i used to have ideals....

thoughts

2008-10-27T18:06:50Z

I was watching the Saturday Night Live skit yesterday with Will Farrel and Tina Fey, and i was rather struck by the difference in the type of satire evident in the two portrayals. Will Farrel's bush is almost apolitical, its a caricature, produced by over exaggerating the personal tendencies of our beloved (almost non-existent these days) current president. It struck a unique chord with me, a pining for our pastoral past when the comic prancing of an overgrown frat-boy (see Old School) were all it took to make us laugh at our leaders. Remember how funny it was when bush almost got taken out by a pretzel, or when Cheney shot that guy (in the face!)?

Tina Fey is a much more nuanced and intellegent actor, and Sarah Palin is... well its been said. The point is, it was easier to laugh at bush because it was all you could do. After the stolen elections, the inane and openly supurior way that the bush boys handled the press and the pesky majority of the country that was sickened by his administration, laughing at his inability to pronounce words or eat solid food was the next best thing to being thrown in jail for being a dissident.

I suppose im a little disheartened by this country moving from Farrel to Fey. Weve lost the innocence that allowed the neoconservative movement to gan so much power. After going through so much shock and dismay at the dismantling of our democracy, we need a more serious class of actors to parody our prospective leaders. The old style simply wont do. The fact that palin exhibits a kooky grasp of her native toungue is funny, but its the utter lack of respect, domination by pithy talking points, stagecraft as a substitute for qualification and total breakdown of the barrier between serving the public and serving your own interests that really gets our goat nowadays, something that Farrel is incapable of riffing off of.

When the satarization of our elected officials get serious, what the hell are the rest of us supposed to do?

Pirate watch

2008-09-04T16:50:55Z

Apparently, pirating aint all fun and games, there's a bit of orginization involved. and now, the most important question of the day, do i download chrome and kick the fox to the curb, or does my google life have limits? Them boys at google have a checkered history, maintaining some comitment right action, but privacy concerns tend to really curtail the usefulness of google's appraoch. so, we have to ask the very simple question, how much do i trust google? well, they do have a comic book, which is a fairly interesting read, but are they creating a virtual police state?
Ive had a rash of people ask me if i watched the republican convention, which i havent. I really find spin more interesting than actual political content, and the spin flying of this convention is something to see. in any case www.fivethirtyeight.com is a pretty interesting poll aggregation site, with specific wieghts for each poll and a complex methodology. after this week, the general election is officially on. Remeber the good old days when we would only pay attention to the last, like, four months of the election? Ah the innocence of not knowing what a caucus was... (Ill show you my caucus if you show me your pirimary....) Greg Mankew seems to showing some of the downsides of McCains tax policy today, which is interesting cause hes been complaining about Obama for awhile.

last day in Ecuador.

2008-08-20T15:29:13Z

Yesterday August ran into some North Americans in an internet cafe, who apparently told him the breadth of thefts and muggings thier group has gone through here. Ive never really been afraid in South America, not of the people anyway, but this town, Quito, is chock full of tourists, and the constant warnings about being careful and not going to certain places definitely makes for a more threatening environment. Additionally, everyone else got on a plane this morning at 430, leaving me here with nothing to do until my plane tonight at seven. I was gonna go a- walkabout for a couple of hours, but its kind of a miserable day, i dont have a camera, and the whole place seems to be sort of... down. Additionally, i get to have a pretty wierd night tonight, i have to find a way to get from Miami international Airport to Ft. Lauderdale Airport sometime between 1:00 and 6:00 in the morning. Whoo. Anyways, i might just go back to the hotel, pack, and watch a movie for a while.

Whats been wierd about this trip is that weve spent most of it having achieved our goal for coming down here. we climbed the mountian a week ago and since then its just been.... well, not basking in the glow exactly, but maybe a little lost. We caught the weather almost perfectly, but it still might have made things go a little easier to climb the mountian later, and the one thing that really hurt us was not acclimatizing.

We went up and saw the monument to the eqautor yesterday, with a cool taxi driver who took us to a bunch of places. the funny thing is, the monument is several hundred feet away from the actual eqautor, which is a bit of a disconnect. its kind of a cool picture to stand with one foot on either side of the eqautor, and frankly if i hadnt have known that it was not the real line, id have been fine, totally trusting. last night we went to what i feel was the best restaurant so far, drank wine, and the rest got packed up. Mudge has been down with some stomach thing for a day or so, which sucks. Something pretty bad too, worse than anything ive had down here. So thats gonna be a fun plane ride. My regular life is starting to seep into things, starting to think about school and finding a job and soccer again. (It´s really herd for tourists to play sports, so this continent is frustrating because they play soccer everywhere... without you...) Turns out ive got a bunch of stuff to do.
So, the challenge of the mountain was not really skills, although if were gonna keep doing this stuff im gonna have to keep certain habits up, but the altitude, which took all my strength. the beach was less than youd want from a resort, and more than you get in the third world, the city is actually kind of dull, unless you like expensive bars and the threat of mugging, bluefooted boobies have a superiority complex, whales dont like boats very much, people with cameras should always carry them, and i need to learn spanish.

Whales, Boobies, Mojitos on the beach in hammocks.

2008-08-17T19:34:09Z

After completing the mountain, we split into two groups. August and Forrest attempted the second tallest mountain in Ecuador, Cotopaxi, while Mudge, Sarah, Orion and myself went west to a town called Salinas, and then north to a resort-esque town called Puerto Lopez (unfourtunately i did not get to post from Puerto Lopez.) The coast of Ecuador caters to lots of national tourism, so while there were many other tourists, Gringos were not as pervasive as you would expect. The main attraction of this town is seasonal Whale watching, which we hit right on the head, and an island called Isla la Plata, where there are several species of Boobies... the birds that is. One thing they did have down pretty well were the bars, mostly just shacks on the beach with hammocks in back and a blender up front. You could literally lie in a hammock and have drinks brought to you. This is kind like living inside of a cliche, but it was very relaxing. The first night we got into the town, we got a hotel down the strip which resembled a concrete bunker, this is in fact how we reffered to the place. In general, though, despite a few bug bites, it was generally a good, and easy time. We took a tour to the Island, got to see whales, blue-footed Boobies, Masked Boobies, and French People. The Island there fell off the continent, so the ecosystem is alot more hardy than the Galapagos. (apparently theres a tortoiuse there that is the last of its species. Call me what you will, but that is damn depressing.) The bus ride back to Quito took twelve hours, in which my Ipod got stolen, we ate nothing, and one of the brakes (we think it was the brake, it was hard to tell) had to be hammered off one of the wheels, so pretty miserable. Today we toured the Quito Botanical Gardens, saw some cool Orchids and a bunch of endangered species (optimistically, were supposed to lose one in five species before the end of the century) and we are planning on getting dinner in the old town, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. should be cool. we leave on wednesday, so weve got a couple of options for how to spend our last days here. For the record, the Boy´s mountian bid was foiled by sickness, although they had a good time. We met them in the hotel last night, watching a Kevin Bacon movie.

