Life in Bolivia

2005-12-15T12:04:00.000-05:00

I know this blog is dead. I'm working on getting my new one www.coffeemetalbeer.blogspot.com up, but until then I thought I would post this here.

I was waiting for my bus here in Portland this morning. Freezing my ass off, as it was about 28 degrees out. Behind my bus stop is a place called Stumptown Printers. They do concert posters and all sorts of cool stuff. One of the guys from Foghorn Stringband works there.

Anyway, imagine my surprise when I saw this poster in the window. It was designed by www.justseeds.org, and you can buy copies there for $3. Stumptown did the printing. Very cool for all you Boliviaphiles.

Adios, y buenos noches

2005-10-03T23:31:00.000-04:00

Let me say that it is good to be home in Portland, Oregon. It is so nice to again be able to ride my bikes, see live music, drink beer, soak up cold, rainy days and dose myself with the world's best coffee. Oh, and to be surrounded by more friends than anyone as surly as me has any business having. If I died and went to heaven, the only difference between it and Portland would -- hopefully -- be cheaper housing in heaven.

When we came up with the crazy idea to move to Bolivia, I started this blog as a way to keep our friends and family up to date on what we were doing and where we were. Somewhere along the way, it became a general forum for me to rage on about whatever was on my mind.

Most surprisingly, people seemed to enjoy what I was writing. I can't get over how many people read this thing. I get a ton of e-mails from complete strangers telling me how much they enjoy the blog. That's nice. One of the best compliments came from an acquaintance here in Portland who recently told me that even though I've been thousands of miles away this past year, she feels like she knows me so much better now because of the blog. That makes me feel like I was doing something right.

Well, now that we are home in Portland and have finally found an apartment, I just don't think that there is anything left to write about -- at least anything that fits the confines of "Life in Bolivia." So, I will end it here. I may start a new blog about something else. Maybe I will work up enough energy to expand the blog and turn it into a book. Maybe. We'll see.

There are truly too many folks to thank individually for their help and support during this crazy adventure, but I will single out three.

First, my brother Jeff. There is only one person on this earth that we could not have done this without and that is Jeff. Our beloved 3-legged Rottweiler Juno needed a temporary home while we were in Bolivia. Without hesitation, Jeff agreed to take her. He spoils her rotten and she loves it and deserves it. No Jeff, no life in Bolivia. Muchas gracias, mi hermano.

Second, my parents. I could call my folks up and tell them that I was going to build a rocket in my backyard and fly to mars, and their only reaction would be to say "What can we do to support you." They realize that the best a parent can hope for is to have happy kids who are the best individuals they can be. The object isn't to make tiny clones of themselves. I hope to remember this with Mac and Jane. If I can be 1/2 the parent my mom and dad are, Mac and Jane will be lucky kids. Muchas gracias, mom and dad.

Third, Lu, Jheyson and Vlady, our Bolivian family. They took care of us, watched out for us, counseled us, and provided invaluable insight into the "real" Bolivia that we otherwise would not have had. If there exists a better human being than Lourdes, I have never met them. Muchas gracias, mi familia.

Finally, if there is a take-away point from our entire experience, it can probably be summed up in this quote from Cash Peters, who hosts a Travel Channel TV show:

"Every five or ten years, you have a big adventure; otherwise, you are not living."

Think about it. If you keep pushing off your dreams until next year, or until you can only save up enough money, you will never, ever realize them. You will never do anything. And you will die thinking about all the cool things you always wanted to do but never got around to. Please, do it and do it now. And don't forget to tell us all about it. The only regret you will ever have is the decision not to go.

Us? We're already dreaming up our next crazy scheme.

Friends in Need

2005-09-27T16:58:00.000-04:00

We got some bad news from our friends Doug and Lisa Jo Looney down in Bolivia. Doug and Lisa Jo are Catholic missionaries with the Maryknoll organization. They are Red Sox fans, so you know they are good people. Their three little kids went to school with Jane at Tierra de Ninos preschool. In fact, I first met Doug when I was walking into the school and he was walking out and we were both wearing Red Sox hats.

Anyway, Doug was experiencing some pain and went in to the hospital to have it checked out. Turns out that Doug has a tumor growing in him and it needs to come out.

Faced with major surgery and potential cancer treatment (they don't know what it is yet) in Bolivia or in the United States, they chose to send Doug back to the U.S.

As you can imagine, if you were sitting in a hospital bed somewhere in pain, and scared, it sure would be nice to have your family with you. It will cost the Looney's around $3,000 to get the whole family back to the States. Missionaries don't make a lot of money. They really need some help to pay for this trip.

I can tell you firsthand that Doug and Lisa Jo do a lot of good work in Bolivia. They don't walk around trying to convert the natives to Catholicism. That isn't what they do. Instead, they live in a very poor area of Cochabamba and do their best simply to help the poor people have better lives. Lisa Jo, a trained grief counselor, also spends a lot of time in local hospitals comforting people who are dying. It would be great if some of those Karma points could be cashed in now.

If you are at all in a position to help a very good bunch of people who are out in the world sacrificing themselves trying to make the world a better place, then please consider sending a little money their way. The money would ensure that the whole family can be together right now. Every bit helps. If you can't send money, then I am sure they would appreciate any prayers you can offer. They are good folks and they need your help.

Send checks to:

Lisa Jo and Doug Looney
Maryknoll Lay Missioners
Bethany House
Maryknoll, NY 10545

Muchas gracias.

Back Home Again

2005-09-26T14:32:00.000-04:00

After Day 3's epic 758 miles over 14.5 hours (including 4 hours in Ft. Collins getting Smokey fixed up) I was in no mood to travel today. In fact, it seemed like a heck of a day to sleep in, then kill the afternoon in a pub. But then I remembered I was in a Motel 6 in Ogden, Utah and suddenly the open road didn't seem so bad.

So at 6:30AM I am once again hauling the duffel bags out and tying them onto the roof. Man, it is COOOOOLD in Ogden Utah in the morning. My hands turn numb while tying knots. But soon enough I am wandering back out to the interstate and making way towards Portland.

Utah is some pretty country. To my left for a while is the Salt Lake. I see a lot of nice rock formations along the way, but not much else. Once you get north of Ogden (which itself is north of Salt Lake City), it is some barren country.

I am also on like day 4 of the Roberts confirmation hearings and it is just killing me.

Quick enough and we're in Idaho. This part of Idaho looks a lot like Kansas. Then again, most of the country looks a lot like Kansas. Remember that next time you talk smack about Kansas.

My first gas stop is somewhere outside Twin Falls. Smokey is a smokin' and a drippin'.

I've always romanticized Boise, Idaho as being kind of a mini-Portland on the rise. A frontier town with character on the verge of taking off. Gateway to some beautiful country. I had never been any where near Boise before, so I don't know why I thought that. From the highway, Boise is kind of dreary and depressing. To be honest, a lot of places are like that (though not St. Louis or Louisville, both of which looked cool from the highway and made me want to visit). So, I drive on and decide to grab some lunch further up the road.

I am also making a list of life's universal truths. I have added these so far this trip:
23. From the interstate, the whole country pretty much looks like Kansas.
24. Truckers are apparently all perverts.
25. If there isn't constant and maddening construction on your highways, your congressman isn't doing his job 'cause the rest of the country is being widened. Call him and tell him you want your pork too.
26. Being in fear that at any moment your 6-year-old car with 108,000 miles on it will die, stranding you 30 miles from anywhere in an area with no cell phone reception, helps keep your mind off the fact that the entire country looks like Kansas and that all commercial radio sucks.

Up to the Oregon border the interstate system has pretty much been straight and flat. But soon after your cross into Oregon, Interstate 84 starts curving and climbing and showing off fancy things like "trees," which, believe it or not, they do not have in Kansas. Oregon seems to say "we're different here. We don't suck." It makes me feel good.

Well, until I notice two things about Oregon: (1) it is the most desolate state I have encountered, with even fewer roadside services than Wyoming; and (2) it is the only state with a 65mph speed limit on the interstate. I spend most of south eastern Oregon starving to death, hoping I don't run out of gas, with my foot on the brake. Speaking of which, it still pisses me off that you can't pump your own gas in Oregon.

At some point after half of a day driving in Oregon, I suddenly realize that the golden hills have been replaced with forest. It is kind of weird because you are driving through high desert plains one minute, and the next it's like "Wow, where the hell did the trees come from?" I also think to myself that if I had never been to western Oregon, I would be dumbfounded by the beauty.

The road in to Portland skirts the southern shore of the Columbia river, taking you through what they call "The Gorge." It is always windy out here and you see crazy muthers on their kite boards and wind surfers just blazing across the river. It doesn't look fun; it just looks scary.

About 5pm I finally am able to relax, knowing that Smokey is going to live long enough to take me home. A half an hour later I am puttering through my old neighborhood, tired, exhausted and sick of driving. Portland looks the same as when I left her a year ago, but is somehow busier, bigger and crazier than I remember. No other city we have visited in the world bussles with the same amount of energy as Portland. To be honest, it kind of overwhelms what is left of my brain.

I pull Smokey up to a spot in front our friend Susan's house, near 28th and E. Burnside. I shut off the engine and watch the oil smoke rise for the final time. I use what is left of my energy to unload the duffle bags from the roof one last time, before collapsing into a heap on Susan's couch. She shoves a bottle of Mirror Pond in my hand. It will be several days until my brain, road-weary from 2800 miles (I managed 742 the last day) is able to form a coherent thought.

Day 3, or how I spent my afternoon in Ft. Collins, Co.

2005-09-21T15:58:00.000-04:00

6:30AM in Colby, Kansas is unholy cold. Well, at least to someone who just left hot, humid North Carolina. When I back up the Subaru, I notice a pizza-sized oil spot under the car. Crap. I cross the street to fill the gas tank and buy a few extra quarts of oil while I am at it. I roll out and cross my fingers.

A couple of hours later, I approach Denver. Until this point, I had seen nothing but corn fields. But the corn fields end at Denver with the Rocky Mountains rising straight up out of the ground. The little bit I can see through the brown air looks impressive. I take E470 around Denver so I miss downtown's rush hour traffic. But E470 is a toll road. No big deal, right? Well, every 3 miles is a toll plaza. It costs me $10 to go 17 miles. And everytime I stop to pay a toll, my car becomes enveloped in smoke. Still, better than being stuck downtown at rush hour.

The other thing I notice about Denver is the sprawl. Pretty soon suburban Denver will go all the way to Salina, Kansas. Lots of ticky tacky little boxes (note: subtle reference to the brilliant Showtime series "Weeds").

Leaving the Denver area, I notice on the map that there is not much between Denver and Boise, some six hundred miles away. Which is to say there isn't much between Denver and Portland. Outside of Denver I stop at a rest stop and the Subaru is dripping a ton of oil and smoking like Snoop Dog at a NORML rally. Which is to say it is smoking a lot.

So I pull off the highway in Ft. Collins, Colorado (just north of Denver). As luck would have it, Smokey (my new name for our Subaru) leads me right to a place called "Nice Car," which fixes nothing but Subarus. The mechanics take one look at Smokey, all laden down with the duffel bags on her roof, and they know what has to be done. They feel sorry for us, and commit to putting us back on the road ASAP. The guys at Nice Car shuffle Smokey to the front of the line and put her up on the rack.

One look confirms it: Smokey's front crank case seal is a goner. Maybe another seal farther back in the engine is gone too, but there is so much oil splattered on the bottom of the car that they can't see. The guys set to work fixing Smokey and I head up the street to downtown Ft. Collins.

