glow white in the sunlight.

Arequipa is nice but i am not going to get in touch with peru, i can feel it already. I have in the country one week, i am nostalgic about bolivia, so nothing, i hope i can at least read lonely planet till the end. By the way, do you like lonely planet? Is it a question to like it or not? It is necessary, you just cannot be without it but i think i dont like it, too much breathtaking, to many adresses of fancy expensive restaurants, too american, too fake cool and juppy. However, i have to admit that it can save you in the middle of nowhere by indicating that a bus stops next to the second palm tree when the tucan calls twice.

it is better to stay in a counrty longer and discover it. I dont even understan wgy i came to peru. I think it was the impulse, i planned it and sometimes there is just no brain capacity to revise these plans once in your head. It was on my route. I also needed to escape from Bolivia, always high, not breathing good there, always cold and always a little sad. There is this alcoholic sadness like in Hungary, and only the infantil happyness of its people, especially the women, who stay giggling around at 40, saces it from being sad. I fell in love with Bolivia, i had realise it when i arrived to Peru. Peru, or at least this part, is so much european again, shopping streets, beton everywhere, alternative youngsters having stylish glasses. Bolivia, you hate it or love it. They say this about India. So, you hate or love the underdevelopedness? The third world? By the way, wher is the second?

Bolivia is magical, with the huge chaos and those strange smells which somehow do not make you nausea.

The children are sweet and if you smile at them, you are already a friend of a family.

The adults played in la Paz's huge park (an empire for children, financed by the venezuelan gobernement, by the way, Morales is also friend with Castro (is he still alive por favor?) so there are cuban doctors attending you for free around Bolivia), and they enjoy it morer then their siblings.

The men are ugly and good humoured, till some age when they get totally deteriorated, probably from alcohol. They have a pure alcohol, tipically taken after everymeal, with some juice mixed.

So their faces get some kind of was figure exposed to the sun for too long. Of course that i am exaggering, but  the many    totally drunk, yellow eyed old man, who barely couldnot talk to us for example on our trip around sucre impacted me a lot. The women produce children under 20, wear their long hair in two plaits whcih they bind together withs ome ornaments, wear thousands of skirts which maybe they never clean, and have these beautiful materials wrapped around their back where they have everything, ffrom 5 kilos of potatoes, to their two children. People do not use bags, it is always these colourful materials their travel companions, which can also serve as a pillow to sit down in the camions for example. They also have some cute hats sometimes, on the top of their heads, like charlie chaplin. And the women laugh a lot. when we were on the camion, they wanted to peel of the hairy leg of Alvaro. "Quizas no va a doler" (Maybe it is not going to hurt)  - they said and were crying from laughter.

Ah, Mona Lisa played the charango, did you know?

Next to the bolivian flag (which originates from a flower, the red is for the blood flown, the yellow for the rich minerals, the green for the rich flora and fauna) is the wiphala flag (with inca originis) which among many more is the symbol for the indigeous folks autonomy. I am for the cause!

Actually with the Spanish girl we were talking here in Arequipa, that she was feeling ashamed all the time for the past. Emiliano told me that in his religious school, on dia de la raza (the day of the race)  -which falls on the date of the discovery (what??) of america, 12 October, one of the teachers started talking about massacres and stuff and he had to leave his job. The Spain said sorry for what we did only a few years ago. Now, Dia de La raza tries to be more a day of cultures, with telling more the truth. But still, Peru and Bolivia cannot produce cocaine as medicine (the two countries which have used the coca leaves for thousands of years) whereas many other countries can, Coca Cola is earning the profits of the coca leaves (and earlier of the cocaine) whereas Bolivia has to fight for the production. There is not too much justice for these countries and since american media rules the world till you do not travel here, you do not know about these things. I read some things in the museum of coca, in la paz.

mate de coca

I love the couples, they feel like love.

There must be many heartbrakes because every second song (terrible they are) I about broken hearted macho. The best song was in our micro to Copacabana, “God bless my mother that she gave birth to me like a macho” “The women are the real machistas because they search fro the machos” –Are you convinced?

On New Years Eve, you have to choose between red or yellow underwear. You might have guessed the red stands for love, and yellow for money. The problem of money can be solved in a relatively easier way, by buying billions of dollars for a few bolivianos. My new year was spent in the bed of the hostel, with some mysterious fever which I baptized fever of la paz.. I was feeling weak all day long, I didn’t know if it is because of the altitude, the tiredness or the pollution. The pollution can be terrible sometimes when these old cars and micros (small buses with someone always shouting the direction where it is heading to) jam up in a steep street. In the evening I was already with fever. The Japanese were cooking Japanese food, fortunately I was invited, if not I could have been reaaaaly hungry. One Japanese was extremely nice, my roommate, he brought me tea and food. When he later arrived totally drunk to his bed, he asked for his compensation with murmuring something like if I wanted to warm him during the night!!! Thank you, I am warm enough with my fever I said.