On a side note, it seems like the drill anywhere, and everywhere, and as fast as possible lobby in the U.S. is gaining steam despite the fact that economically it makes no sense and will not help, well, anybody. This has an interestig paralell here, as Ecuador´s history has much to do with Oil. Theres alot of the stuff here, and it seems like there may be alot more. In the Globalization Dialogue, the oil fields here are rather controversial. It certainly seems that the oil wealth has fueled a large migration of wealth out of the country, leaving behind ecologically riuned rainforests, corruption, an increasingly shrinking middle class, and a growing social movement. Greg Palast, among others, has done a deal of reasearch on how the oil wealth here ruined the country, and in Political Science classes countries like Ecuador are held up as some mysterious paradox, where large amounts of natural resources do not cause a country to become rich and well-off.
Bolivia´s president Evo Morales held a recall vot last week, the idea being that the growing opposition to his presidency, lead by the eastern provinces of the country, and cumulating in the recent "autonomia" vote lead by Evo´s longtime rival, Manfred Reyes-Villa. This blog has an admittidly left wing account of recent events, although unlike the coverage that you see in the states, its actually from Bolivia. I suppose what im trying to say is that doing Public Policy because you´re scared (Gas prices are high! Drill Now!) misses the point. Countries have to fight, and fight hard, to profit from thier own natural resources. As far as drilling in the U.S. is concerned, it´s a terrible idea. It takes years for an oil well to get up and running, and the U.S. does not have any great excess of refining capacity. Additoinally, any sane politician (an admittedly scarce phenomenon) will realize the potential of the carbon tax. The point is, providing relief from high gas prices is not something drilling can do, so the policy option does not fix the problem it is addressing, which really should be like, a goal for any policy position, and accelerates the blatantly siucidal drift into ecological collapse brought about by the carbon economy. I guess i dont see the trade off as being very good.

Sometimes i read the news from back home and just sigh. Anyways, i think the plan from here is to go have siesta time at the hotel, maybe watch a bad movie, drink some cerveca and try and fend of whatever sickness im starting to feel. I start school, uh, in eight days, so ill prolly be on the internet a bit taking care of business, although apparently this netcafe sells beer, so....

Success!

2008-08-14T16:33:47Z

We climbed the mountain on the first night in the refugia, which was problematic as that entailed around 10,300ft of elevation gain in a day. High altitude sickness sets in after around ten thousand feet in a day, so we were all really sucking air for the top 1000ft of the climb. its hard to overstate how much the altitude caused us pain. I could take maybe six steps before i had to stop and catch my breath. At the summit, theres a maybe half mile jog over to the real peak, which took Forrest, Orion and myself around half an hour to complete, but that puts us at the fifteenth tallest peak in the world, the highest point in Ecuador, and the farthest point from the center of the earth, so quite a few accomplishments for a day of climbing. We had perfect weather, clear skies all morning. Began the climb at 1100 in the night (after 2 and a half hours of sleep) reached the first summit at around 730, and the real summit at 8, got back to the refugia at around 200 in the afternoon. Which makes us about usual on the ascent and like two hours behind schedual on the descent. Unfourtunately, having clear skies made it colder, and the peak is fairly well above 20,000 feet (the dead zone) so we couldnt get enough oxygen to keep ourselves warm, no matter how much we tried to move. we had moonlight for the first three hours or sao, until the moon went down, making everything dark and depressing for about five hours until the sun came up. This period of time entailed a seemingly endless trudge up a slightly crevassed snowfield.

(heck yes! Refugia in the foreground)
After getting back to the refugia, we decided to catch a ride in the back of a truck back to RIobamba, as most of us were completely exhausted, with a fair amount of altitude sickness going around. Alot of us had to take our boots off and check for frostbite. Considering the size of our group, we made pretty good time, keeping up with the guided groups for the most part. One causualty: my glasses broke as we were gearing up for the climb, vis a vis me putting on my baliclava. now i can wear either my sunglasses, which is wierd when its dark, or my regular glasses as long i wear my skullcap as well, which makes me look like a thug. Just bought superglue, so fingers crossed.

(Orions Hero shot approaching the Refugia)
After we got back to Riobamaba, August and Forrest decided to go climb a mountain called Cotopaxi, the second tallest in Ecuador, while the rest of us went o the beach (Hello, Malaria medication! like morning sickness for the non child-bearing....) About a seven hour bus ride, dropping 9000ft of elevation. So far Salinas is an expensive but not very appealing tourist ghetto, with old decrepid colonial hotels with cold showers. but there should be whales.