I love Ft. Collins. What a cool little town! It has lots of old brick buildings, tons of people on bikes and driving Subarus. In short, it is like a little, dry Portland. Definitely a "10" when it comes to towns to be stuck in on the road.

I quickly find a coffee place called "The Bean Cycle," which roasts their own beans on an Ambex roaster up front. I grab a large coffee and settle into a soft couch and proceed to kill off the rest of the morning with a good book. Second best cup of coffee I have ever had (Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Portland is the best coffee in the world). They even fire up the roaster and I am treated to the sweet black licorice smell of roasting coffee beans. What heaven!

I have a couple hours yet to kill before the car is ready, so I walk around town a bit more. The warm hominess of Ft. Collins is such a stark contrast to all of the rest stops, corn fields and gas/McDonalds freeway pit stops. I could live here.

After a bit, my nose leads me to Coopersmiths, a brewery. Since I am stranded here, I treat myself to a couple of pints of a nice tasty IPA. Not a bad way to kill an hour or two.

But soon enough my car is ready. I hop on the road $450 lighter, but Smokey isn't so smokey. 100 miles later, after crossing into Wyoming, I pull off the road and check the car. Smokey isn't smoking or dripping. Good sign. I continue on and during the late afternoon I stop to get some gas. The second I turn off the ignition, Smokey starts smoking. And dripping oil. Not as bad as before, but obviously there is another bad seal. Damn. I now have to stop every hour to check the oil level.

Now a word on Wyoming: It is beautiful, with brown grass fields, dramatic skies and beautiful rock formations. But it is desolate. In fact, they have barely any rest areas. Instead, they have what they call "parking areas," which are rest areas without a toilet. I guess they figure that out here in the middle of nowhere, who really cares where you pee?

By 8pm I roll into Ogden, Utah and find the obligatory Motel 6. I am dead-dog tired. Despite a 4 hour layover in Ft. Collins, I make 758 miles today, a record for the trip.

Day 2: More of the Same

2005-09-19T12:39:00.000-04:00

Sitting on your bum bum all day driving makes one a lot more tired than one would imagine. So, last night I slept HARD after those 683 miles. I intended to sleep in, but I popped awake at about 5:30 in the morning. So, lacking anything better to do, I loaded all the bags back on the roof, tied them down well, and was on the road by 6:30.

I'm a few minutes outside of Mt. Vernon, IL when the sun begins to rise. It is a giant, gauzy red sunrise which tints the brown cornfields. I watch the sun reflect off the tailgate of the truck in front of me. Pretty.

It isn't long until we hit the first of what is to prove a maddening day of road construction. If I haven't said this already, let me say it now: The whole damn interstate system is under construction. I must get stuck in a dozen construction zones today.

Construction is a pain because it slows me down. The road narrows to one lane and the speed limit often drops to 45 or so. And there are all these big signs saying "Minimum fine in construction zone: $395."

Let me tell you, the threat of an almost $400 fine for speeding slows me right down. I crawl through these zones. But invariably there is some jerk on my tail wanting to take his chances at 75mph.

I manage to time it perfectly so that I hit St. Louis at rush hour. I crawl through the city. My engine is starting to smoke again from the oil leak. Great. I'm this little gray cloud creeping through St. Louis.

With traffic and construction, I make just 80 miles in the first two hours.

Eventually, I am through the city and I-70 opens up a bit. Missouri looks just like Illinois and Indiana -- nothing but brown cornfields. Well, that and porno.

Missouri, as viewed from I-70, is nothing but adult video and fireworks "superstores". There is one of each at every exit. I don't know if this says more about Missouri or the truckers the stores are primarily aimed at (I know this because they all advertise "truck parking" and one even calls itself "Adult Video Superstore Truck Stop").

Not much in the way of radio out here in middle of nowheresville. I get middle of the road country and public radio. I like public radio, but all that is on this week is the Roberts confirmation hearing. I am a lawyer and this stuff bores me.

Kansas doesn't seem very inviting. It is the only state I go through without a "Welcome to . . . " sign. The road through Kanasas is also impossibly straight. I think that Kansas wants you to get the hell out of its state fast. I note that every damn farm in Kansas has a billboard pointed at the interstate with an anti-abortion slogan on it. Hope those truckers picked up condoms at the Missouri adult superstores.

As the afternoon drones on and on and on, I'm still listening to public radio. Every 10 minutes they give you the weather for the entire state, broken down by region. This is funny because the weather is the same everywhere in the state, but the announcer still thinks he has to break it down every 10 damn minutes like this: "In north-east Kansas tonight it will be in the low 40s with a 30 percent chance of rain. Tomorrow highs in the 70s with a 20 percent chance of showers. In south-east Kansas tonight it will be in the low 40s with a 30 percent chance of rain. Tomorrow highs in the 70s with a 20 percent chance of showers. In southwest Kansas . . . " I memorize it and start reciting the weather every 10 minutes along with him.

Round about 6:30 I park the Outback in front of another Motel 6, this one in Colby in northwest Kansas. The car quickly becomes engulfed in a thick cloud of oil smoke. I ignore it as best I can, check into my room, and down three cans of Miller beer back to back to back before sleep finds me.

688 miles made good. Another record.

Headed West (day 1)

2005-09-16T15:55:00.000-04:00

I woke up around 7AM and finished packing the car. It is pretty hilarious. I have two huge duffel bags strapped to the roof. Every square inch of the interior is full. Mac's blue tricycle is crammed into the front passenger seat.

Looking at 2800 lonley miles on the road, I decide to delay my departure by an hour so I can grab the package of cds sitting in the apartment manager's office. My buddy JP put together a little care package to get me across the country.

So, around 8:30 I kiss the wife and kids goodbye and hit interstate 40 headed west for Oregon.

I pick up a great bluegrass show on the country station out of Galax, Virginia as I head out of the state. It is kind of sad, though. This music will always remind me of our time here, and it is bitter-sweet. I turn off the station and just concentrate on the road.

Outside of Mt. Airey I see a guy on the side of the highway. He has a big backpack on, and a little dog. He is dragging an enormous crucifix over his shoulder. Gotta love the South.

North Carolina fades out of my rearview mirror soon enough and I am in to Virginia, then on to West Virginia. Some beautiful country out here -- nice rolling mountains. And road construction EVERYWHERE.

My first stop for gas (I average about 3 tanks a day) is in West Virgina. I head into the rest stop bathroom and when I come out I find my car engulfed in smoke. I pop the hood and see that the tiny oil leak, which drips on the exhaust and smokes, has become a pretty scary leak. Oh, great. I decide to stop and check the oil level every few hours. Nothing else I can do.

By early afternoon I am into Kentucky. Lexington is just as I imagined it, with rolling green horse farms, with their mansions and endless white fences, everywhere you look. Southern Indiana passes in a blur. I can't get many radio stations on the interstate, but I do pick up some John Mellencamp which makes me smile. The road passes not too far from French Lick, and I am tempted to make a detour and visit Larry Bird's birthplace. But I am nervous about my leaking engine and anxious to make as much ground as possible.

By dinner time I am in Southern Illinois and suffering serious road burnout. I start looking for a hotel to crash at but there is nothing to be found. I end up driving a bit further than I planned, and end up in Mt. Vernon, Illinois.

680 miles made good. I am toasted, my car is smoking, and I went about 80 miles more than I planned on. Still, this will prove to be my shortest day.

Where are you from?

2005-09-08T12:43:00.000-04:00

It's a question we got asked a lot travelling around South America. Usally, the first thing someone asks when you meet them is "Where are you guys from?"

When I was younger, it was easy to answer: Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Or, I would usually say "Boston," the closest major city, because no one knows where tiny little Chelmsford (pop. 15,000) is. I moved to Chelmsford when I was two and lived there for 10 years or so. Even after I left, that was still my home for a long time.

But Chelmsford hasn't been my home for 24 years now. Heck, I've only been back three times in those 24 years. I don't know a single soul in that town. When we do visit, it is only to drive by and see our old house and lament at how neglected and run down it has become. We also visit the tiny little ranch that was our first house there and marvel at how itty bitty it is. It seems to get smaller everytime we visit. How did we ever fit into that place?

Since I left Chelmsford, I have lived in Tokyo, Japan, in San Francisco, in San Jose (twice!), in Los Angeles, in Portland, Oregon, in Bolivia and in North Carolina.

Megan's case is even worse. While born in Peoria, Illinois, Megan didn't really live there until she was in junior high. Her early years were spent in Hong Kong and in Tokyo. After six years in Peoria, she moved to Indianapolis and then to Ecuador, Minneapolis, Vermont, Nevada, Texas, San Francisco, San Jose, Portland, Bolivia and North Carolina. Where the hell is she "from"?

Our various parents now live in Los Angeles, Bakersfield and Phoenix. I've never even been to Bakersfield. We're not from any of those places.

As for our own kids, Mac and Jane have lived in three different cities in two countries (not to mention visiting six countries total) before turning two and four, respectively. Where are they from? They usually don't even know where they are.

This is all stuff we have been thinking and talking about lately because, well, we don't have a television. Also, we have decided that the next place we put down roots, we want to bury those roots and stay there for a long, long time. Or at least until Mac graduates from high school in 15 years.

Megan and I have enjoyed our somewhat rootless existence, but we think it will be pretty cool to try it the other way with Mac and Janey.

So since returning from Bolivia, we have really struggled with this. We kind of made a tentative move towards settling in North Carolina. We have some family here and thought it would be nice to be close to them. And it would be. But despite putting on our best face, there has always been something forced about North Carolina. It was OK enough, but it never really fit right. We never admitted it to each other, but I know we both felt it.

I had a job interview the other day down in Charlotte. It went reasonably well. I was pretty sure I was going to get the job. When I told this to Megan, she was near tears. It was not until that moment that the reality of not returning to Portland finally sank in. And it didn't feel so good.

I never told Megan, but I secretly hoped that I wouldn't get that job. Turns out I didn't get it. At which point our decision became very simple: We are returning to Portland.

Y'see, despite all of our restlessness and roaming, after a year or so of giving long-winded and complicated answers to the simple question "Where are you from," we had found the answer: Portland.

** On a related note, we never like to do things the easy way. Here is the route we took to get from Bolivia to Portland:

START -- Bolivia
Cusco, Peru (7 days)
Santiago, Chile (6 days)
Valparaiso, Chile (1 day)
Santiago, Chile (1 day)
Mendoza, Argentina (3 days)
Buenos Aires, Argentina (7 days)
Raleigh, NC (7 days)
Ocean Isle Beach, NC (6 days)
Greensboro, NC (1 day)
Marshall, NC (4 days)
Greensboro, NC (50 days)
Marshall, NC (3 days)
Greensboro, NC (1 day)
Transcontinental drive (6 days)
END -- Portland

We should have some tour shirts made.

The Greensboro Hillbillies

2005-09-01T09:57:00.000-04:00

We were awakened the other night by incredibly loud screaming right outside our window. It was one of our hillbilly neighbors, the one we call "Mouthy" because she shouts instead of talking. Mouthy was screaming at Mullet Man (named for obvious reasons) about what I don't know. But Mouthy did use the "F" word quite a bit. "Never in my f-ing life" she screamed at a few points, so I guess it was serious.

Photo: Jane belts out a tune with her preschool class. This has nothing to do with the story, but it gives you something to look at.

The screaming went back and forth for half an hour. It was 3a.m. What possesses someone to have a screaming fight at 3a.m. in his or her front yard is beyond me.

I was trying to peer out our windows to see who all was involved and to try to get a better idea about what they were fighting over. Megan was shouting at me to get down on the ground in case someone started shooting. It was that crazy.

