Kasia's journal while she's in Bolivia during Senior Project in May.
E-mail Kasia directly at kasiap1@netscape.net.
Sunday, June 01, 2003
As I write this, I am on the airplane from Santa Cruz to Miami, somewhere over the Amazon. I tried to write an entry in a sketchy little internet-rental place in La Paz last night, but the internet was going so slowly that it would have cost more than I wanted to pay, so I gave the woman one boliviano and left.
Wednesday was a long day. I had another class that we had added on at the end, and I had a lot of stuff to do for the University before I left. There were a lot of sad goodbyes and “when are you coming back?”s. Julie and I convinced Leo to take us into La Paz really early in the morning so that we could have some time in the city. So we got up at 5:00 and left campus before the sun even came up over the mountains. Surprisingly, I didn’t get sick the entire trip on the T.M.D.R.I.T.W. (the-most-dangerous-road-in-the-world) and we made it into La Paz basically without incident. I guess I’ve gotten used to the scary cliffs and Leo’s fast driving, so I just spend the 4+ hours talking to Julie and enjoying the mountains. At one point, we picked up a road-worker and drove him about an hour to his post that was on the road right out in the middle of nowhere. The thing about T.M.D.R.I.T.W. is that it goes from one place to another place, but there is absolutely nothing in between except the Andes and the tropical forests and the waterfalls.
We had some work to do in La Paz, so we got that done first thing. We got something fixed on the truck (the altitude up in the mountains absolutely kills vehicles), we stopped by the Franciscan office and dropped off 3 puppies that we had brought with us from the UAC and exchanged them for 3 typewriters, to be taken back to the UAC. Then we went to the American Airlines office to confirm my flight and when we came out, we found ourselves in the middle of a big protest march with flags and megaphones and loud fireworks that sounded like guns going off. In February in La Paz, there were some big political protests that got very violent and a lot of people died, including a friend of Julie’s from the UAC. So this made her (understandably) very nervous and we went to have lunch and sit it out. Then Julie had some calls to make (it’s a lot cheaper from La Paz than Coroico), so I had an hour just to hang out on the street. I walked around and talked to some vendors and saw a little bit of the city, which was really cool. I bought a newspaper and sat and read it until Julie was done and then we went and got ice cream. I had the best ice cream in the world, called cherimoya which is made out of a Bolivian fruit by the same name. You always see this fruit in the markets. The fruit is bright avocado-y green with these spiky bumps all over it, and to see it, you wouldn’t think that it would make a good ice cream. But it actually does, all except for these big chunks that you think are going to be like candy pieces mixed in, but turn out to be the seeds of the fruit that you just have to spit out on the ground as you go.
Then we went to the Cathedral de San Fransisco, which is the oldest building in La Paz, having been built by the conquistadors. I guess maybe I’ve seen gaudier churches, like perhaps in Europe, but this one was incredibly hard to take in. There were gold altars all over the church and huge bejeweled gold panels honoring all different saints and the Spanish themselves. All of this gold was undoubtedly stolen from the Incan temples and melted down to create this shrine to their conquerors. The hardest part about this was the dichotomy between the extravagance and its settings. I don’t know how the Catholic Church can’t look at this Cathedral in light of the country that it is in and not be absolutely ashamed of itself. What that amount of gold is worth could feed the entire starving country of Bolivia for a month, but they have to live with it and worship it as their savior. I just don’t understand. All over the church there are these huge statues of Jesus with real human hair that are so bloody and gory that you can’t help but look away. Julie says that this is because the people of Bolivia, who live with such poverty, identify better with a suffering Jesus than the image of the risen savior. In front of all of these statues, you see old cholita women on their knees praying. I guess all of the gold is a way of honoring their religion, but to me it seems like such blindness.
I had read that the prisoners in the La Paz prison give tours regularly and tourists can go in and look around for a couple bolivianos. Julie and I wanted to go and check it out, but when we got there, we only got as far as the front gate and the guards stopped us and said that they weren’t giving tours. That was probably better, because just at the front gates, we could see hundreds of people gathered in this big room behind bars and it was a pretty spooky sight. I probably wouldn’t have liked a tour anyways.