about to head up the mountain

2008-08-10T23:47:33Z

Chimborazo is big, big in the way that volcanoes are big, which is to say that the earth was forced out of the path of a terrible, smoky hot monster thousands of years ago, laying waste to all around it. The principle aspect of volcanoes, as opposed to the mountains in Colorado,
to which we are all so wonderfully accustomed, is the fact that they dont have any context. There are no other mountains nearby, and so they stand out. The picture above is from yesterday, with a bit more haze than today, i just came down from the balcony on our hotel, where the first views of the glacier have materialized just below the cloud cover. It is somewhat unfourtunate that we have such a looming, impressive goal for this trip, as Ecuador is among the coutries that are really interesting to me. It is the only other country, aside from Bolivia, that has a majority indigenous population. The graffiti here is as entertaining as the stuff in Bolivia, although it centers around neo-nazism, anarchy, mickey mouse, and Columbia. I just finished a book, by Franklin Foer, entitled How Soccer Explains the World, which is ultimately a fairly cluttered way to look at how globalization affects institutions, (it monetizes them) but it has provided me with alot of stuff to think about down here, vis a vis the whole rich kid in a poor country thing. Ecuador has dollarized, meaning that they´ve given up the considerable benefits of printing their own money in favor of the stabilizing effect of using the mighty (but falling) dollar. Things are still pretty cheap, and the act of being a tourist (there really should be a word for this, other than touristing) is actually alot easier, as we dont have to convert money. Anyways, i find that my spanish is not better, but easier to use, and alot more comfortable, which is positive as i start a spanish class three days after we get back. the group of six has fairly well established itself socially, which is easy as this group has been doing things together for, like six years now. Oh, i was just reminded, for anybody who found this looking for Ecuador, there is no real coffee here just sweet mother Nescafe. sigh. Anyways, were quickly running low on time, so we head up the mountain tomorrow, and stay at the refigia until we bag the peak. There is no real plan after that, although we might faction into some seperate groups (the "beachers," the "other mountainers," the "federalists") and do other things, although thats kind of a lame way to do this stuff. anyways, ill be back with a good story soon enough.

first week, or so...

2008-08-09T22:28:40Z

Given the fact that i found out that i was going to Ecuador about 48 hours before i left, things have gone surprisingly complication free. I had two airlines to get to Quito, the first was an economy line that took me to Atlanta, and stuck me there for an extara hour, and the second was a south American company that was full of, well, south Americans. My limited spanish skills served me to some degree. My seven hour layover in Miami was just as disorienting as i remembered, although it was easier because i no longer felt any qualms about sleeping on the seats. Got into Quito with a splitting headache, which toned down the being in a foriegn country alone where i dont speak the language terror/excitement. Got ripped off by some guy in a van charging me ten dollars to drive to the center of town, but i managed to find a hostel that was only six dollars a night, which is about as cheap as it gets.
Quito has a trolley running up and down its major arteries. To be more specific, it is an electric bus which loads in the median as opposed to on the side of the road, like a bus rapid transit system. I got to explore the travellers ghetto before i went to meet the others at the airport. (The airport is in the center of the city. there is a highway on either side and a golf course next to it. This makes for a particulairly nail biter of a landing, but it makes it eaiser to find the airport, you just follow the noises of planes taking off and landing, which can be heard from miles away.)
After meeting August, Forrest, Sarah and Orion at the airport, which only took two hours longer than i expected, we went out for drinks and some food at an upscale joint in the heart of the ghetto. This meal, and the accompanying three bottles of wine and shots of, unfourtunately, jeagermiester, is by far the single largest expense so far, outside of the tickets. One f the really strange moments in Quito involved Forrest and I stumbling up to the liquer store after dinner, where we hung out with some local youths who, after giving us some of whatever they were drinking (some sort of schnapps under the brand name Crystal), repeatedly warned us against talking to strangers... Anyway, we basicalll made acted like scum of the earth travellers, waking up the woman who ran the hotel at like one in the morning drunk, and interupted the Istreali´s watching Friends.
The next day we got some food from the market and set out for Muichachi, a town south of Quito with three large mountains next to it, where we were intending to acclimate and try out some skills. We stayed at the hacienda San Jose in El Chaupi, run by a guy named Rodrigo, and one of the better places ive stayed south mexico. (think warm showers, free breakfast, clean beds and beer) The comfort of the haciendo contrasted starkly with the general decrepidness of the Refugio Ilizanas, the oldest mountain hut in Ecuador. It was freezing cold, and soaking wet, with old stained mattreses and the tart smell of abundant mold. The mountain was extremely windy and foggy the first day, and extremely cold, windy and intermittently foggy in the morning, when we made a peak bid, which ended shortly, without success.
We spent the day after our failed bid back at the hacienda, eating Rodrigo´s excellent dinner. We are currently in Riobamba, near the main mountain of interest, Chimborazo. The idea is to spend as long as we have to to get good weather to tag the peak, and then we can slack off for the rest of the trip. anyways, tomorrow is sunday, so well be marooned in´Riobamba for a day, so i was gonna post something a bit more philisophical, as opposed to chronological.
so yeah, toodles

woke up after the party and....

2008-08-03T20:30:42Z

had a ticket to Ecuador, c/o my friends. woot. looks like ill have some new posts here pretty soon. I'm a little daunted by the size of the climb and the fact that i have done zero planning for it, but im not really worried about it. sounds like i wont be able to get very deep into the culture of things down there, this being largely a climbing trip, but there will be enough time to see a little bit of the area. Monetary concerns continue unabated, but it'll work out. ill have to engage in a great deal of remote business, as i need to register for various classes and tweek my schedual a bit, but it'll all be for the best. Th crazy thing is that ill have about two days of flying and sitting around at airports both ways, with an as yet unplanned trip between airports in Florida, but who likes being well rested anyway?

snowy monday

2008-04-07T20:24:32Z

i was trying to find a reason why there has been so much cold weather around these parts recently, and viola.

my god man

2007-12-12T07:29:58Z

Ive been really bored lately. i came to this conclusion when i realized that i was excited about having gotten a job. a job where ill be wearing crocs. im gonna say that again; crocs.actually it should be pretty doable. i met and liked the owner and the woman whom i'm assuming is going to be the foh (front of house if you've never worked in a restaurant) manager. theyll have good iced tea. in other news im still resolving some issues with cu regarding going on the hut trip. i haven't ruled out going on a hunger strike, but i think ill know by next week.

jays_a_sellout @ 2007-12-01T13:41:00

2007-12-01T20:43:10Z

heh. apparently old vw's are a pretty popular choice for electric conversion.

jays_a_sellout @ 2007-10-28T19:35:00

2007-10-29T01:39:47Z

got drunk at noon, watched a band that my mom is friends with today. pretty awesome after the three hour slideshow/party last night. apologies to everyone who was bored and let down by these events. i had a great time. just wish things were more... changed round these parts. (cant we clone one freakin dinosaur?)now i've got more than one influence telling me i should get on myspace. everyone i know who's a musician uses it. including my mommy.

jays_a_sellout @ 2007-10-24T22:36:00

2007-10-25T04:39:07Z

i am home. home again to the differences and the simple moments of lonely reflection, and hopefully the stunning fierce moments of activity. and i might be skinnier. i hope so.