I never did figure out what the heck the fight was about; the sheriff came out and put an end to the front yard battle. The sheriff visits them a lot.

Photo: A couple of villagers in Tarabuco. This town is well known for its textiles. We bought a ton of stuff here. Very cool little place. Again, like all the photos here today, not a damn thing to do with the story.

The next day there were a few less hillbillies. Mouthy was gone, and so was Brandon, her son. We aren't sure what Mouthy's relationship to Mullet Man was. Boyfriend/girlfriend, we guessed. Mullet Man was still there.

Photo: More scenes from Tarabuco.

Ok, so we do not have a television. So, doing our little anthropological study of our neighbors takes up a lot of our down time. In fact, Megan and I went out for a beer sans-kids the other day. We went to a local brewpub called Red Oak Brewing. Not a bad place in a primitive first generation brewpub kind of way. Unfortunately for Red Oak, the first generation mostly died off 20 years ago. Somehow they have managed to survive way past their sell-by date. Actually, their amber isn't bad, if a bit generic. I asked the server what kind of beers they had and she replied "light, medium and dark." I was tempted to explain in my beer-snob way that "light, medium and dark" are not actual styles of beers. The server was missing several teeth, and judging by the color of the ones she had left, she was going to be gumming her food soon. So, anyway, this isn't a sophisticated beer place.

Photo: This is a picture of the roof of Convento San Felipe Neri in Sucre, Bolivia. This is my favorite building in the world. Incredibly beautiful.

Megan and I each had two pints, and we spent an hour and a half trying to sort out the connections between our hillbilly neighbors. They had, at last count, five adults and two adult-sized kids living in a two-bedroom unit. That is a lot of folks. I guessed Mullet Man and Mouthy were dating, and that Brandon was her son. Then, there was Little Mouthy, who we figured was Mouthy's thinner sister and the mother of Hailey. Bald Guy was probably Little Mouthy's significant other, but not Hailey's dad. Finally, there was Big Momma, who parked her ancient Ford Aerostar, seemingly filled with all of her worldly possessions, next to our car. Nearest we could figure, Big Mamma was the mother of the mouthy sisters. This family tree was hard won, and the result of much debate on our part.

Photo: Jane and Meg get shoeshines in the main square in Sucre. Bolivia must be the shoeshine capital of the world. People like shiney shoes, but the roads are so dusty and dirty that you really need to keep on top of it.

We still are not sure who owns the broken down black Cadillac Eldorado. The car was towed home last week and has been parked ever since. Every night Mullet Man, Bald Guy, and an assortment of friends come out, smoke some cigarettes, pop the front hood and stare at the engine. They have intense discussions. Sometimes they jack the car up. Once they took the battery out (it is still sitting on the curb). But they do this every night and still the car sits there. I thought all rednecks new how to fix a car.

Yesterday morning Hailey was loaded into a pick-up truck with her suitcase. The truck actually was in working order, so it must have belonged to a friend. The friend drove, and Little Mouthy and Bald Guy piled in. They disappeared for most of the day.

A few minutes later the sheriff showed up. Apparently the hillbilly's were being evicted. I have never been evicted, so it was interesting to see. The sheriff knocks on the door. No one answers. She then puts this thing on the doorknob that is like a "boot" you put on a car wheel. It makes it so you can't put a key in the lock or turn the knob. The hillbilly's were evicted.

Photo: Religion is very visual in Bolivia. One explanation for this is that when the Spaniard came over to convert the natives, there was no written language so they felt that visual explanations would be more powerful. There is also a lot of gore associated with religion, and Jesus in particular. This is a picture from an Easter procession that marched right by our house. The Jesus they are carrying is covered in blood and has many gaping wounds. It is pretty gross.

Yesterday afternoon the hillbilly's apparently managed to get access to the apartment. They showed up in their friend's pick up, sans Hailey, and grabbed a few things. All of their furniture stayed. They disappeared and never came back. The busted Cadillac Eldorado is still sitting in the parking lot, its battery on the curb next to it. I wonder if anyone will ever come back and get it. Probably no

Climbing Tunari

2005-08-26T09:49:00.000-04:00

So back to Bolivia again for a second.

Right before we left, we decided to climb Cerro Tunari. Now, the mountains that surround Cochabamba are for the most part wholly unspectacular. Certainly, they are not what you would expect of a city set at 8,000 feet in the Andes Mountains. For the most part, the hills look just like the East Bay hills that surround San Jose and Fremont, California. Imagine Mt. Hamilton. There is one exception, which is Cerro Tunari, rising up over 16,600 feet to its scraggly peak.

We arranged our trip through the excellent folks at Volunteer Bolivia. To get up and down in a day, you need to get an early start. So, we were to meet downtown at the VB offices at 6AM. We arranged with Lourdes to watch the kids all day, but when 6AM rolled around Lu was nowhere to be seen.

Megan and I decided to go find her, so we left a friend with the sleeping kids, and we walked up the hill to Lu's house. It was pretty cold outside, even though it was summer. Now, Lu, like most working class Bolivians, lives in a "compound" with various extended family members. The house is a series of rooms that surround a main courtyard where the cooking is done in an outdoor kitchen.

After banging on the door a few times, Toby, her enormous but harmless German Sheppard mix was howling up a storm. Finally this gruff 80-year-old guy -- Lu's husband Vlady's grandfather -- comes to the door. We can hear him clearing the night's phlem out of his throat as he approaches.

"Who is it?" he yells.

"Is Lourdes here?" asks Megan.

"Yeah, but she's sleeping. Come back around 9."

"Well, here's the thing," says Megan. "She is supposed to watch our two little kids this morning."

"She doesn't have two kids," says the grandfather. "She only has one and he isn't little."

"No, we have the two kids. And Lourdes was supposed to come to our house around 6. She must have overslept."

"Yeah, she is sleeping. Come back around 9."

This went on for a bit, until Megan could finally convince him to go wake Lu up. Grandpa goes around back and knocks on Lu's door.

"Lu, there are two gringos outside and they want you," he tells her.

"Oh crap," thinks Lu, realizing she has overslept. She throws some clothes on and runs out the door, flying past us as she heads for our house.

So, this was how the day of our climb started.

When we got to the VB office, there were a few assorted volunteer-types waiting for us. Luckily, they weren't too pissed that we kept everyone waiting. We all hopped in a chartered van and sped for the base of Tunari.

Well, you don't really climb from the base because it would take you three days and be really boring. You take a van up as far as the road goes and walk from there.

On the way up, we passed a lot of beautiful old adobe villages. Tons and TONS of llamas, often crowding the road. The road itself was a narrow little tract that climbed a steep canyon, with an enormous drop off and no guard rail. We spent a lot of time trying not to look out the window.

The Lonley Planet guidebook will tell you the climb is a peace of cake. Let me tell you, nothing is a piece of cake at 16,000 feet. It was murder. Well, for everyone but Megan, who is a freak of nature and scampered up the climb like a billy goat, leaving us all gasping for air. To rub it in, Megan talked the whole time.

"How can she talk so much," said one of our group. "I can't even f$%king breathe."

After an hour of lounging around on the summit, which is as close to the top of the world as I will ever get, we dragged our now wobbly legs back to the van. Lacking the energy on this one-coffee Friday to tell you all the details, here are a few shots from the trip.

Above: Our group gathers its strength as the van drops us off. It's going to be a long-ass way up that mountain.

Above: Here we are resting on our way up. I'm pretty sure there are 6 people on the verge of puking or dying, and Megan chatting away.

Above: Here is me, Meg and a friend resting on the summit, which is like 16,610 feet. That is freakin' high up there, let me tell you. We all agreed that it was one of the most beautiful, peaceful hours of our lives up there, though.

Above: On the way down we passed a little llama-herder's camp. It was pretty neat to see. Though, to be honest, I was pretty blown by this point and could barely stand up.

2005-08-23T09:53:00.000-04:00

Back to Bolivia for a moment.

My buddy Osama is obsessed with cholitas, which are Bolivia's native, dark-skinned women with the two long pony tails, pleated skirts and bowler hats. In fact, Osama, who is Muslim, claims that he wants one as his second wife. The sticking point is that he needs the permission of his current wife, Christine, before he adds to the stable. And Christine isn’t too keen on sharing Osama. The Kommandant is fiery like that.

Every time we pass a cholita in the street, Osama will say in his clipped Pakistani accent, “Look at the strong legs on that one! She would be marvellous!” He will then goad me on, “Jim, I think you need a cholita too. We both should have cholitas!”

I mention this only because it tells you that any advice you get from Osama needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Note: This photo has nothing to do with the story. It is just a nice picture of Christo, who sits on a hill overlooking our house. He is a bit over 33 meters high.

So for whatever reason, when it came time for us to have some dental work done, Megan asked Osama for advice. Now, we had originally been sceptical of Bolivian medical care, but after discovering that the medical care in the U.S. actually rates just 36th best in the world, behind Columbia and tied (tied!!) with Cuba, we figured what the hell. Plus it is dirt cheap to have stuff done down here.

“You must go to the fat lesbian,” was Osama’s advice. “I am a big baby when it comes to my teeth. I will only go to the fat lesbian.” Then he added, “But she is not a cholita, though.” To Osama the world is split into two camps: “cholita,” and “not cholita.”

Dr. Karin (turns out she does have a name) has an office in the Torres Sofer building, which is home to Cochabamba’s one and only high-end shopping center. It is something of a Tony address in an unquestionably un-Tony place. We always wonder who in such an impoverished place can (or would want to) buy Benetton clothes and $200 lighters. Probably the guys from immigration who have all my money.

We make appointments with Dr. Karin and on the day we show up, Megan decides to do a “twofer” and have the kids see their doctor, who also has an office in the Torres Sofer building. So, Meg checks us in and then disappears to take the kids for their physicals.

I’m sitting in the waiting room reading some Argentinean fashion magazine when the assistant calls me in for my cleaning. Nice office. It looks, to be honest, just like my dentist’s office back home, if a little cleaner and more modern.

Dr. Karin is very nice and, well, a fat lesbian. Not that there is anything wrong with that. And she’s not a cholita, either. Osama is two for two.

Note: Again, this photo has nothing to do with anything. But don't you think they add to the story, none the less? This is our supermarket IC Norte. Rumor has it that this place was started by drug lords as a way to launder money. Only a rumor, I stress.

Dr. Karin’s English is about as good as my Spanish at this point. Which is to say it sucks. Karin gestures to her dental chair and I sit down. She pokes and prods in my mouth a little bit. She hems and haws. Grunts a bit. She says something about three somethings. I just understand the “three” part. She then asks me some questions and I just say “si” in response.

Now, nothing gets me in more trouble than this. I really hate to look dumb, or to admit that I am as clueless at Spanish as I am. Especially considering how much time I spend studying. So, people say things to me and if I don’t understand, I just say “Si.” I can tell you that this is not a really good strategy.

So Dr. Karin asks me something else, and again, not wanting to look dumb, I nod and say “si.”

I hear the sound of the tooth cleaner warming up. I like the taste of that bubble gum stuff they use, so I’m kind of looking forward to this part. Plus, nothing in the world like the super-clean feel of freshly scrubbed teeth.

So I kick back and close my eyes as I hear Dr. Karin move the polisher towards my mouth.

Only it’s not the polisher. It is the drill.

And Dr. Karin hasn’t given me any novocaine.

Note: Yeah, nothing to do with the story again. But this is a pic of an ugly mob descending on Cochabamba's main square protesting the natural gas situation. Or maybe it was the price of diesel. Or the time they changed a trufi line. Can't recall . . . .