We spent the rest of the day walking around La Paz, just seeing the city. We walked around all of the real markets where no one speaks English and tourists are scared to go and we saw thousands of cholitas hawking their fruits and fabrics and shoes and spices and bowler hats to each other. It was quite the sight. We were going to go wee a show of professional dancers doing the traditional folk dances in fancier costumes than you see way out in the campo but we were tired and so decided not to go. We had dinner at a REAL Cuban restaurant, which was absolutely amazing after a month of Bolivian food (I’m not making judgments, but let’s just say it’s not the greatest). Julie found out that she had received a counterfeit 50 Bs. Bill (which they’re always looking for here, because I guess they’re really common – even though I definitely couldn’t tell the difference – it had a watermark and everything – but every Bolivian we talked to knew that it was fake right away) and so I bought her dinner. The entire dinner of avocado and tomatoes and rice and beans and yucca and sodas and everything else was under $4, and that’s with a tip that was many many times larger than what is culturally expected. When we came out of the restaurant, there was another protest march going on, but this time it was an army of cholitas, which is about the least intimidating thing you can possibly imagine.
Since we were both exhausted, we decided to go to bed early and we went back and got in bed around 9:00, which gave us 7 hours until we had to get up for my early flight. Julie says that the altitude makes it hard to sleep, which I found to be true. Even though I was so tired, a combination of the altitude and the million things that were going through my mind kept me up until about 2:00 in the morning, which made getting up at 4:00 extraordinarily painful. At the La Paz airport, they open every bag you’re going to check before you do so, and by the time I got to this pint in the line, I was so nauseous from the fatigue and the altitude that really I thought I was going to throw up all of the security guard’s stainless steel table. It got worse when I went to eh metal detectors and the guard there decided to go through my carry-on bags. Thoroughly. Unfortunately, I had packed all of my shampoo and everything in my carry on and she wanted to open up every single bottle and have an in-depth conversation (in Spanish, of course) about its contents. Of course, because of the altitude, the shampoo and lotion and face-wash splattered EVERYWHERE all over EVERYTHING and the security guard and I stood there for 10 minutes rubbing the lotion that was all over into our hands and arms. The line at the metal detector was held up because the guards running it stopped so that they could watch and laugh at us. I guess it was funny. Kind of.
When I got into the terminal, I bought a Mate de Coca at the coffee bar and after a few sips, I felt completely better right away. The United States, in my opinion, should seriously think about legalizing it – at least in this medicinal form, because it’s like a miracle cure.
I had a window seat from La Paz to Santa Cruz and then . . . well, it’s a long story . . . I ended up in a middle seat on the flight to Miami. That’s 7 hours in a middle seat. Honestly, it’s like my worst nightmare. Oh well, I guess I’ve had worse experiences . . .
On the flight from Bolivia to Miami, all of the flight attendants and just about all of the passengers speak only Spanish, yet the security precautions video is only shown in English and French. I would be annoyed with American Airlines for this faux-pas if it weren’t for the fact that they are the only American airline willing to fly into Bolivia and that in the in-flight meal, they served almost real-tasting campo cheese.
It’s hard to imagine NOT being in Bolivia. I guess you can just get so used to things. Yet, I have begun to think about all of the things at home just like I would have. I’m getting nervous for my graduation speech and worried about how the Bolivian-bugbite-scars all over my ankles are going to look with my prom dress. Still, I can put a lot of things into perspective and much of what would have tormented me a month ago seems utterly silly now. But I’m excited to see family coming for graduation and I miss my parents and friends, so I guess I’m ready to be home.
Now they’re going to show a Kevin Kline movie that I’ve never heard of, and I think I’ll watch it because I have a lot of other time to do nothing.
we shall never cease from our exploring,
and the end of all our exploring,
will be to arrive at the place where we began
and to know the place for the first time.
-- t.s. eliot "four quartets"
AFTERWARD: ok, I don’t want to go into great detail about this because it’s a sensitive subject, but my flight from Miami to Chicago got in late and so I missed my flight home! It was awful! I almost had to spend the night in the Chicago airport, but my parents’ friend Fred came and picked me up and let me sleep on his couch, and then dropped me off at the airport in the morning. The travel time in total, from La Paz to St. Paul, took over 30 hours. It is SO GOOD to be home.