seventeen hours left

2007-10-23T18:38:45Z

This is it. The last freakin day in Bolivia. After four months. We went out to Olivers Travels, a bar in La Paz last night. Our last bash sort of thing. They play good music there. In any case, its kind of managed by a brit and an american ex pat, two young guys who were travellers but got stuck. The american guy was there and lamenting on the fact that this had gotten old to him and he kind of wanted to move on, although he thought his girlfriend might be pregnant. This stuff wont happen at home. The whole thing kind of seems surreal. La Paz is home, the good old hostal Solario. Weve come back to this place many times, and it usually feels like a homecoming, nowadays. Boulder is like, millions of miles away. The other end of Gmail chat. In the bginning of this trip, we didnt really understand buses. We would just go and buy a ticket, show up half an hour early, pack our stuff and get on. As time wore on, we realized more and more that we were signing up for like, sixteen hours of torture. Uncomfortable, stuffy, dusty, terrible food at late night stops, kids singing off key for money, and getting dropped of in a strange city at five in the morning. Tomorrows plane flight feels like one of those first bus rides. We just show up, get through customs and then sail away, i guess. Its pretty hard to realize that we wont be coming back to La Paz. Yesterday, someone pickpocketed Forrest. Only got his passport, and had a fit of conscience a block later and returned it. I will miss this place.

jays_a_sellout @ 2007-10-17T19:19:00

2007-10-17T23:27:07Z

this will be my last post from somewhere ther than La Paz, or, Colorado, i guess. at least for awhile. we got up at 530 this morning to walk out to the vineyards, about 25km away. after buzzing the bell on our hostel for about half an hour, we got out, which is a problem weve had before. then after walking for an hour, we got a taxi, for significantly less than the book says it would cost. we got to the vinyard before they opened. its interesting country, and the wine´s pretty good. we have also found some pretty bad wine. and pretty bad singani, the bolivian national grape based hard alcohol. tomorow we have tickets for the twenty four hour bus ride to la paz, where we will get ready for coming home for a week, and hopefully have enough money left to go to the bar one more time. see everybody soon.

jays_a_sellout @ 2007-10-15T11:40:00

2007-10-15T15:45:08Z

Tupiza is an interesting place. Bolivia is about the size of California, not that small, but not huge either. Whats crazy about it is the diversity covered in that area. The amazon basin was one of those places, for me, that exists on a map. In some sort of other world, all i knew about it was that it was there and it was way different from everything i had ever seen. Which was true. What i learned about the rainforest was that its a pain in the but. Thousands of pounds of dirty, dusty dangerous biomass for every ten feet of distance between you and where you want to go. It´s pretty standard really, we need the rainforest. I mean the total we, every persono on the planet. But there are good reasons to burn the thing down, if you happen to live there. Convencional ecological conservation through tourism is a terrible system. It promotes the type of acventure tourism that you find in brochures, white people riding around in jeeps driven by friendly natives. Meanwhile indiginous movements occupy and destroy protected land, corporations buy off land owners, lip service is given to the idea of protecting these areas, but the whole system is being destroyed. Heres a qoute from a woman who was going to try and climb Huayna Potosí ´i need to go back to Killamanjaro before all the ice is gone´. Conservation will never be funded through tourism. Converging these two ideas presents those with money the opportunity to spend it on conservation and those with nothing the ability to take that money. The rainforest has no point where its value is judged or estimated. It is a bcackground for pictures. The simle fact is, as long as people live in and around these areas we are going to have to give them alot of reason to value the jungle as it is.

The only direct point where the rainforest affects us now is in the air, theyve been burning the thing down for a month to get ready for the rainy season, so half of Bolivia is covered in a terrible smog. The mountains, the high plains, and so on. There is alot of stuff in this country. Which is awesome. Were in the dry, high desert area. Hot during the day, cold at night, and full of wierd geology. There are crazy canyons, high rock towers, extremely spiky plants and very little water anywhere. And completely different from the rest of this country. Weve been hiking around during the day, ive gone through most of a bottle of sunscreen, but i dont have any burns yet. Which is surprising. The town is tiny, with five pizza places and not much else. Ive been watching alot of soccer and drinking beer, which comes in one liter bottles. Yay! The Internet is master than it has been in alot of places, which kinda makes sense as apparently this is the most literate place in Bolivia. There are alot of netcafe´s compared with the size of tupiza (except this computer does not have englich installed in Word. Makes it harder to edit.) In Sorata, for instance, we saw four netcafes, but when we tried to use the Internet, they all said they didnt have it. Anyways, from here we head to Tarija to taste some wine and see the city, and then its a 24-hour bus ride back to La Paz, assuming nothing strange happens. Things seem to have gotten significantly wierder in the U.S. while weve been gone. Al Gore, seriously?

jays_a_sellout @ 2007-10-10T19:53:00

2007-10-11T00:29:00Z

so we just went and did the salt flats of Uyuni. This is one of the flatest places on the planet (i think its the flattest, but i dont want to inappropriatly throw figures out there). Southern Bolivia is tremendously inhospitable. Its basically all high desert, and where there is water, its extremely salty. Further, there is a constant wind and its generally cold. Because of this, most people just do the tour that we just did. This is our second encounter with guided tours (although the guided thing just means theres some guy yelling at you to get going all the time) whats fun about this is that you meet new people, in this case a couple from Berlin, and some swiss girls. Its like this herd of four wheel drive vehicles parading through the desert, stopping in the same places. We had met some spanish girls and a couple from Australia/U.S. in La Paz, and we kept remeeting them along the way, which is an interesting, somewhat highschooly experience. the highlights were the salt flats, which were pretty much just salt and flat, like in the name, but for as far as you could see in any direction, and in the middle there was an island which was a coral reef like, thousands of years ago. Then there were ~~swamps~~ lakes with like, thousands of flamingos eating sludge. Which was kind cool. after that we saw Geysers, at like, 600 in the morning and a hot spring. We also spent the first night in a salt hotel (also aptly named; a hotel made of salt) which was surprisingly functional. Forrest didnt go in the hot spring. Wuss.
The jeeps are interesting, there are six tourists, a driver and a cook in each one. they all have different sticker or tour agency names on the side. they all carry extra tires and fuel, and they are all really close to breaking down. now, this would be deadly dangerous except for the fact that they are herding animals. unfourtunately, its next to impossible to sleep inside one. well, the rest of the trip will mostly be spent in Tupiza nad Turija, the southern wine country. mostly, its still the desert, but itll bring us within forty Km of the argentinean border, and thus well heve pretty much seen this entire country except the eastern, developed, wealthy, comfortable part. meh.

of devils and sins.