I turn white. Dr. Karin asks me if everything is ok. I say “si.” See, there I go again. I’m in this predicament and I still don’t have the balls to say “Holy crap I have no idea what you are saying get away from me!”

She starts to drill into my teeth.

But surprisingly, it really doesn’t hurt. She drills and fills three cavities and despite sky-high anxiety I have to say I don’t feel a thing. I may have just shaved 5 years off my life because of the terror, but there is no pain.

A bit later Megan shows up. It’s her turn. I tell her about the no novocaine and she thinks it is pretty funny.

Post Script: Meg had a tooth filled by Dr. Karin this same day. Only Dr. Karin royally screwed the tooth up. Megan makes 4 more visits to the doctor, trying to get it fixed, before we leave for the U.S. It never gets fixed. Eventually the tooth starts to break and the gum swells. Megan endures months of pain while we wait to get some dental insurance to cover the insanely high U.S. prices.

Hangin' With Riley

2005-08-19T10:51:00.000-04:00

We got a babysitter for the kids last night for the first time in forever. The occasion was Riley Baugus playing a gig down at our local coffee place, The Green Bean.

Riley is one of these young guys who is just the real deal. He plays guitar, fiddle and banjo and has a voice that absolutely oozes blue ridge. I mean, the man has played with Tommy Jarrell. Tommy freakin’ Jarrell!!! To translate that into rock ‘n’ roll terms, imagine what it would be like to jam with the Rolling Stones or Jimi Hendrix. Tommy Jarrell is the Jimi Hendrix of Appalachia. Only better. Have you seen the movie “Cold Mountain”? Then you’ve heard Riley play.

Before the show we hit Natty Greene’s, which is our local brewpub. Damn good pale ale that is hopped to high hell. We’re sitting at the bar, talking about our kids (which is what parents do because after spending so much time being a parent you forget what else to talk about) and in walks Riley. He sits a couple seats down from us at the bar.

“Hey, that’s Riley,” I say to Megan.

“Really, are you sure,” she asks.

“Hell yeah,” I say. And then, because I have already had two beers, I tell her “I’m gonna go talk to him.”

So I waltz right over and introduce myself.

Now, even though I have never met the dude, I kind of feel like I know him already. Our favorite band in Portland is a group called Foghorn Stringband. Riley is not only buddies with them, but he plays with them quite a bit in the Dirk Powell Band.

So immediately we have something to talk about. We jaw about Foghorn and Riley tells me that he is going to tour England with them next month. We also talk about Pig Iron, which was a different band with a bunch of the Foghorn guys. When I mention Foghorn leader Caleb Klauder’s solo work, Riley blurts out “Oh, I LOVE that song ‘Joseph’!!!”

How much do we like Caleb Klauder? We had his record playing in the delivery room when Jane was born because we thought it should be the first thing she heard in this world.

Well, I tell Riley we can’t wait to see the gig tonight and then excuse myself because I’ve had two beers not four.

The show itself was cool. The Green Bean is like our second home in Greensboro -- so much so that we consider the owners Pete and Ann our friends. Pete is actually helping me find a job. He talks up his other lawyer customers and then calls me at home later in the day with leads. Plus, they have two kids – Otto and Angus – that are roughly the same ages as our kids. How cool is it that they have a kid named “Angus”? You know that kid will rock.

I will say that Greensboro shares with Portland and Los Angeles and most places that one thing that f#$king drives me insane: People talking during a concert.

Listen, folks. If you go to see live music, shut up and listen. It is not OK to talk during a concert. You’re not in your living room. Talking in a concert is like farting in church. You don't do it. Plus, you are bugging the crap out of the people next to you and you are disrespecting the artist. Stop it.

So about 10:00 Riley is still playing but we have to get back and relieve Silia, our babysitter.

Anyway, that's what we did last night.

Foist Away

2005-08-15T11:35:00.000-04:00

To follow up my "Foisting Imperial Ale" story, I am happy to share with you that Gov. Easley signed the bill into law on Saturday, raising the beer alcohol limit to 15%.

So, pretty soon we should be able to get our hands on some tasty imperial ales down here.

Oh, the baptists and pentacostals must be sooooo mad today!

Old Fiddlers Go to Heaven

2005-08-15T10:56:00.000-04:00

Saturday night we headed up to Galax, Virginia for the 70th Annual Old Fiddlers Convention.

Galax is just across the border on the other side of the Blue Ridge Parkway, not too far from Mt. Airy. Mt. Airy is best known as the hometown of Andy Griffith and the inspiration for Mayberry. You can go up there and visit Aunt Bee’s BBQ and Floyd’s Barbershop and all kinds of kitschy things like that.

Anyway, it is beautiful country up here, with rolling green kudzu-covered hills (everything up here is choked with the devil weed kudzu) and quaint old towns. Galax itself has a nice downtown with old brick storefronts. I love these old Southern towns and fall in love with every one we visit. Galax is the kind of place where every house has a nice front porch with 5 or 6 wood rocking chairs lined up and ready for some serious porch sitting.

Usually there is some sort of rebel flag hanging off the house. Many have two. In fact, right on main street is a store called “Rebel Without a Cause” that sells nothing but rebel flag pillows and flags and throw rugs. I can tell you that to most of these folks the flag really does stand for Southern Pride and nothing more.

But the Old Fiddlers Convention is serious business in these parts. It runs for a full week and takes over a huge park right in downtown Galax. Early in the week, they have individual instrument competitions including claw hammer banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle and dobro. Friday brings out the old time bands and Saturday is the bluegrass band competition.

We headed up Saturday and when we arrived, about an hour before the show was to start, were greeted by an endless mass of RV’s as far as the eye can see. I mean, there must have been several thousand campers covering the park. I hear that quite a bit of pickin’ and singin’ goes on in the campground, but we decided to head for the grandstand.

The stage itself is set up to look like someone’s front porch. Behind it sits a big ugly yellow tent where the bands warm up. The first 100 feet in front of the stage are flat and covered in lawn chairs. Behind that is a large covered grandstand, where we sat. I’d say there were about 5,000 people there watching the music.

For the bluegrass band competition, there were about 75 bands. Most came from rural Virginia and North Carolina, but there were some from West Virginia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and even one each from Connecticut and Florida. You’ve never heard of a single one of them, but I can tell you every one of them was excellent.

The organization was incredible. Each band got to do one song. The first band came out from stage right, took 15 seconds to test the mics, etc. They played their song, took a bow, then exited stage left. The band would not even be off stage before the next band would be out setting their mics. Fifteen seconds later, they were into their song. And so on. Band after band after band.

Now, Portland has a big bluegrass and old timey scene. But the bands up there tend to be young guys in their 20s or early 30s. In contrast, the bands here were generally much older. There was one group of Gen-Xers who did a cool blue-grassed-up cover of some classic rock tune to thunderous applause. But usually the bands were a bunch of guys in their 40s and 50s who just love playing.

Quite a few were what I call cross-generational bands. I loved these. You’d have some 16-year-old on mandolin. His 45-year-old dad on guitar and vocals. A couple guys in their 50s on bass and banjo. And then some codger about 82 on the fiddle. This music brings folks of all ages together.

And the old show business adage about never going on after acts with kids or animals really held true. While there weren’t any animal acts, a few bands featured young kids and these just went down a storm with the crowd.

The crowd was a diverse but mainly rural, working class bunch. Lots of good ol’ boys I imagined were named “Bobby Lee” or Darryl or something like that. Most of them brought their blue-haired momma with them. Like I said, this music brings generations together.

Mac is obsessed with his Brio train set right now and not only sleeps with the train cars but insists on bringing them with him everywhere he goes. So, he was a pain in the ass up in the stands. He didn’t want to do anything but yell “choo choo” and run his trains into people. Megan eventually took him and Jane over to a patch of grass next to the grandstand. I joined them soon after. They ended up playing with a bunch of other kids for most of the night, having a great time.

Around 8:30 we finally decided to head out. We had an hour and a half drive home, and the kids were getting cranky. It was cool though, because the local country station was broadcasting live from the festival and we were able to listen to bands all the way home. When we pulled up to our place at 10, four hours after the show started, they were still going strong, one band after the other.

Next year's festival runs August 7-12.

Foisting Imperial Ale

2005-08-05T14:37:00.000-04:00

North Carolina is one of the few states that caps the alcohol content of beer at 6 percent.

This is a stupid law, and one that really has no justification for being other than the fact that it is 70-years-old. Keep in mind that the tax on cigarettes in this state is just a nickel a pack. So, apparently, strong beer is bad but cigarettes are good. One kills you, one doesn't.

For the past few years a group called Pop the Cap has been working hard to get this law changed to a more reasonable 15% alcohol limit. This week, their bill passed the state senate, clearing the way for governer Mike Easley to sign it into law.

Now, if you are not a beer snob like me or my buddy JP, you are probably wondering why this law even matters. Two words: Imperial Ale.

The finest genre of beer known to mankind is the imperial ale, which is a very strong beer that is chock full of flavor. As far as ale goes, this is the brass ring. Your average beer drinker probably couldn't stand more than one or two sips of such a beer -- its flavor intensity is something you need to work up to. But for the sophisticated palate, there is no better beer.

IMHO, the two best beers on this planet are Stone Brewing's Arrogant Bastard and Dogfishead's 90-Minute IPA. Both are imperial ales. Both have alcohol content far in excess of 6%. Neither can be sold in the state of North Carolina.

That is about to change, and my tastebuds are doing a happy little dance about it.

Rev. Mark Creech with the Christian Action League of North Carolina is not as thrilled as I am. "I'm so terribly disappointed," he said in today's paper. "These beers of high alcohol content are now foisted on the people of North Carolina."

I can't wait to foist one, Rev. Creech. But this is one of those examples of people who have no idea what they are talking about foisting their opinions on the world. I guess Rev. Creech is scared that there will now be a bunch of yuppie alcoholics shelling out $5 for a pint of strong ale, leading lives to ruin. Maybe he is mad that malt liquor may become available. Yeah, because until this bill passed winos had no access to drinks in excess of 6% alcohol?

Anyway, the day Easley signs this thing I am going to be first in line for a pint of imperial ale.

This place is a zoo

2005-08-02T10:47:00.000-04:00

So yesterday was $2 day at the North Carolina Zoo. Us being po' folk right now, we jumped all over that.

In the past 14 months or so, we have been to the Portland Zoo, here in the U.S., as well as zoos in Baja, Mexico, La Paz, Bolivia, Santiago, Chile, Mendoza, Argentina and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Without exception, we find that each zoo has something wonderful to offer.

For instance, though he was kept in a tiny cage, you could get literally inches away from the lion at the Mexico zoo. In Mendoza, there were some monkeys and llamas that had escaped from their cages and were wandering the zoo freely. In the same zoo, they had a lion exhibit with 7 or 8 big male lions, all roaring up a storm. It was awesome.

But if you read crap like the Lonely Planet guides, the authors always come down hard on second and third world zoos for their "inhumane" cages, etc. In the U.S., the big thing is to put animals in these elaborate exhibits that simulate their wild habitat.

And so it was here at the N.C. zoo. Really, at this zoo the cages were the stars. I say this, because unlike at zoos in South America, I don't think we saw any actual animals at the NC Zoo.

The thing is they have all of these giant "cages" for the animals. I mean huge! The African plans exhibit was so big that they have those touristy binocular like things you can pop a quarter into to actually see the animals. You know, those things they have at "scenic overlooks" on the sides of highways. I swear the animals were like 6 miles away!

At the American Bison exhibit, the bison were little specks some 50 miles away at the edge of a forest.

