Pretty Potosí

Last Friday, I arrived in a quiet but pleasant town called Potosí. Wasn´t planning to stay long, but this mine tour I wanted to do wasn´t running till Monday, so I found myself in the well-rehearsed position of having nothing to do in a small town for a weekend. I ate well, did a lot of walking, saw the longest market street in the universe and checked out some local pubs. Definitely not a bad town to look at.

The entry to my hotelThe church at the end of my blockSome neighborhood boys playing in an alleyMe in my lonely room

Needless to say, after a few days of relaxing I was ready for a little excitement. In Potosí, mining is still a large part of their economy, with about 15,000 people still working the mines in the surrounding mountains. They´ve been at it since the 1500´s and at the current moment are enjoying some of the highest mineral prices in a long time. The specific mine we visited was in the mountain Cerro Ricco, which means something like Super Valuable Hill, according to this guy sitting next to me. Preparation included suiting up in a very worn-in mine-suit, visiting one of the refinery plants, and also picking up some goods at the Miner´s Market.

The refinery plant

Cerro Ricco, or as I like to call it - Bling Mountain!

We got coca leaves and soda for the miners, tried some of the traditional mining drink - 192 proof throat skinner - and picked up some dynamite for later. Our guide gave us a little background info, including the fact that the whole mountain was supposedly four years overdue for a massive collapse. Delightful! With that breath of confidence, we were ready to walk into some narrow dusty tunnels.

Multiple groups waiting to enter

Right off the bat, about 100 meters in, a couple of miners were riding a full cart (cart? what do you call those things?) of gravel out and derailed right in front of me, nearly losing their load and taking the bottom half of my body with it.

Straight outta Donkey Kong

Our group was comprised of all guys; young, eager, and perhaps a bit foolhardy, so our guide said we could have extra fun. His idea of fun was sending us on "challenges" where he´d give us directions and we´d have to crawl thru tiny spaces, climb wooden barriers and slide down mine chutes to meet him in another hot, cramped and dusty hole in the ground. We did all this, met some miners at work, and discussed the lack of oxygen - all taking about two hours. With our mouths sufficiently coated with dirt and various minerals and our shirts soaked through with sweat, we emerged from our personal hell into the bright cool outside. It was actually quite interesting, and I´ll admit a bit fun, to see how these people work and I now have a much greater appreciation of the everyday toil of miners around the world.

Me, England, and Ireland

At last, the grand finale - DYNO-MIIITE!!! We took out the dynamite we bought at the market, unraveled it (who knew dynamite was a green playdoh-like substance?), and prepared them in balls with their fuses, wrapped em paper, surrounded them with calcium somethinerother to make the explosion bigger, and wrapped it all again in a plastic bag. With short notice, the guide lit one guy´s fuse, and he used his fuse to one by one light all of ours, Fourth of July sparkle stick-style. We now had three minutes.

With the fuse lit

The guides took all the lit bundles and ran off into the hills screaming "BOMBA!!". They laid all of them out at a safe distance and ran back to the group. Everyone waited anxiously, and just as someone started to say, "Well where the heck -"

BOOM!!!!!!!!!

It wasn´t so visually spectacular as it was aural. The booms made it feel like, just for a second, your whole body was flattened in space before you bounced back to full form. We waited out seven of these massive charges and happily piled into the van to go back the Potosí. I absent-mindedly rubbed my eyes and felt the sweet burn of nitroglycerin as we returned. Coooool duuude

HAHAHA

i just realized i´m missing a crucial comma in the next entry, can you find where it should be? oh, and mina updated her trip summary on the hosomio blog, so check that again @ hosomio.blogspot.com
peace

I´M ALIIIIVE!!!

The Yungas road, a.k.a Death Road has been proclaimed the world´s deadliest. Indeed, in passing along this very road, one can see dozens of crosses standing testament to its steady diet of about 200-300 poor souls a year.

Behind the crosses - nothing, air for thousands of feet straight down. There was lots of talk about the Israeli guy who´d died only three weeks back.
So of course, tourists flock to La Paz every year to merrily ride bicycles down. Two days ago, I was one of them.
I found the cheapest agency I could and got picked up at 8 in the morning the next day. An hour drive brought us to a glacial lake where other agencies were unloading their gringos as well. There wasn´t a single native doing the ride, I can only guess they all know better. I strapped on my helmet, put on my orange and gray jumpsuit, and had some crackers. I couldn´t help but think, "These could be the last crackers I ever eat." I enjoyed them to the fullest and slapped myself.

The launching point

We started at above 5,000 meters. The first section was on a highway and all downhill, so i trailed the guide flying through the thin and frigid air.