2007-10-07T16:18:14Z

Quick update: the mines of Potosi were crazy. The major health problem for miners is from silicosis, where silicon grows in the lungs. You can see silicon growing on the walls of the mine. Kind makes you think. Inside the mines there are a bunch of statues of the devil, with gigantic phalluses. This is important for the ceremonies performed by the miners, but its still kind of... graphic. We went out to the mines twice, and on the second time, Forrest and I tried the pure alcohol that the miners drink (96%) which was surprisingly drinkable. In addition, we were chewing alot of cocoa leaves. At ten in the morning. So that day was kind of a drug and alcohol infused haze. But alot of fun. It really only takes like three sips of that booze to get gone. We also saw a catholic science fair, with alot of little girls showing of thier projects on marriage, the arc, the theory of evolution, (i think they were against, but it was in spanish) and performing mock marriages. we met a guy who was doing his thesis in anthropology on the miners, from Austria, and some other interesting people.

After Potosi we went back to Copcabana and the Isla del Sol for a bit, where we were really running low on funds, which was interesting. all we could afford for dinner was a bottle of singani. (bolivian grape spirits) We actually got a picture of titi´karka, which is the rock of the puma in quecha, i think, and which lake titicaca is named after (they named thier lake after thier rock, which is named after a puma) and which forrest had neglected to take a picture of last time. So that was good.

Yesterday we went ahead and did the death road. Which was nuts. There was one cliff that was 1000mts (3300ft) (apparently during one of Bolivia´s recent dictatorships, in the 1950s, they used to push people off this cliff. fun fact!) and the road is pretty much one lane. And you can get going really fast, cause its all downhill, and more people die on this road than any other in the world. we met a bunch of other travellers, hung out at the nicest hotel in Coroico, which had hot, non-electrifying showers, food and beer. It was nice.

Tonight we catch a bus down to Uyuni, to go and see the salt flats. This has been a highlight of Bolivia since we started looking at it. Its comletely flat and covered in salt. And theres a hotel made entirely out of salt. after that weve got two weeks, (kinda starting to freak out about that) in which to explore southern bolivia, and then we go back home.

jays_a_sellout @ 2007-09-27T13:28:00

2007-09-27T17:30:16Z

Erin got into La Paz two days ago. Forrest had read her email and flight information incorrectly, so we were actually at the airport the day before (this involves the blind hope that Forrest´s tiny little alarm clock would wake us up at four in the morning, a bumbling ten minutes of putting clothes on, waking up the hotel attendant, getting out of the hotel, finding a cab, getting to the airport, seeing how long the flight has been delayed, wondering whether the burger king is open, getting crappy, overpriced Nescafe, and waiting for about two to three hours.) in any case, we were well practiced in the procedure before we got there. After Erin arrived, we went to some of our favorite haunts in La Paz, went and saw the world press photo exhibit at the church by our hotel, got Forrests camera back from the coffee shop where he had left it, and got on a bus for Potosi, a mining town (actually one of the most important mining towns in the Americas, and one of the largest cities (and highest at around 13000ft) at its heyday.

The bus sucked. Having three people instead of two put us in a position where one of us (me) would have to sit next to a stranger, and the operators actually moved me around, so I was sitting in between two people in the farthest back row. The seats back there don’t slide at all so the ride, in theory a ten hour ride from seven at night to 530 in the morning, was devoid of sleep. At around 200 in the morning, the bus stopped, and turned off its engines in the middle of nowhere. This was bad. There was a line of busses and trucks as far up the road as we could see, and apparently there was a road block. Again. It sucked, and they were going to be there for three days in theory. At some point some guys said they had a truck on the other side of the roadblock that we could walk to and get a ride to Potosi, so we started walking. Because they had to repack more, and Forrest was worried about missing the ride, he sent me on ahead, with the main group. It was about an hour long walk past hundreds of stuck vehicles, like twenty lines of rocks across the road, lots of grass fires and drunk blockaders, and one tire fire, and the truck on the other side was an ore truck, open topped. In addition, Forrest and Erin hadn’t caught up with me yet, so I had to try and get the truck to not leave while I looked for them. They had been taking pictures of the protests.

We got on the truck at about four in the morning, and loaded a lot of people. There were about sixty people in the truck, so for about five people (including me) it was standing room only. In addition, my feet were completely wedged in behind an old woman and a young couple with a baby. At some point I got about two inches of space and get the heel of one foot up, which meant now I was standing on one and a half feet. My calf on that side is still painful as hell. It was supposed to be a three hour ride, but it ended up taking about four and a half hours. At some point I could move again, so I sat on forests lap until his legs went numb. This entire time I was occupied with trying to keep my blanket wrapped around me to keep the wind out. I did eventually get to sit down, and passes out until the sun came up. It was a great introduction for Erin to this country. We got into Potosi at around 930 am and hiked around for a while to find a hotel, got some breakfast and passed out. It was awesome. Yesterday we did nothing, and today were going to go take a tour through the cooperative mines around Potosi. The life expectancy of the miners is about ten to fifteen years after they enter the mines. They can barely afford dynamite and coca leaves, so tourists are kind of expected to give them something. There are a lot of noxious gasses and fun stuff. Anyways, talk to yall later. Hope your having a silicon gas free day.

jays_a_sellout @ 2007-09-21T16:45:00

2007-09-21T19:56:11Z

Yesterday we went to see a wall exposed by miners working for a cement company containing more examples of dinosuar footprints than any other place in the World. They had cuonstructed a miniature park associated with the wall which contained like twenty statues of dinosuars and cretacious fish for comparison. This wasnt that impressive, the statues were cool, but we werent allowed to actually approach the wall, as having tourists visiting the critically important, massive, rare archeological site made it difficult for the miners to carry out thier dinamiting operations. Im not entirely sure how i feel about the regulatory regime that would not restrict a private interest from blowing up a hill that was proven to contain such a large amount of fossils. But i guess thats how it Works down here.