To make matters worse, in order to see the entire zoo, you needed to walk over FIVE MILES. And I kid you not -- they only have like 12 different animals!

Contrast this to the wonderful zoo in Buenos Aires, where you can see like 1000 different animals and only have to walk like 3/4 of a mile. And in BA, the exhibits are cool old school ones. Like, "Let's make the elephants live in a castle". And you can buy buckets of animal chow and actually are encouraged to feed the animals.

Here in NC, you can't bring any food into the zoo. If you want to feed your starving kids, you need to either walk 5 miles back to your car or buy the zoo's ridiculously expensive food.

That is one of those "Only in America" things. Why is there a need to rip off captive audiences her? For instance, if you go to a night club in Bolivia, a beer will cost you a dollar. Same as it costs in the supermarket. In the U.S., they will charge you like $6 or $7 for a beer. At the local baseball park here, they played a game the other day in humid 98 degree weather with a "heat index" of 110. And they would not let you bring water into the park. If you wanted to avoid heatstroke, you needed to pay $3 for what is otherwise a $1 bottle of water. Evil.

But back to the zoo. If I was an animal, I would definitely want to be in one of these cush U.S. zoos. I could roam around and hide from the people.

As a zoo patron, the zoos in the U.S. totally suck.

Speaking of which, my neighbors have this old black Cadillac Fleetwood. You know, the old school one with the rear wheels half covered up. It has no front grill, only 3 hubcaps, and is missing two windows. In the evenings when it is especially hot, they like to go out and sit on the hood and smoke cigarettes. They do this shirtless, except for the girl who mercifully keeps her top on. It is like they are really proud that they own a Cadillac and want to make sure everyone knows it. Which is pretty cool.

People think this way, and they live down the street!

2005-07-30T12:44:00.000-04:00

Megan, honestly, has a hard time adjusting to life in the south. It has been eye-opening in some ways. For instance, she has learned that there are a lot of genuinely fine folk who, well, happen to be missing teeth, proudly wear the mullet, speak English at a second grade level, and think the rebel flag is a genuine symbol of southern pride. But they ARE nice folk.

That is not to say that there are not people like us here (whatever that is). But what makes North Carolina different from Portland is that everyone here is NOT like us. Portland is a great place, but it is the most homogonized place in this world. Everyone in that town is a middle to upper-middle class white person with a Subaru Outback, who likes old houses and good beer and good music. They all wear fleece vests and carry their kids in Kelty backpacks.

As a middle class white guy with a Subaru Outback, fleece vest, Kelty kid-carrier, jones for good beer and love of great music, I felt very comfortable in Oregon. I don't always feel that comfortable here. For instance, when is the last time you've been somewhere where you were the only white guy? Or the only person with an education? Or the only person with a passport?

I am not trying to say I am better than anyone else. It is just interesting to me to be surrounded by lots of different people. I actually like it, and I know it is good for me.

But really what scares Megan the most are the letters to the editor in our local daily paper. It cracks us up and is the first section we go to every morning.

Here are some excerpts from one of our favorites, which ran in the paper on Thursday.

It was headlined: "It's time to realize we're in a world war."

Here goes:

"Read the newspaper or listened to TV news lately? Story after story about the Islamic bombing in London and about the bombing in Egypt. It cries out for smart people to understand we are in a world war.

London police have finally gotten the right idea and are using the right methods: an ultra-fast response and orders to "shoot to kill."

. . . .

Thank God the Patriot Act will continue to protect fools and drunks who believe the Muslim culture wants to live in peace. Read the Quran. The final message is "kill the unbeliever, where ever you find him."

How dumb are we going to continue to be? We have been at war with Islam for more than 1,400 years and it continues today. Immigration is war of another form.

Muslim communities are not interested in assimilation. They gather in one neighborhood, build their mosque, become citizens and fly their old flags. They claim a portion of Christian America -- for Islam.

Billy F. Hammack"

Memories . . .

2005-07-27T14:24:00.000-04:00

So I am sitting here in the public library with a lightning-fast internet connection and thought I would take a break from job hunting to post up a few pictures from our summer trip.

But first, let me tell you that a bunch of dumb-ass hicks come to the library down here to screw around on the computer all day looking for an on-line date. And why is it the person next to me always thinks they are so cool because they put on some headphones and sing-along and "chair dance" to some crap top 40 song only they can hear? Do they not think people can hear them singing? Are they THAT dumb or just rude?

Our hick fun continued last night with some of our neighbors throwing deck chairs into the pool and using them as some kind of sunken pool toys. "Mommy, why are those people putting furniture in the pool?" Jane asked. "Um, because they are Dale Earnhardt Jr. fans, Jane." Best I could do.

But I digress.

Here is a picture of Janey with a porter up on Machu Pichu. It pays to be in shape. We beat up the stairs the 100 people who arrived at the same time we did and managed to take this shot before the ledge became as packed as the floor at a Green Day concert. And we did it with Mac on Meg's back and Jane on my shoulders. Aarghghg.

Here is the familia in some other part of Machu Pichu:

Life in Bolivia is Dead. Long live Life in Bolivia.

2005-07-25T14:34:00.000-04:00

Well, after much soul searching and hand-wringing, we have made the very difficult and, for us, sad decision to not return to Bolivia at the end of this summer.

Why? It is a very complicated decision, that really has nothing to do with Bolivia. We love Bolivia, and believe it is the most culturally rich, exotic, beautiful, pure and maddening place in South America.

Megan was working in Cochabamba as a teacher. The school she worked with was full of wonderful teachers and administrators. Really, you could not ask for a better bunch of people to work with. The school, however, is a "for profit" school run by a board of directors that we have serious issues with. Without getting into too many details, we viewed the way that the board treated certain other teachers and staff as, well, downright rotten and scummy. And on top of that, we have very significant issues with how our immigration and tax situations were handled. We basically got screwed out of a ton of money. As a result, we had absolutely no confidence in the board of directors and do not feel it is in the best interest of the family to return. Oh, and a whole bunch of other little things too.

We are now living in the Southern part of the U.S., which is something I said I would never do.

If you think Bolivia was culturally different, well, that ain't nuthin' compared to the South.

So, while I will not write about Life in Bolivia anymore, I will keep the blog alive writing about Life in the South.

Our neighbors mostly have no teeth. Sweet folk, but toothless.

Welcome to life in the south.

South America Top 10

2005-07-19T11:10:00.000-04:00

We have been holed up in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains this past week. What amazing country. My brother-in-law Matt is a contractor and he builds these unbelievable houses using the "post and beam" technique. These houses are my dream house. Usually smaller in size, but with tons of character and craftsmanship. Matt's house is a log cabin set on 10 acres of land that straddles a ridge. Incredible views of the mountains and the French Broad River. We don't want to leave!!!! Needless to say, if I ever get a little bit of money the first thing on my list will be having Matt build us a cabin.

Well, back to South America. Here is a list Megan and I compiled of our 10 favorite things from the 3 weeks we spent travelling around:

10. Tango in the San Telmo neighborhood of Buenos Aires. On one of our first days there we took the subway down to this old, once grand neigborhood to walk the small cobbled streets and take in the antiques fair. In the middle of the little plaza they have there was a couple putting on a tango exhibition. We spent a good hour watching it and were just amazed at how beautiful it was.

9. Avenida Huerfanos in Santiago. Santiago is probably our favorite city in South America (so far). Running right through the entire downtown area is Avenida Huerfanos, which is closed to cars. The street is lined with all kinds of bookstores and cafes, etc. Jam packed with people at all hours of the day. We spent a lot of time walking this area. I think it says good things about a city when it closes off parts of its center to the god-awful automobile. This was also a big taste of "civilization", which is something we had not seen in a loooong time.

8. Hotel Ultramar in Valparaiso, Chile. Coolest hotel we have ever stayed at. Chic but down to earth. Super-nice staff. To-die-for breakfast. Amazing 100 year old brick building. All for $70. Yes, your dollar goes far south of the border.

7. Chilean oranges. Most of the fruit in your local supermarket comes from Chile. After a year of Bolivia's sad, mangy fruit with its messed up skins, seeds and lack of sweetness, these oranges were a revelation. Every orange you get in Chile is perfect. Perfect, unblemished orange skins. Bursting with sweetness and juice. No seeds. They were the most perfect fruit we have eaten in our lives. We still talk about them all the time. And miss them.

6. Sacred Valley, Peru. Take a staggeringly beautiful valley, surrounded by steep, jagged snow-capped mountains. Add Incan ruins that will blow your mind. Let sit for a few hundred years. This is what you get. It lived up to its name.

5. Main cathedral in Cusco. We are church fans, and this is probably the grandest example of the many we have seen over the past year. Staggering in its scale. The silver-plated alter. The artwork. And Mac screaming "ugly bitch" in Spanish at the top of his lungs, while laughing like a demon, make it a day we will never forget.

4. Museo Interactivo Mirador, Santiago. Coolest childrens' museum we have ever experienced. Clean, big and well-done. It was like a jumbo OMSI (Portland's kids museum), only it was not crowded.

3. Mendoza wine. Imagine California's wine country. Only there are more wineries, dramatic Andes mountains in the background, food is cheap, wine costs $10 for the top bottles, hotels are inexpensive, and there is no pretention. This tops the short list of places we did not want to leave. On a side note, we toted 7 good bottles of Malbec (the local specialty) back with us. I declared them on my customs form, but was not required to pay any duties. That was cool.

2. The staff of Hotel Cusi Wasi in Cusco, Peru. Senora Yolanda and Senor Christian took wonderful care of us. They were like family by the time we left there. In fact, Megan almost cried on the way to the airport. One morning it was particularly cold and Yolanda made us all some nice, hot chicken soup.

1. Machu Pichu. We had high expectations and Machu Pichu surpassed them all. It still blows our mind to think about it and to look at the pictures we took. A magical place, and one that should be on everyone's life list (but hurry -- it is quickly sliding down the hill!)

39 Days on the Road

2005-07-16T12:25:00.000-04:00

So we and our 300# of luggage have been on the road for like 39 days. Next time you bitch about that road trip with your kids, think of us. Until you have travelled with a 2 and 4 year old for 39 days through 5 countries, you will not get any sympathy from me.

Last we talked, I was in Buenos Aires. Well, we flew 14 or so hours to North Carolina. The kids did great -- they are old pros.

First day here we went to Wal-Mart. Crazy how much processed food people eat here. Very few raw ingredients and lots of stuff in big super-sized flashy packaging. You are all going to die.

The other thing I noticed -- and I put myself in this category -- is that the folks in the U.S. are the worst dressed in the Americas. I never noticed it before, but after a year in South America, it cracks me up the crap we wear. We look bad. I may be one of the worst offenders.

Anyway, we spent a week in the Raliegh area. It was nice and all, but too big and spread out for our needs. So, we headed down to Ocean Isle Beach and spent a week in a million dollar house right on the sand. Not bad. The whole Yeakley clan was there and the 18 of us more or less avoided killing each other.

We're now in Greensboro, NC. We really dig it here. Nice small town atmosphere, lots of character. Affordable housing. We will likely give this place a shot.

But today we are off to Asheville up in the Blue Ridges to spend a few days with Meg's brother Matt. I love it up there. Should be fun.

More later . . . .

We have 300lbs of luggage

2005-06-30T15:26:00.000-04:00

We have now been travelling around South America for almost a month with two toddlers and 300lbs of luggage. I am pretty tired, I can tell you that.

We arrived in Buenos Aires after a 14 hour bus ride. Cannot really complain about the bus ride. The bus was nicer than first class on an airplane. We had a nice dinner served. Drink cart. Great breakfast. Gigantic soft leather seats with about a mile of leg room. I could live on that bus. Loved it!