The first part

We were doing that for about and hour and a half then ran into a few inclines. I´m proud to say I was one of the few to motor through only on bike, not walking or pussing out and getting in the bus. No pain no gain. Finally, we reached the fork in the road where the left continues on safely with comparitively soft-looking asphalt, and the right winds off into the mist and gravel. At that altitude, you´re basically always in a cloud, which was probably a blessing to blindfold us from the spine-tingling dropoff to our left.

Taking a break
A waterfall
A dramatic misty shot

We took the first part slowly, which nobody argued with since the path appeared to disappear a hundred feet ahead in the fog. The more we descended, the warmer and clearer it got. At last, when most of us had gained a little confidence on the bike, we began pushing the speed. The path widened and the dropoff was more of a slope, so I felt free to really let loose. I stuck to the guide and raced downhill. I got in a little silent competition with this German girl, who was a crazy horse beast, and we went neck and neck trying to keep up with the guide. Dust flew in my eyes and my butt, arms, and fingers ached like hell, but I was having the time of my life. I lost myself to the speed and adrenaline and the final hour was a blur. I do remember I beat Hitler though.

Me and Diego cooling off at the bottom

So in the end, it turned out to be much more fun than dangerous, in my opinion you´d have to be pretty foolish or incompetent to actually go over the edge. I know I´d do it again in an instant. It´s defintely been the highlight of my stay in La Paz, which has been nice all around. Here are some photos to serve as some cool-down viewing after that super-intense adventure blog.

Coming into La Paz, the view of the city from my bus
Look, Uma - in Bolivia, you´re bagged water! Cool!

Lone Ranger

Hello again everyone. I know it´s been some time, I´ve been waiting for Mina´s pictures and extra commentary just like you have. I´ve gotten word to expect it soon. After her departure, I hung out in Lima for a few days waiting for my camera to be fixed AGAIN. I met some cool Swedish guys my age staying at the hostel, Oscar, Marcus, and Carlos, so we went to the zoo and generally hung out. The night before the zoo though, I had this really vivid premonitional dream of getting eating alive by snakes and pumas, both of which I saw in the flesh the next day. Oogy boogey, I know. Anyways, the next day I went on my own to look for second-hand English novels but only managed to find the 1987 edition of the Guiness Book of World Records and The Hobbit among a bunch of romance crap. Did you know the fattest man ever lived on Bainbridge Island, right next to Seattle, and weighted like 1200 pounds? They treated him at UW Medical center, starved him basically for two years then he gained 200 lbs in two weeks immediately after being released. HAHA my god. But I digress.
So after that book hunt I went to Lima´s black market, which any normal shopper couldn´t tell apart from a proper shopping mall, I´m talking escalators and fountains and everything. Until you see the rock bottom prices and entire aisles devoted to not-so-wholesome viewing material. So there I picked up some much-needed CD´s and some black market Toblerone. Later that night these two German sisters who I volunteered with in Ayacucho randomly popped up in my hostel, completely unplanned, so we were happy to see each other and went out for some dindin.
The next day I caught a bus to Arequipa, which I´d seen already but seemed a good spot to split up the journey into Bolivia. And on the bus I got the entire front row on the second story, so I could lounge my little heart out and watch the road rush by underneath me.
Yesterday´s highlight around town was a steak and cheese sandwich which was unlike anything I´ve had this trip, and by the beard of Zeus, only two dollars. Today I went river rafting on the Rio Chili for about an hour and a half, passing Class I - Class IV rapids. Actually the Class IV was only for about two seconds plunging down a quasi-cliff, fun nonetheless. Kayaking is where it´s at though, there were a few kayaking next to our raft and they´re goin underwater, upside down, sideways, backwards, looked like loads of fun.
So...yeah! I got the rest of the sunny day to laze away in Arequipa then I´m headed thru Puno to La Paz. Should get there within a day or so, with a new bundle of adventures awaiting my arrival. Just thought I´d give y´all a dupdate. Lata

Hello Everyone! This is Mina and Owen reporting from Lima, Peru: our last stop before Piglet goes home and Dungbeetle stays on for more adventures in Bolivia, Chile and possibly Argentina. I´ll try to briefly recap my (Mina´s) trip, but for more pictures you can go to www.hosomio.blogspot.com because i don´t want to be repetitive. Chao!
By the way, the pictures aren´t uploading for the millionth time, so i´ll have to add them when I get home, along with more text. sorry, Mina.