Anyway, we are in Sucre, the administrative capitol of Bolivia. It is a UNESCO World heritage site based on the proliference (is that a word?) of colonial architecture. It is a very pretty city, and one of the most progressive places in the country. (this means that there are girls walking around wearing clothes you could describe as Skimpy, if you are a patrarchichal imperialist, sexy if you are a misogynistic booty hunter, provocative if you are a sexually repressed academic, or a number of other words for a number of other flippant descriptions of poorly defined architypes. It also means that the grafiti has a distinctly esoteric streak (apparently the anarchists in this town want Sucre to be the capitol of Bolivia, and they want all the damn Masons out!). In addition to the Dino-park (which involved a ride on the dino- truck) we saw the house where the bolivian declaration of independance was signed, which had a portrait of Simon Bolivar that he considered to be the best likeness of himself and a replica of the original declaration. We also saw a Franciscan monestary, which was cool and had a lot of portraits of st. Francis, and a plaque marking the spot where somebody was assasinated. Next to this museum, there is a café with an impressive overview of the city where we got a few beers with a guy from Oregon, whose name i cant remember. This character had been in Sucre for two months, through a bunch of riots they had here about a month ago, relating to Sucres attempt to gain greater autonimy, and general dissatisfaction with the Evo Morales government in the more wealthy and less indiginous eastern region of the country. After beers at the Café Mirador, we went to the Joyride Café and got some food and more beers. Then we went back to the hotel. The bus thing in this country has a few themes: its imposible to sleep, and if you get to sleep, they will either stop someplace to get a meal, or arrive at your destination. Additionally, arriving at your destination means: its around five in the morning, the sun isnt up, youre groggy from having been woken up right after you just got to sleep for the first time, the guidbooks map is wrong, which doesnt matter very much as there is no way to figure out where north is. Furthur, the goal is to get to a hotel and sleep, but the hotel you carefully looked up and decided to go to the night before doesnt exist, and the hotels dont open for another 3 hours anyway, so getting to a hotel is a happy fantasy that keeps you walking around a strange city at 500 in the morning in a stupor, whereupon you settle for bad cup of coffee and Chat with the locals, who are going home from a night of heavy drinking. This seems to be the only reason anybody in Bolivia is awake before 800am. Also, the movies on the bus are dubbed versions of terrible american movies (Killer Bees was the most recent instalment), subtitled versions of good american movies that youll get to see half of before the bus breaks down for some reason, causing them to stop the bus, and therefore the movie, for a smoke filled ten minutes of waiting and trying not to suffocate while the operators ‘fix’ the bus (wait for the smoke to disperse into the bus, pretend everythings ok) at which point they switch dvds to something spanish and terrible (The Guardián was viewed this way), or a morality play where everything is bad and then the characters find god and everything is good again, in spanish. the point being, we had taken the bus to Sucre the night before last, so we were tired anyway, and stayed up till two am last night drinking singani, a bolivian grape liquer, and arguing about the prisoners dillema. so yesterday was a long day. if interesting. were heading back to La Paz tomorrow, which will be a 12 to 14 hour bus ride. should be fun.

slow week

2007-09-17T17:20:08Z

We had to work to get Huayna Potosi. We took the bus from El Alto, waking up at 4:30 in the morning, and leaving at 6:00am. The bus dropped us off on Zongo Pass at 7:30 am, in a blizzard. We kinda started to consider going back. But there was the Refugio, about 200ft away in the clouds, so we went there. The Refugio Huayna Potosi is a bit like the huts, only there was a woman there serving breakfast, and it cost 70 Boliviano´s for a night, around 9 dollars. There was a group there, a few guys from Argentina, and one guy from Spain, who had a guide with them. Once again, our conviction to do everything without guides was getting us into trouble. But the guide said the weather was better up high, so we decided to stay. After breakfast, we repacked and headed out to the old glacier to practice glacier stuff. We could not find a decent crevasse with which to practice, but we set up a semi-functional z-pulley, and practiced traveling on the glacier. This particular piece of glacier was pretty much pure ice, and somewhat different from my experience with glaciers before. In any case, we screwed around for awhile. At about 4:30 in the afternoon we realized two things: the clouds had come back with a vengeance, it was snowing and visibility was really low, and it was going to be dark soon. So we pulled our gear and headed back. The trail was obscured by the snow, so we get lost almost exactly as the sun went down. It was still foggy, and we were negotiating cliff bands and aqueducts for a while. At about 8:00 we started talking about what we had to bivouac with. About an hour later we stumbled into the Refugio, much to the amusement of the people who were there. They again suggested that we get guides.

The next day we hiked up to the higher Refugio, the rock camp. There were some Swiss people there, and another group of Argentineans arrived in the afternoon. It was still a blizzard outside. They had a little cooking tent were some guides were making dinner outside. And they wanted to lead us up in the morning as well, for some reason. We made dinner, screwed around and went to sleep around 7:00, when there seemed to be a break in the weather. We didn’t want to be the first group on the mountain, as the trail might be hard to follow, so, we decided to wake up at 2:00, after the first group. Of course at 1:00, the other group woke up and reported that it was still snowing and they were heading up anyway. We followed them a little later, their headlights illuminating the path up the mountain, which we still had not gotten a view of, as the past two days had been pretty foggy.

We passed all the other groups and met up with the lead group, which turned out to be the Argentinean and Spanish guys that we had met first thing. This put us into a bit of a pickle. We couldn’t pass them, as there was about eight inches of fresh snow on the trail, and they weren’t going as fast as us. So we followed them. The guide got lost just before sunrise, so we sat and waited for more light. We summated at around 8:00am, I think. It was still a blizzard. The weather was supposed to be better above 5000 meters. We were now above 6000. barely.