What can I say about Buenos Aires? It is the monster truck of cities. We cannot believe how big it is, and remember that we lived in Tokyo for 4 years. Tokyo is a quaint little village compared in this place. Everything here is huge. Huge buildings. Huge parks. And the streets?

The main drag here -- 9 de Julio -- has 23 lanes of traffic. TWENTY-THREE LANES OF TRAFFIC!!! They claim it is the biggest street in the world, and I believe it. The street we are staying on has a measly 12 lanes. That is like a side-street here.

Needless to say, we are a bit daunted by the scale of it all.

We are staying in an apart-hotel in a ritzy neighborhood. We are around the corner from the Four Seasons. But the place we are staying in is more like the One Season. We have a wonderful view of a dank alley. I kid you not. It is the most hilarious view in the world -- I even took a picture of it. But being able to cook our own food is nice. Speaking of which, I am on my way to the grocery store right now.

On Saturday night, we fly to the U.S.

Ahhh, it will be nice to have a good cup of coffee. I am fully convinced that there is not one place in South America that can make a good cup of coffee or pull a decent shot of espresso. It is sad how much bad coffee they drink here. Bad coffee and bad beer. The wine, however, is excellent and we are drinking as much of it as we can.

On to Argentina

2005-06-22T19:38:00.000-04:00

Well, after 8 days in Santiago (we originally were going to be there for 2) we had to make a decision: Either buy an apartment and stay forever, or continue our travels. Reluctantly, we decided to move on. But let me reiterate that my buddy Zej was right -- Santiago is a great city. And I will say the same thing about Chile that we said about Peru -- can´t wait to go back and see more.

We wanted to take a bus across the Andes to Mendoza, Argentina but the weather was not cooperating. Snow had closed the pass in the mountains for the past few weeks.

Still trying to wait out the storm, we took a bus to Valparaiso on the coast of Chile, about 2 hours from Santiago. Cool little gritty town with just enough charm. The town is built on a steep hillside around a nice cove. They have 15 of these things called ¨finunculars¨ or something like that. They are tiny little elevator-trains that creep up the hillside. Very cool. Gave the town a San Francisco vibe. The constant fog helped -- you could barely see the damn finunclears.

But bonehead Jim, the same guy who gave himself food poisoning back in Peru, decided we would go to Valparaiso on zero notice. We just jumped on a bus and went. No hotel lined up or anything. Well, when we got there we had a hell of a time finding a place to stay --there just weren´t many hotels. We also did not Xerox the Valparaiso section of the guide book either, because we didn´t intend to go there. So, we were totally clueless. We finally ended up at a place called Hotel Ultramar.

The Ultramar was the COOLEST hotel we have ever stayed at. It is in this 100 year old brick building. Very chic design. Super clean. Old hardwood floors and giant windows. Incredible breakfast. Turns out we had read about the place in Vanidades Magazine back in Bolivia. Vanidades is the South Americans Vanity Fair. It was a splurge, but a great night.

Our last day in Santiago we spent at Museo Interactive Mirador, which we agree is probably the best kids museum we have ever been to. Amazing museum, and it had a great staff that was very good at engaging the kids. Jane and Mac had a heck of a time. We also checked out the new Santiago Acuario, which is nice but at this point kind of like a really good pet store.

With the buses showing no signs of running any time soon, we bought plane tickets and flew here to Mendoza (and got hit by LAN Airlines with an excess baggage charge on our 140kg of luggage). Judging by the Andes that passed below our plane, the road is not in good shape. Tons of snow!

Mendoza is Argentina`s wine capital -- 70% of all Argeninian wine comes out of here. We picked up a nice bottle of Malbec, the local specialty, this afternoon on our way back from the zoo. We paid about $3 for the bottle, which retails for $16 in the US. We will drink a lot of wine while we are here in Argentina!!

But other than wine, there is not much to do here in Mendoza. Still, it is a cool town with every other store a wine or chocolate place. We will tour some wineries tomorrow, then kick around for another day before moving on to Buenos Aires. Not looking forward to that 14 hour bus ride, but we can´t afford any more plane tickets.

Chile in 30 Seconds

2005-06-18T17:09:00.000-04:00

Turns out we got hit with like $500 in airport taxes on our way to Santiago. They even charged Mac $100 tax to land here, despite the fact he did not have a plane ticket. Airport taxes are killing us.

Santiago, however, is AWESOME. We love it. It is like New York City, only cleaner. And much cheaper. Great Museums (Bellas Artes and the Pre-Columbian being our faves). Visited the house of Nobel Prize winning poet Neruda. Great cafes. Nice, clean subway. It is a far cry from the Flintstones-like existence we have been living in Bolivia.

We planned on staying here 2 days, but have been here 5. We planned on taking a bus to Mendoza, Argentina today, but an Andes Mountains snowstorm put and end to that. We are going to Valparaiso, Chile, a small town on the coast, tomorrow to wait out the storm.

Peru in 60 Seconds

2005-06-14T10:32:00.000-04:00

I feel like dog crap today. I´ve got the Incan Ruins, so to speak. The funny thing is that we have cooked all of our own meals in our hotel. So, I actually gave myself food poisoning. I´m such an ass. And I need to catch a flight to Chile, so this will be short.

By the way, I will pay over $400 in airport taxes for the flight from Cusco to Santiago. That is just wrong.

Cusco is, well, just like Bolivia. I guess that should not surprise me since it is just on the other side of Lake Titicaca, relatively speaking. Same exact architecture. Same adobe houses. People look the same. The indiginous women dress just like the women from Potosi (with different hats). They even dance the Tinku here!

Some differences though. Cusco is kind of like Bolivia if Bolivia ever managed to get its shit together. It just works better here. They also realize tourists are their life blood and treat them accordingly. Better food here. More gringos. They still build with adobe, whereas Bolivia is now mostly ugly red brick. You CAN drink the water here. Toilets are better.

One example: I went to the Peru Rail office to buy our tickets to Machu Pichu. Stupidly, I forgot my passport (well, in my defense, I didn´t realize the train to Machu Pichu was considered international travel, but since they demanded my passport I guess it is). After waiting for my number to be called for an hour, I walked to a nice desk where a professionally dressed woman helped me buy the tickets. When I realized I didn´t have my passport, she said no problem. She took my hotel number, went to a phone and called Megan. She got our numbers from Megan, and completed the transaction. I was given two train tickets that looked like plane tickets, and was on my way.

The same transaction in Bolivia would look like this: There would be no organized number system. I would have to jostle with 100 pushy, rude people who would keep cutting to the front of the que. When I finally worked my way up front, the woman would ask for my passport. When I realized I did not have it, she would tell me I was out of luck. If I did manage to get a ticket, it would be a scrap of paper with a seat number on it and no more. I would not be able to make reservations in advance.

On the other hand, instead of $130, the tickets would have cost me $6 in Bolivia.

Cusco highlights: Machu Pichu was completely amazing. We were awed. Much better than we ever imagined. Worth every bit of hype you have heard, and then some. Beautiful churches in the city itself, including San Blas and the main cathedral. The sacred valley was also amazing, including Pisaq and Ollantytambo ruins and the market at Pisaq.

Low lights: I am freezing my ass off. It is so damn cold here and nothing is heated. In this regard, it is just like Bolivia, but I don´t know what I was thinking. I didn´t bring enough warm clothes. Also, the museums here suck. The Incan Museum, in particular, was a big let down. The museums in Bolivia are MUCH better.

Oh, and Sucre is still without a doubt my favorite city in South America.

p.s. We felt that 7.9 earthquate that hit northern Chile yesterday afternoon.

Safe in Peru

2005-06-08T14:22:00.000-04:00

We managed to get out of Bolivia just at the right time. Mesa resigned (again!!) the night before we left, and Cocha was experiencing a total shut down on the day we flew out. No taxis. No buses. Stores and banks closed. We got to the airport only because I managed to find a taxi driver the day before who said he would take us if we went early in the morning. We had an early flight, so that worked.

The day before we left, the airport was blockaded. We also saw tons of streets blockaded, some with bonfires lit in the middle of the intersection.

Luckily when we got to the airport, there were no blockades. We even managed to have an espresso while we waited for the flight.

In La Paz, the airport was chock full of people who had spent the night there. They were rightly afraid that if they left, they would not be allowed in the airport. There was a group of over 100 Israelis there waiting for a plane chartered by their government to get them out. Argentina was also sending planes for its nationals.

The only event for us at the airport was dealing with immigration. We had to pay the usual $25 each airport tax in Cocha. Cocha also hit us with a $20 additional tax each because we have 1 year visas. In La Paz, immigration hit us with another $40 in fees, again because we have 1 year Bolivia visas. So, we went through hell and spent almost $1500 to get 1 year visas, only to find out it entitles us to get hit with still more fees everytime we leave. Madness. Something is wrong with the system when it would be cheaper for us to go to Chile every 3 months to renew our visas than it cost to get the damn 1 year visa.

It was also interesting to see our buddy Osama's son Rahim, who was travelling with us, get hit with a "random" security full body check at every point. None of us got picked, but then none of us look middle eastern.

So, we are safe here in Cusco. We are checking the internet and TV for news on Bolivia and hoping our friends there are OK. We did hear today that all schools in Cocha are closed for at least 3 weeks.

Latest from Reuters

2005-06-06T10:26:00.000-04:00

Click here for the lastet Reuters news on the situation here.

A Little Travellin´ Music Please

2005-06-06T10:09:00.000-04:00

I´m downtown right now a few blocks off the main plaza. All of the roads are closed and clogged with protesters. Everyone is peaceful now, but you can sense things are just gearing up. I can hear explosions in the distance -- fireworks or dynamite, depending on the group. Terri and I just left the post office and are going to run a few errands before escaping back to our safe little neighborhood.

Bolivian friends have called us in the past few days and advised us to stockpile food, water and gas. La Paz is facing a serious food shortage. Here, the price of tomatos has gone from 1B per half kilo to 1B PER TOMATO. Other food prices have gone up accordingly.

But we are, God willing, hitting the road tomorrow for 2 months of travelling. It will be nice to get out of Bolivia and away from the blockades and protests.

So, while we visit some 5 or 6 countries in the next couple months I will be posting here about those experiences as much as possible.

I hope there is still a Bolivia to come back to in August.

To Hell in a Nicely Woven Handbasket

2005-06-02T09:43:00.000-04:00

I was down at the post office yesterday and most of the roads around there were blockaded. Same goes for the road behind our house, which leads to Sacaba and on to Santa Cruz. Our friend Terri is stuck in Sucre right now, with all roads in and out blocked. Terri´s sister Sandy and Sandy´s husband Ron, are trapped in Potosi. La Paz is reportedly a mess, with ¨dynamite throwing protesters.¨ Well, my local tienda still has beer so all is not lost. Still, these blockades cost Bolivian businesses $8.3 million per day. Crazy how Bolivians angry at their government and foreign corporations express themselves by hurting their own people. Smart.

Basically, the country appears to be heading down the crapper, which is a shame. I wonder how the U.S. government, with its long-held wish for a military base here in Bolivia, will react if cocalero Evo Morales (who is buddies with Chavez in Venezuala) gets close to the presidency?

For your convenience, I have listed some news stories on the crisis below:

BBC

CNN

BBC photos

Al Jazeera (seriously)

Life in Bolivia: Episode 2, the Sequel in 3D Sensurround

2005-05-30T10:32:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, but we´ve had friends visiting and I have been spending my mornings sight-seeing, rather than interneting.