Three guys from Cordoba, Argentina saved my day, being so nice, and coming to great me at midnight with their unmistakable “fernet con coca”, I said Chin Chin and lift up my cup of tea. Later we traveled together to Copacabana and Isla del Sol. There is no way to beat the Argentineans (and especially the cordobeses) with sympathy!! They are just too funny! By isla del sol, our group grew bigger, with a German guy, Felix, and Victoria from Buenos Aires.

Talking of friends, you meet old travellers all the time. I walked along the share of Lago Titicaca when i came across the chilean girl :)

Copacabana is the center of blessing the vehicles, the substitution for security :D

isla del sol was just too beautiful... i wish i had stayed more nights!!!

I hade a farewell dinner and party

on the boat there was an argentinean with a hunagrain surname!!! yeaaaah

ciao ciao i leave for cuzco today

4 days walking in Cordillera de los frailes, around sucre

I am in Peru by now... I have lost my senses for a while and wasnot feeling like writing. Too many things started to happen inside and around me. I am leaving pieces of myself in some corners, along the roads, in the heart of other peopel. I forgot Europe, my things a little. The only reality is that of the travel. Again i am nostalgic about new people i met in la paz and copacabana but i am already getting to know new ones here in Arequipa, and i am going to be nostalgic about them in a few days. And this goes on and on like this till the end it seems. I think my nostalgy cannot be cured, i am fanatic about it. I have just watched the photoes of last week, and it seems still inside me and yet so far. And the places seem more and more beautifil like this froma far, when i am there they become the reality and do not have this speacial breathtaking effect of a postcard.

I am not reading the guide anymore, only when it is necessary, i do not go to too many museums, i do not care where and where.

I am missing Bolivia, a lot. It is another world inside these rich countries of Chile Argentina and Brasil. What is it doing there? What was here before Evo Morales? What will be here in 20 years? I cannot imagine any of the answers...

My flight will be from Brasil probably...So i will have to cross the jungle, and i will learn some portuguese, i will watch the fake tits of the perfect bodied brasilian girls and the almoand shaped eyes of the guys. I have a necklace from a friend, it was bought in Brasil, it should bring me luck.

So many things to tell but now i want to tell you about my 4 day trip around Sucre. We went with Alvaro, with a tent for 1 person where we pressed ourselves together to have place, with 5 kilos of mango and tomatoes and chocolate and with a little piece of map of lonely planet. I left my compass at home :) In the end of the trip we became experts to orientate us according to the mountains and rivers, the only points of reference.

We hitchhiked,

travelled on camions (many times there are camions instead of buses in farfetched places, very cheap and incredible atmosphere)

and walked a looooooooooot. I did not know that i was capable of walking so much!

We had to ask for the way from the locals (who speak way much better quechua or aymara than spanish) because the indications were never clear. One hour walking for them was 3 hours for us. Rumours of a bridge here and there, rumours of the level of danger of the river.

We slept the first night in a little church.

Our neighbours were maria and some little rats which ate just a little piece of all our chocolates. In the night we watched the lightnings in the distance.

In the morning, as it was Sunday a religious gathering arrived with alot of food, drink and good mood. They make apicninc every month here. The children can drink from the age of 15. they invited us to eat picana, a traditional bolivian christmas food. made with two kinds of meat, chicken and cow. they told me i could try that alcohol, i am only going to see some stars :)

We found that misterious bridge, or pasaje, it doesnot even deserve the name of a bridge.

The second night caught us with rain, so we had to find something fast. We asked a roof from the locals. Strange people, the fatther, totally drunk, was talking to us in quechua, and the son lazily translated his questions but our answers in Spanish probably did not get to the mind of the old guy. Anyway, after bargaining the price it was calmer and they made us tea and some popcorn kind of stuff. Instead of rats we had a grillo.

After the bridge, to get to Maragua, we had to climb so hight that i was thinking my lungs are going to jump out of their place and run back to sucre where i was only distrubing them with smoking some cigarettes sometimes.

Maragua lies in a crater, with purple and green surrealistic colours.

 The villagers do tourism, in a strange way. We were supposed to pay for everything, even they were laughing about the irreality of the camping price they wanted to give us. Finally they let us keep just there, under a little roof. They had some misterious reunion in the evening and in the morning a guy arrived witha fromal paper signed by the boss of the village that we have to pay. We got so angry!! Obviously we did not pay (they were prepared for this coz we had to sign that we read the letter) and i furiously wrote a little letter explaining our anger. On the village side, the boss stoppe dus in agood mood and wanted to make us pay for leaving the village. He was laughing. The sad or funny part is that they do not do it with a bad thought, just nobody explained them waht tourism really was. They asked us form which agency we had come... what??? we were with a broken tent and totally hippy style :)

We had to get up really early to catch the only camion to sucre. The city was strange after so many days in the nature... And i looked with different eyes at the women selling all their vegetables around, all were on those camions from those little villages...