My extended stay in Lima turned out to be a godsend, I got to hang out at the beach, take a tour of the city, and hang out with a really cool Colombian family. This is a picture I took on the tour at a place called Lover´s Lookout or something like that. I couldn´t quite capture how pretty the scenery was and I don´t know who that man is, otherwise I like the shot.



When I arrived the next morning in Ayacucho, expecting to see an eager Owen standing at the gates, I was mildy disappointed. Apparently Owen thought I would be coming in half an hour later than I was, so I spent some time taking pictures. This is a picture from the top level of the airport looking out on the runway. Once I started getting a little nervous I called Lorena (Owen´s coordinator person) and she and Owen coincidentally showed up at the same time, Owen by bus and Lorena by taxi. It was a happy reuinion and we all rode back to la casa together. See next picture for a happy reunion between Dungbeetle and I.



The day I got to Ayacucho was the biggest day for the Santa Semana celebrations. AFter the bullrun during the day we napped to save up energy for the nighttime festivities. Around ten o´clock we went out to the Plaza DÁrmas to see some fireworks. I´ve never seen anything like these fireworks. I was sure something was going to catch on fire because they had these huge structures that looked like they were made out of wood, and the firework were attached to the structures. I don´t know how they did it, but it looked really cool. THis is Owen attempting to get a good picture of the fiery structures, but you´ll have to use some imagination.

CORN PARTY!!

This´ll have to be a quick one. Just wanted to give a brief summary of the Festival de Choclo, held every year at corn harvest time, and a time for all locals to pull out the stops and cook some mean corn. You might think it sounds lame, indeed I wasn´t exactly pumped for the event, but I quickly learned not to underestimate a Peruvian, some corn, and a dash of creativity.

We descend on the corn feast.

There were sweet corn cakes, corn tamales, corn beef chili, delicious corn and veggie gumbos, and plenty of everything. We all pigged out on dozens of dishes and probably consumed about an acre of corn altogether.

The world´s largest corn something-er-other.

Sampling at an especially tasty stand.

We listened to some live music, to full to even roll over, and enjoyed the ever-present scenery. A wonderful cultural and culinary experience.

The view and a building in the town.

Ayacucho: Revisited

Back to my home away from home, although this time in a different house to accomodate our girth of 15 people. The work at the orphganage has been more like work, with all the kids back from break and going to school, we need to plan more educational activities and do a bunch of chores all the time. And this time around it´s really becoming apparent that most of the administration don´t give a hootinanny about the kids, so we´re on our own trying to get them to do homework, take showers, etc. Today I almost lost it when six kids and I wasted two and a half hours waiting for this pottery class that didn´t happen for the second time, due to the director having a certain part of his body stuck up another, if you catch my drift. Enough about that.

Most of the new crew, 12 gals, 3 guys. If you think that sounds nice, think again.

We´ve been doing the same things on the weekends as I did the first time, but there´s been a couple of new experiences. Getting bucked off a horse for example. We were taking horses to a waterfall nearby, and at one point I decided to open her up a bit and bring my steed to a gallop. That went fine, boosting my confidence to the point of getting a bigger faster horse and taking off like a gunshot. In was a mere ten seconds after this that I was going so fast that time slowed down, and my ´Whoa Nelly´s´ were lost to the wind. Jessie, if you´re reading this, I could really have used some pointers. I slid a bit sideways on the saddle, and knew I was doomed. Two more strides and my face was planted in thankfully well-maintained grass. A scrape on my arm, a nasty bruise on my hip, but I suppose it was all worth it for the marvelous first impression I made, right?

The first milder ride

Visiting the Wari ruins again.

A mountain donkey

Vinchos, the destination of a two hour hike

A girl and her sister at the trout farm we had lunch at

Another new thing we´re doing this time around is volunteering with Ayacucho´s association of disabled people every saturday in the mountains. I´ve only been once, but what we did was taxi up nearby this tiny town called yanama, to a gathering in a field of about a dozen squat mud buildings. Every weekend about a hundred disabled people and their families gather there and have meetings, play volleyball, etc. The disabled are really discriminated against in Peru, and organizations like this one and new and rare. Anyways, my job with two other girls was to prepare an english class, which we did containing a couple songs, diagrams, and games to teach about 15 kids their numbers, colors, and basic introductory english. It started slow, partly because of my poor spanish and partly because we were in the middle of a windy field, but the kids were eager and we got cookin near the end. Some of the other volunteers prepared an ecological course about littering (also a huge problem in peru) and general sanitation and health. It went extremely well, all the adults seemed to be really absorbed, and it all ended with us helping them clean up their field that was covered in a thin layer of trash. It was a success and a nice way to spend a Saturday morning. Too bad I forgot my camera.