Politically, there have been huge violent protests in La Paz the past few days. The roads to La Paz and Oruro are blockaded again. The Muruyina interchange in our neighborhood was even blockaded yesterday. When blockades hit Cocha, you know it is hitting the fan. Here is a story on the latest:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/05/31/bolivia.riot.reut/index.html

But, I don´t care for politics, so here is my much promised update on some of your favorite blogs from the past year:

* ¨Is there and events coordinator in the house?¨ (10/1/04): In this blog, I wrote about a hilarious night of madcap entertainment in the Pasaje de Catedral (or, ¨alley behind the church.¨) We haven´t been back to see another concert here, but do visit the pasaje often. They are really developing it nicely. In fact, our friend Yves recently helped a group of weavers from the Japo village open a store there. They sell all kinds of hand made weavings -- tapestries, scarfs, blankets, etc. Great stuff at incredible prices and Yves tells me he is having trouble keeping the store stocked. Best of all, most of the proceeds go directly to the weavers themselves.

* ¨El dia de no agua¨ (10/19/04): In this blog, I wrote about our zany adventures trying to get the water system in our house to work. Knock on wood, we have not had any water problems since. Well, occasionally the water company tries to shut off the water, claiming we haven´t paid the bill, despite the fact that we have a receipt showing that we did in fact pay it. It only takes 27 phone calls to solve the problem. None of our toilets work, either, but that is another story. We do have several dead animals in our water tank. There are at least 2 dead frogs in there, though I suspect that a rat or two may have joined them. We opted not to have the tank cleaned, because water is so nasty anyway that it probably doesn´t matter. We just keep our mouths shut when we shower, and don´t look in the tank. I don´t want to know what is in it.

¨Mail Jail¨ (11/30/04): In this blog, I wrote about the fact that we had to visit 50 government agencies and pay a million bucks in fees (or something like that) to get our freaking mail from the Bolivian postal service, almost 4 months after the mail was sent to us. We have learned that if you keep the package under 2kg, it gets to us pretty quick -- 2-3 weeks from the U.S. We also have sent a good number of packages to the U.S. and they usually get to their destinations 12-14 days after we send them. And we sent them by boat. That is one fast boat.

We also spend enough time with the folks in the package department and in customs that they are like old friends now. They know us and give us special treatment when we go in. Nice folks.

¨Rug Hunter¨(12/16/04): In this blog I told you about my hunting trip with my Pakistani buddy Osama, where we shot nothing but bought a great rug. Osama at the time was on the U.S. no-fly list because he shares a surname with a well-known terrorist. After 7 months he finally managed to get off the list, and just returned from a 2 week trip to Uruguay and Paraguay ( the ¨Guays¨ as I like to call them). We are heading to Osama´s this weekend for some fish curry. Mmmmmm.

¨First Impressions¨ (8/28/04): In this blog I wrote of some of my wide-eyed first impressions of Cochabamba. I don´t know. Cocha is not a great city by any measure. It is dirty. It has no civic pride whatsoever. No culture. No interesting architecture. No decent restaurants or cafes. It is, in the world of cities, a big zero. Oh, and the people here make New Yorkers look like Miss Congeniality winners. That, of course, is not to say all people here are bad. There are many, many wonderful people here and we count many of them amongst our friends.

On the other hand, there are surely worse places to live in Latin America than Cochabamba. The weather here is decent. It is safe.

Bolivia, however, is an absolutely wonderful country. It is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Its culture is still relatively undisturbed. It is not touristy. Cheap place to travel. I would tell you to come here but the roads are all blockaded so you couldn´t leave the airport anyway. In that way, Bolivia is something like the prom queen who commits suicide.

¨Confessions of a hopelessly undecided mind¨(2/18/05): Here, I wrote of our thought process in trying to determine where to live when our time here is up. We are still not much closer to a decision. In fact, we have told ourselves we will not worry about it anymore until this summer. But if I had to handicap it, I would probably give these odds: Connecticut, 3-2; North Carolina, 4-1; Portland, 10-1. Then again, we all know what happened at this year´s Kentucky Derby. Speaking of which, Kentucky is off our list because the majority of its counties are dry or partially dry. When the f%&k did prohibition end anyway?

All quiet . . .

2005-05-24T10:36:00.000-04:00

The issues surrounding Bolivia´s natural gas reserves seems to be coming to a head here. The protests this week are supposed to be among the worst we have had in the year we have been down here. President Mesa is on his last legs, and would gladly quit if congress would let him. Poor bastard.

We have some friends visiting this week, and due to blockades they had to fly rather than take bus.

Otherwise, we are relatively unaffected here in Cocha. The worst thing about Cocha is that nothing happens here. Well, during times like this it becomes one of the best things about Cocha. It is not a political town, so it is very tranquil right now.

I will get my update up in the next few days.

Coming Soon . . . .

2005-05-20T11:23:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday, I am going to update some of your favorite stories from the past year. That should be fun. Also, I will try and finally post the story about my trip to the dentist.

Otherwise, Megan is busy finishing up the school year. I am busy planning the details of our mammoth summer vacation that will take in 6 countries and something like 16 cities over the course of two months, before returning to Cochabamba. That trip is going to be fun, interesting and exhausting.

Can I Borrow Some Money?

2005-05-13T10:02:00.000-04:00

I was reading the headlines in the local paper Los Tiempos yesterday. One that caught my attention was that they have announced that the local government has no money to put on the Festival de la Virgen de Urkupina this year.

This is the largest festival in the Cochabamba area. It commemorates alleged visitations of the Virgin Mary to a shepard girl in the local hills and takes place in the town of Quillacollo. In addition to drinking lots of chicha and tons of folkloric dancers, the festival includes a massive faux-pilgrimage from Cocha to Quillacollo. Megan did the walk last year.

Another article in the paper tracked the continuing saga surrounding Aurora, one of our two local professional soccer teams. Seems the players were paid half of their March salaries but have not been paid since. Team head Jose Luis Montoya says the team is in an extreme financial crisis. Just to be sure, I walked by Montoya´s massive mansion this morning -- complete with mulit-car garage, full time chofer, huge swimming pool and full size tennis courts. There was no ¨for sale¨ sign up, so while none of his players can afford to eat, at least Jose Luis is not out on the street yet. Sleep easy tonight.

Another pro team, Bolivar, is suffering similar financial difficulties.

I read the headlines to Lourdes, who was ironing nearby.

Lourdes reminded me that there is also no money here for school lunches anymore, nor for trash pick-up.

¨There is no money for anything here,¨ she sighed, before going back to work.

This really bummed me out. Lourdes is such a wonderful person and friend. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be in her position. She is basically trapped in a country with no future. Faced with these circumstances, many rich Bolivians bolt for the United States or Spain, where they can get a decent job, a good education, and enjoy a high standard of living. I can get on an airplane any time I want and leave. Lourdes, and the vast majority of Bolivians, do not have those opportunities. Yet, somehow she remains positive, upbeat, and keeps smiling.

Bolivia has always been poor. Bolivia has always had, at least as far back as anyone can remember, one of the most corrupt governments in the world. The people have pretty much accepted that this is their lot in life, and that things will never change. Sadly, I think they are right.

I admire those like Lourdes who persevere here in the face of such circumstances (at least until we can get her to come join us in the US).

Keeping Safe

2005-05-10T10:24:00.000-04:00

One of our neighbors (a Bolivian national, as are all of our neighbors) circulated a letter to the street last night. Well, his maid actually delivered them.

The letter begins to the effect that ¨In light of the rising insecurity in Cochabamba, and the various incidents we have had in the past of bad people coming into our street, we would like you to consider closing our street by installing a gate across the entrance.¨

We live on a tiny, narrow cobblestone street off a busy road. Our street is a cul-de-sac and has 11 houses on it. It is a pretty good neighborhood and a very good street -- on our street live a former ambassador to China and a retired high-ranking military officer. Lots of nice houses. We also have a gigantic abandoned mansion that, depending on who you believe, belonged to a drug lord or a corrupt government official (as if there are any other kind here) who fled to Miami last year. That cracks me up -- in North America, the bad guys flee to South America. In South America, the bad guys always flee to Miami.

Every house on the street has 8 to 10 foot walls surrounding it, most topped with broken glass or spikes. Every house in Bolivia is surrounded by 8 to 10 foot walls. Half of our houses have huge vicious dogs patrolling the yard.

We also have Edgar, our security guard. We each pay him 100Bs a month. He sits in a little booth at the entrance of our street every night from about 8pm to 6 or 7AM, keeping watch over us. He is a very good guy, but half the time I go by he is sleeping. Not sure how effective he is.

So, despite everyone having huge walls around their house, big dogs and a full time security guard every night, people still feel insecure enough to want a giant electric gate to block off our street from the riff raff.

I think that tells you something about the climate here.

We have had many Bolivians tell us that they feel a revolution or massive political upheaval is coming in the next 12 to 18 months. The likely result would be turning control of the country over to Evo Morales, who leads the indiginous majority here.

That must scare the piss out of the rich folk.

Whether we are in for revolution I do not know. That is not the point. The point is that a lot of people here believe that it will happen, which gives you some insight into what people are feeling.

Personally, we continue to feel very safe here. Say what you want about Cochabamba, but it is not a dangerous place to live by any means. So, we do not see the need to wall our street off, but the deicision is really up to our landlord because we are not going to foot the bill (our share would be $100US).

Keep ya posted . . . .

Water Wars

2005-05-09T10:07:00.000-04:00

Anyone who reads here regularly has heard me talk about the ¨water wars¨ that took place in 1999-2000 right here in Cochabamba. If you´d like to read more about them, here is a link to the Democracy Center´s coverage. Bookmark it and read it when you have a chance:

http://www.democracyctr.org/bechtel/

Having said that, I will note that the Democracy Center is predisposed to blame big foreign corporations and the IMF/World Bank for all of Bolivia´s problems. I think that over-simplifies complex issues and does a great disservice to Bolivia. Keep that in mind as you read. I, on the other hand, am predisposed to hold Bolivia itself responsible for its problems. Bolivia is hardly an innocent victim, in my view. Always keep that in mind, too. I suspect the truth, as it always does, lies somewhere in the gray.

On a somewhat related note, when does too much democracy become arnarchy? Tarija was blockaded last week in an effort to right some wrong. It may still be shut off -- I haven´t seen today´s paper.

And last week, local trufi drivers (a trufi is a bus-taxi hybrid -- it is a car that drives a set route like a bus, picking passengers up along the way) blockaded the center of Cochabamba, effectively shutting down the City core for two days. The trufi drivers were mad because the city wanted to change one trufi route.

It has gotten to the point where the government here really cannot function any more. As long as you have enough people in opposition who are willing to blockade a road, this small minority will be able to stop the government. I feel sorry for President Carlos Mesa, who wants to quit but can´t.

Fast as a Shark

2005-05-09T09:57:00.000-04:00

Sunday was ¨Field Day¨ at Jane´s school. We all loaded in a bus and drove way out in the campo to a nice hacienda, where we spent the day lounging around and doing things like treasure hunts.

It was fun to see Jane play with her buddies Rebecca and Emily, and to meet the girls´ families (Rebecca´s dad, Rodrigo, is a chicken farmer!). We also got to see where Jane has picked up a lot of the Spanish mannerisms she uses in her speech. All three girls talk the same!

One of the highlights for me was the foot races.

The kids started out, with Jane turning in a solid performance. She loves to run because her mommy is a runner, so she really enjoyed it.

Next up were the dads. I got my ass kicked. I even got whipped by some 60 year old dude in dress shoes (we were running on grass). I did beat one guy, but that was because he slipped and fell. I chalk my performance (or lack thereof) up to my being more of a distance guy. I was also giving a foot in height to all these speedy little fast-twitch latin guys.