In any case, we got a better view as we were driving away. The clouds broke for about an hour on the way down the mountain giving us a pretty good view of the cordillera real. We got back to La Paz, sunburned and tired. So we took a few days off, and made chili on night. This was a mistake. We spent the next two days in pretty bad gastronomical distress. And now we are in Cochabamba, seeing the city and hanging out. My Grandmother´s friend is in this town somewhere, so I´m going to try and find him. They have a statue of Jesus that’s 33 meters high, which we went and saw yesterday. Pretty impressive. You can go up inside of the thing. Anyways, that’s where I am. Hope the rest of the world is good.

ahem

2007-09-09T19:50:15Z

~~Huayna Potosi 6088 meters/19974ft.~~
26 feet below 20,000ft. so theres that.

jays_a_sellout @ 2007-09-01T11:48:00

2007-09-01T16:24:13Z

(if you go to this guys flickr page and look at this photo, he points out the hotel he stayed at for ten dollars a night. we havent paid more than 4$ per person, and thats at the expensive place in La Paz. )

The majority of the places weve been in Bolivia seem to suffer from an excess of capacity. One problem we are constantly running into is restuaraunts without food. You go into a place, sit down, ponder the menu which usually has hilarious mistranslations (last night we were at a restuarant that had clip art to help you figure out what your were ordering, a fish, chicken, and so on. For the meat section they had a picture of a unicorn. (We were sold, and ordered immediatly from the unicorn section. I got mine rare) in any case, mt point is that copacabana distinctly has this problem. Its a major town on the edge of lake Titicaca. They have padle boats for rent, in a quick survey, I counted capacity for well over a hundred and fifty people. Not one was in the water. There are hotels everywhere, presumably they are mostly empty. As soon as you get off the bus, you are handed little adverts for hotels, and if you agree to stay somewhere, they lead you there. The first restuarant we went to only had one item they could make. They told us that after I ordered the filet mignon. So weve spent a day here, this afternoon were heading over to the Isla Del Sol to chill for a few days, hike around and such.

The major attractions are the church, a massive crazy building in a sort of arabic style. They do a blessing of the cars everyday, which was nuts to watch. Firecrackers are set off under the vhicles, wreaths and flowers and images of the famous image of the Virgin are put on the cars, a priest blesses the cars and then splashes holy water all over them, then things kinda get wierd. They spray beer and champagne on the cars, offer drinks to Pachamama and so forth. Its cheaper than insurance. We went to an arceological area, a precolinial inca site right out of town. Fairly unimpressive, this stuff is all over the place, and most of the time they dont charge. In any case there is a hill on the other side of town with a huge holy site, lots and lots of crosses and candles. It was pretty cool.

We were hanging out watching hem adorn thier cars, and a group of guys were hanging out on the outskirts of the action. They had travelled, as far as i could figure out, to offer stuff to the church. They had potatoes, like, a lot of different kinds of potatoes, and beer. We drank beer with them, spilling a little on the ground first for Pachamama.

Now, we are head off to the Isla Del Sol for two nights, see some ruins, hang out with the locals. Then back to La Paz and then out to Hyuani Potosi, depending on whethor/when erin gets here.

that was a long time to be backpacking

2007-08-28T19:11:59Z

We began in the small mountain town of Sorata, a colonial area that benefited from a number of Bolivias many boons, gold, quinine and rubber. We stayed in the residencial Sorata, a funky old colonial mansion built by a Quinine family. Considering the fact that we had a gigantic room with three beds, a good shower (the showers down here are electric. Hot water is hard to find and sketchy. For half the country, they dont even bother, as in the Amazon Basin, warm water is unnecesary, and cool showers are refreshing.) the cost was excedingly low. We were a day behind schedual already, having drank a bit the night before we were supposed to leave and woke up hungover, missed checkout and spent the day in La Paz screwing around. And then we decided to stay for a day in Sorata, as it is a stunning place with Illampu and Ancohuma, two of the highest peaks in the country about four miles, (and 11000ft) away. The bus ride was a cramped four hour affair, with a final hair raising descent into the valley of Sorata on intermittent pavement and dirt roads, half finished bridges and the smell of burning brakes filtering into the bus whenever we stopped.

Once into Sorata we set about looking for the start of the trail. There was gringo run restaurant, Petes Place, which had good maps of the mountians, books and food. There were english newspapers and a first edition copy of Mountaineering: the Freedom of the Hills, which i was ga ga over. Gringo mountaineering in Bolivia is Dominated by Alain Mesili, a frenchman, and Yossi Brain, an englishman. We´ve got one of Mesili´s mountain guides, and one of Brains trekking guides. Yossi Brain died in an avalanche in the Aplobambe in his thirties, but I believe Mesili is still alive. The idea of ecotourism, which is mostly a way to provide an economic incentive for the people of Bolivia to not strip mine thier mountains and slash and burn thier rainforrests is prevelant. There is a very good reason for this: Bolivia is a `megadiverse´ country. The ecology here has more boidiversity than most of the world. There is a park that has more bird species in it than all of Costa Rica. In one park. What this meant to us was that doing anything independantly, without guides, porters, or mules, is difficult. Most of the population in and around Sorata is employed or supported by the guides and porters. The position of the population is therefore that it is dangerous for gringos to trek or climb without guides. We recieved many warnings about being robbed. This is hard to deal with. For the record, we camped for thirteen nights, and didnt have any problems, whatsoever. So, do you beleive the guides when they say that your going to be robbed unless you have guides? And doesnt it seem a little bit like they want money because of the threat of you getting robbed? In any case, we ignored them.

So the first day of the trek was supposed to be a climb from the 9000ft Sorata to above a farming area called Lacathyia. Most of the poeple doing this trek have mules, so for us, who were vaguely out of shape and carrying packs between 50 and 60 pounds, we made it halfway and camped above a little town called Qualambaya. the next day we made it well above Lacathyia, heading for a pass at 15700 ft (that puts our first climb at a little under 6000 ft with full packs.) on the third day, which was pretty much just heading up the pass, the fog rolled in. We were following a well marked trail for most of the day, although the trail went to a mine, and not the pass, once we figured this out, we had to backtrack a bit and then got on the pass. This was a hellish series of switchbacks up a bad scree field, althought the view from the top, through a break in the clouds, was excellent. We camped at an area called `aguas calientes,´ a misleading title for a small, cold, oily pond. This is the major access point for Illampu, and it was a bit of a wreck. Not to mention not a refreshing and worm hot spring. Pshh.

