Last Thursday morning (almost a week ago), I stepped off the plane at the world´s highest airport (13,000 ft) in El Alto, on the outskirts of La Paz. I was shakey with altitude, but mostly with excitement. After a full day of travel, I was excited to feel the rainy, coca-scented air of Bolivia.
From La Paz, my group hopped on a bus to descend to a lower elevation that would become our orientation home for the next few days. OH MY GOODNESS, THE BUS. It was the best foreign bus I´ve ever been on. It was a double decker bus (which I´ve never ridden on before), and the seats were like lounge chairs. I was lucky to sit on the top at the very front, surrounded by glass windows on three sides. I watched the Bolivian landscape roll by, chewing on coca leaves, and I couldnt help but laugh to myself everytime we passed a "Llama X-ing" sign on the side of the road. I was pretty content.
Between the llamas, the coca, and the bright indigenous people, Bolivia has, in many ways, matched the image I had in my head but never expected to see actualized. The only difference is that Bolivia is so clean! La Paz, in contrast to Kathmandu, is nice and well kept. There is no trash on the streets, there are green areas and gazebos dotting the city, and colored shrubs are planted in geometric patterns along the road medians for no purpose other than asthetics. Its true, I havent yet visited the poorer regions of Bolivia, but so far is has been extremely tidy.
Our group´s first few days were spent at El Poncho- an Eco-Lodge built from divine Andean numbers and cosmology- doing orientation activities and getting to know each other.
I´ve truly never been in a group that has clicked so well, so quickly. We are all very different, ranging in age from 17 to 21, but we get along great. We are already like family.
Still, the group experience is really different from my last semester. Our seminars on group dynamics and leadership roles are strongly reminiscent of NOLS, meanwhile the accountability we have to our instructors reminds me of a loosely-framed People to People trip. Perhaps the biggest difference is not being in a group, but rather being in a class-type setting with organized lessons and activities. It is different from the freedom and mobility I am used to, but I am learning more academics and gaining more contacts than I ever would on my own. In our free time, I still have plenty of opportunities for the cultural interaction that I love.
The other afternoon, while on a short hike, I was lured into an onion patch by several local girls. I spent the next hour chatting and pulling weeds by their sides. They sowed me some Bolivian dances, and in fair exchange I sang them a Celine Dion song and performed the Macarena.
I am currently in Cochabamba, one of Bolivia´s larger, nicer cities. Cochabamba is also home to South America´s largest Christo (Jesus statue) and South America´s largest open-air market. I have gone to visit both. I discovered my new favorite fruit in the market: chirimoya (custard apple). You can find anything and everything in the market, from hats to meats to furniture to live animals to stolen car parts. One of the strangest things I discovered were the dried llama fetuses (used as offerings) that hang from so many of the small stalls. The smallest were only 12 inches, but they grew upward in size and some were even mature enough to have fur.
The only thing I´ve found for sale in Bolivia that has shocked me as much as the llama fetuses is chocolate soymilk. Not lying. The beverage I expected to live without is actually sold (in plastic bags, no less) at every corner market and street cart!
I could bore you with more about my first few days in the country, but I wont. If you really want more perspective, you can check out the Yak Yak board at http://www.wheretherebedragons.com/yakyak.php (my course is Andes and Amazon, spring 2011). This is a collective blog that my whole group will be updating (under compulsion...) throught the course.
No worries! I´ll still be updating this blog, and most likely I´ll be copying and pasting onto the Yak Yak board. But feel free to check it out if you want to hear about Bolivia from the mouths (or keyboards) of my peers.
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