Anyway, we woke to see that we were completely socked in by fog, visibility around thirty feet. Getting lost sucks. Getting lost in the Bolivian backcountry is a little worse, I think. In any case we dropped down and spent a long day getting to Ancoma, a little town about a kilometer from where we were supposed to be. Forrest was getting hit by the altitude, and had lost his appetite. Lunch was warmed powdered milk, with chocolate and a can of spam fried with mayonnaise. The guide (book) we had indicated that Ancoma offered camping for two dollars per person, and we figured we could get a baottle of something there, so we went for it. The backpacks were still very heavy, having only eaten down three days of ramen, spam, tomatoe paste, bread and oatmeal. When we arrived in the town, in the fog, we found a young girl operating a little shop, who told us to camp in the soccer field and didnt charge us anything. Forrest bargained for the only bottle of rum for miles and some coke, we made dinner and a drink, all the while with an audience of a gaggle of young girls. They wouldnt leave. So we went to bed. We were woken by a group of guides asking us where we were going and again warning us that we were going to be robbed. The girls had gathered all thier friends to watch us pack up and make breakfast, so we left as fast as we could. We opted to take the road to the next town, Cocoyo, over another 15000+ ft pass, as it was still foggy. All of our stuff was soaked from two nights in the fog, and we were hoping to get some sun soon. The pass took forever, but we got above the clouds for a few hours. Of course we then had to drop back into it. There were several migrant sort of squats outside of Cocoyo, which turned us around a little bit, and the slog down into the valley took forever. We got into town around sudown, hiked into the grazing area and set up camp. This was the first time we were on schedual for the trek.

The next day we reprovisioned with bread and some fruit and went for our next pass, up a valley. I was starting to slow down from the altitude and Forrest was feeling better. We had originally planned to stop in the valley and take a slow day, but the pass came into view early so we pushed for it. This entire area of Bolivia is filled with herders and thier llamas, donkeys and sheep. Theres alot of good camping, but its all shared pasture land with lots of... droppings. And people to tell us were gonna get robbed for not having guides. The next day we did another pass, this one being the tallest of the trek at 16500ft, and dropped into a scenic valley surrounded by glaciated peaks. We ate some more ramen and spam, and went to bed. When we woke up, i threw up and had to go to the bathroom. It was obvious that I had caught some sort of travellers bug from something. Forrest tagged some peak we dont know the name of and I took a rest day. This was after seven days of backpacking with these ungodly packs. That were starting to feel better. I mean, we still couldnt lift them from the ground to our backs, and had to use rocks to rest them on, but once they were on our backs it wasnt so bad. Forrest had actually put his biking paniers onto his pack for more space. Of course, due to my sickness, I had no appetite whatsoever, and was struggling to hold down water with juice packets in it. Forrests feet were developing bruises and had a couple of open sores on them from wearing wet socks.

We spent the next day getting into another valley, and pretty much decided to bail. This was difficult. It was at least four days to get out, and two high passes.

My back was starting to hurt. My pack has always been just a little two small, and I was eating nothing. the next pass was steep as hell and I accidentally led us to a lake that was up the valley from the pass, inspiring Forrests anger. We stopped for lunch at the top of the pass, where some rancher´s kid wandered over. This happened a few times. Travellers have been giving chocolate and money to these kids for awhile, so they just kind of expect it. We gave him some crackers, and watched as this kid ate like a half kilo of crackers in front of us, without talking are smiling or frowning. It was surreal. The major problem with this trend, beyond the fact that every child for miles want something from us travellers, is that there is no dental care available to them. So giving them chocolate ruins thier teeth with no hope for correction. The only benefit to us was that when we passed this kids mother and flock, he shood thier dogs away from us before they could bite.

After that we did one more pass by road, which was easier on Forrests feet, and then had a 40km downhill walk to look forward to. We were passed by five trucks on the way up the pass, all going to wrong way. This gave us some hope that some trucks would be going to oppisite way, and we could hitch a ride. The next day we hiked until about 100pm and then mercifully a truck came, and we hopped in the back. There was a gold miner there with us, of all things. He asked for food, and offered us an ounce of gold for 150 bolivianos. We were tempted but still unsure how much the ride was going to cost us, and we had very little money on us. In any case, the truck took us to La Paz, back to civilization and a hotel. We went and saw Die Hard four and ate good food, and now I am reading some books about bolivian history. We had been fantasizing about good food since the third day of oatmeal, powdered soup with instant mashed potatoes, ramen, tomatoe paste and spam. Our diet was limited and got old very fast. We had aslo watched a pirated copy of tears of the sun with Bruce Willis at the hotel in Sorata, (Forrests choice) so die hard four was an interesting conclusion. Now were back and planning on heading out to lake titicaca before we start tagging high peaks and heading South. Clean clothes, warm food that is´nt spam (im pretty sure the spam had a role in making me sick, so I dont think I could eat any more of it if I wanted too) movies and books. A vacation from our vacation while we are on vacation

leaving on a minibus

2007-08-11T03:27:21Z

Allright, so the independence day celebrations were a little less than spectacular. Mostly, it just meant that alot of places were closed for the past week. Our major occupation has been gearing up for a twenty five day trek across the Cordillera Real, a spectacular mountain range in the north of Bolivia with, I think, five peaks over 6000 meters. the route crosses aomething like 20 passes over 15,000 ft, although we will be ending it early. We´ll be starting in a town called Sorata, and ending on the Hyuani Potosi Refugia, about six miles outside of La Paz. This is along trek, longer than weve ever been unsupported, although there are plenty of good bales. the altitudes are also above and beyond anything in Colorado. we are leaving for the start tomorrow, and should return to La Paz about 25-26 days later. the packs we have are extremely heavy, with twenty five days of food and fuel, cold weather gear, med kits, layers and basically nothing else.
Forrest and I went and saw the new oceans 13 movie, blessedly in english with subtitles, and then Forrest saw the new Harry Potter, mostly to spite me. we adventured to the southern zone of La Paz, walking by the presidents house. (while doing this, we were asked by armed guards to cross to the opisite side of the street, which was interesting because after about a hundred feet, theres a military zone, so we were asked by a man with a machine gun to walk in the road, on the side farthest from the presidents house. ) in doing saw, we actually got to see the river of La Paz. there are no dunping laws, so this is an extremely fetid river, and for the majority of its extension in La Paz it is coverd. Forrest qouted something like 150,000 liters of raw urine are deposited into this river yearly. La Paz holds something like a quarter of Bolivias population all told. walking around the city is a heady task.
anyway, im pretty much just checking in before we leave, and I wont be able to update for awhile. but i should have some interesting stories when we get back.