The main event was the moms. Megan was in the middle of the pack at the turn, but then put in this Carl Lewis-like finishing stride to put the race away. I was seriously awe-struck. Megan has this 6th gear none of the other moms have. It was like she turned on the afterburners and she was just gone! I was so proud!

After the race, I congratulated Meg and told her how well she did. She just looked at me and said plainly, ¨Did you actually think I wouldn´t win?¨ She has that confidence I lack.

Deadly Consequences

2005-05-06T10:14:00.000-04:00

Last night, after the kids went to bed, I went down to Cafe Republika (run by Volunteer Bolivia -- http://www.volunteerbolivia.org/). I was there to see Jim Schultz of the Democracy Center talk about his new book ¨Deadly Consequences: The International Monetary Fund and Bolivia´s Black February¨.

Schultz, an ex pat from San Francisco, is an excellent speaker and about as knowledgable about contemporary Bolivian affairs and history as anyone in the world.

¨Deadly Consequences¨ is the first in a series of short books that Schultz is doing to document the number of recent crisis in Bolivia, including not only Black February, but the water wars and the current gas crisis as well. This is much needed, as the international media has all but completely ignored these fascinating stories.

Black February occured in February, 2003. Then-president Goni was working towards meeting goals set for Bolivia by the IMF and World Bank, including a reduction in the defecit and in inflation. The original plan to raise the money needed to reduce the defecit was to increase taxes on the richest 4%. Well, Goni was one of the richest 4% so he didn´t want to go that route. Instead, he decided to increase taxes on the working poor, which includes police officers and teachers. Prior to announcing this decision, Goni was warned that focus groups showed the results would be catastrophic.

They were right. Goni plowed ahead anyway with the tax increase. Now, you have to understand that Bolivia is the poorest country in South America and one of the poorest in the entire world. I see little kids using broken glass as a toy all the time. Many people survive on less than one dollar a day. To increase the taxes on these people was not a good or ethical decision.

After Goni announced the tax increase, a group of police officers showed up in the La Paz square that is anchored by the Presidential Palace and Congress. During the course of the morning, a group of students joined the protest. At some point, the army began assaulting the students. The students sought protection from the police. The police fired tear gas back at the army. Tear gas turned into rubber bullets, which turned into live rounds. Yes, the army and the national police were fighting each other in front of the Presidential Palace and Congress.

After several days of protests, the end result was 34 civilians dead and hundereds more wounded.

Schultz lays the majority of the blame on the IMF. For years, the IMF has used Bolivia as its lab rat to test out policy developed by the IMF in its ivory tower. Every single time the results have been catastrophic, with dozens dead and injured. IMF policy lead to the water wars and it lead to the gas crisis. Essentially, the IMF is a dangerous beast that does not learn from its mistakes, nor is it ever held accountable.

Personally, I agree with Schultz that the IMF is clueless and dangerous. But I place 100 percent of the blame for Black February on Bolivia. Bolivia elected Goni. Bolivians pulled the triggers on those guns. While the IMF may have contributed, all of the decisions that lead to violence were made by Bolivians of their own free will. The IMF has also had nothing to do with Bolivia`s history of political unrest and corruption. So, I do not think it is fair to once again try to blame Bolvia`s problems on others.

The greater problem, in my opinion, is Bolivia`s chronic dependence on foreign aid. Basically, Bolivia is a money whore. Bolivia is one of the 5 largest recipients of foreign aid in the world. In my view, almost all of this money is a total waste. It`s like the old saying ¨Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime.¨ Well, no one has figured out how to teach Bolvia how to fish yet. It continues to survive merely as a beggar-state.

Plus, there are cultural reasons why Bolivia is and will always be a Third World country. Bolivia is not a Third World country because it doesn`t get enough aid or because it has had bad luck. Bolivia is not going to become Spain because a bunch of gringos come down here and volunteer or because the IMF loans it a ton of money. This is kind of depressing. I think that most aid workers here are wasting their time. It`s like trying to cure a brain tumor by giving the patient ketchup. Ketchup is not a cure for cancer. Give the patient a ton of it and it won`t help. Similarly, foreign aid and volunteer work is not a cure to cultural things such as religion, morality, etc., which many scholars have pinpointed as the route of Latin America`s problems.

Anyway, I encourage you to check out what the Democracy Center is doing and to get a copy of ¨Deadly Consequences¨ if you can. They also have a number of other interesting publications. See the link below.

http://www.democracyctr.org/

If Larry King Wrote My Blog . . .

2005-05-03T10:07:00.000-04:00

Call me crazy, but 6 beers and a bag of potato chips is a good dinner . . . Mark it down: Next diet craze -- stomach amoebas! . . . I don´t know, but a taxi system with no actual set fares makes riding across town kind of like playing Yatzee -- 6B´s, 10B´s, YATZEE . . . Cochabamba´s trash filled streets put me in the mind of Paris (during a sanitation workers strike) . . . If I were a Spaniard in 1538 -- I´m being honest here -- I would have conquered Bolivia too. Or at least its women. Ouch! . . . Do the DEA guys keep all the good weed for themselves? . . . You heard it here: Goni for President in 2007 . . . Call me nuts, but packs of rabid dogs put a spring in my step . . . Refrigeration smigeration. I like my meat kept at room temperature and covered with flies for a week before I eat it . . . This altitude makes me dizzy . . . Who knew the U.S. could give Bolivia $52 billion in aid and have it make no impact whatsoever. Well, unless you count the gaudy mansions all the government officials live in . . . What do an honest Cochabambino and a unicorn have in common? Neither exists! . . . It doesn´t take a scientist to tell you LAB is a crappy airline . . . When people burn their trash it reminds me of summers camping in the Catskills. Who´s got the smores! . . . Bolivia in the EU by 2010, says I . . . Am I the only one who would like to see all major league ballparks replace hotdogs with saltenas? . . . Chicha and papas fritas go together like Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston (before the divorce) . . . Am I crazy or would ¨The Macarena¨ make a great national anthem for Bolivia?? . . . And finally, if George W. legalizes the coca leaf, I say FOUR MORE YEARS!

Fun with LAB!

2005-04-28T10:28:00.000-04:00

We begin our winter/summer (depending on where you live) vacation with a trip to Peru.

We bought tickets on LAB Airlines, Bolivia´s main airline, to fly from Cochabamba to Cusco, Peru via La Paz. The flight was on June 9.

LAB, for reasons known only to them, cancelled the June 9 flight. They only fly to Cusco a few times a week, so the closest flights were June 7 or June 11. No other airline flies from La Paz to Cusco.

LAB put us on the June 11 flight from La Paz to Cusco, without our consent, and kept us on the June 9 Cochabamba to La Paz flight. That would give us a roughly 48 hour layover in the La Paz airport. A bit much, I think, sitting around in El Alto at 13,000 feet with the toddlers for two days. Well, it is also idiotic.

We asked LAB to change both flights to June 7. They would not do it without charging us $30 per ticket.

Let us review for a second. 1. They cancelled the flights we bought. 2. They put us on a flight of their own choosing. 3. They insist we pay a total of $120 to change to a flight we actually want.

It was at this point that I learned Megan can tear someone a new a##hole in 2 languages. You are truly bi-lingual when you can do that.

A further wrinkle: While it will cost us $120 to change our clusterf#$ked tickets from June 9 and 11 to the June 7 flights, we can cancel the tickets we currently have without penalty. So, we cannot change the tickets, despite the fact that LAB is responsible for their being messed up, but we can get a refund and just go buy new tickets for the 7th for the same price as our original tickets.

Life in Bolivia.

Crazy disease hit parade

2005-04-25T09:55:00.000-04:00

Little Papi spent a fun weekend battling rotavirus, which despite the fact that it kills 600,000 kids a year, he seemed to handle just fine.

Well, I guess if by ¨fine¨ I mean sleeping 22 hours a day, waking only to throw up and to lay some nasty diarrhea on us. There is no treatment -- you just try as best you can to load them up on fluids and try and keep them down.

So, since we have no television, radio, computer, newspapers, telephone or, really, much else, we need to amuse ourselves with fun little games we make up.

This weekend it was Mac Puke Roulette. Here is how it works: Mac, would lay motionless in Megan's lap. He refused to drink, so we would fill up a little syringe with chicken soup broth. Megan would then inject the broth in his mouth. That is one shot. We would continue giving him shots of soup broth, seeing how much we could get in him without him puking. Invariably, we'd say ¨just one more!¨, which would be followed by him puking all of our hard work up. We always gave him one too many shots. Poor bastard.

So, Mackey Boy is feeling much better today and had some Ades calcium fortified apple juice and a tortilla for breakfast. He held it down and had a lot of energy. But he was already skinny before his rotavirus, and now I swear he must weigh 16lbs. He is a little skeleton, but at least he is not victim 600,001 this year.

Rat Bastards

2005-04-19T11:06:00.000-04:00

You may recall my bitching a while ago about the fact that we do not have any trash pick-up in Cochabamba. Instead, I would drag the bags a few blocks away to a giant green dumpster. These dumpsters are all over town. Most people, aparently, are unable to figure out what the dumpsters are for, as Cocha has a LOT of trash strewn about its streets (unlike La Paz, Sucre, Oruro and other Bolivian cities, whose citizens manage to find where the trash goes).

Well, a couple months ago we started having trash pick up. It was nice. Three days a week, I would hear the telltale clang clang clang, and Jane and I would open our gate and hand our bags to the trash man, who would throw them in the back of a dilapidated old 3-wheel Gruman tractor. Jane, by the way, more often than not did this in her underpants (¨My legs were hot,¨ she would tell me every day when I asked why her pants had magically disappeared).

Well, a few weeks ago the trash men stopped coming. Aparently EMSA, the trash company, is broke. Its workers are refusing to pick up my trash because, well, they aren´t getting paid. Don´t blame them.

Well, it took me a week to figure out that the trash men weren´t coming back. In the meantime, a pile of 6 trash bags formed in the area in front of our house, next to the front door that lets us out of the massive 10 foot walls that guard our meager possessions from the riff raff (man would burglers be pissed if they targeted us thinking we were rich gringos. ¨Donde esta the f$%king furniture,¨ they would ask each other).

Now, this gets funny because one night I opened the front door to go and lock the gate.

And a herd of some 6 or 8 giant RATS scurried out from my trash pile and escaped under the gate.

The next day, Jheyson and I took all of the trash to a dumpster.

Undetered, 3 of these RATS came back that afternoon. At 2PM. In full daylight. Obviously, I didn´t intimidate them. They poked and prodded around where the bags used to be for about half an hour. And I can prove it because from the safety of our living room, I videotaped them!

Now, let me tell you that these are RATS. These are not cute little field mice like we used to get in our basement back in Chelmsford, MA. Smokey, our cat, would kill them and bring them into the kitchen as gifts.

No, these bastards are gigantic, vicious South American river rats. They are BIGGER than Smokey was. Put a freaking mask on them and they are raccoons. I kid you not -- these are genuine monsters!

We get them I guess because we live just above the Rio Rocha, which is actually more of a trash dump with a small stream running through it, than it is a proper river. We live in a cul-de-sac, which has a big drain at one end. Said drain runs straight to the river. So, there is basically a rat highway coming right to my door.

Now our tale gets really creepy.

Saturday Lourdes was cleaning up the little patio area near our front door. She noticed a lot of rat poop around the front door. Then she noticed teeth marks on the bottom of our front door (which already has an inch gap under it).

The giant rats are slowly eating their way into our house.

It´s All About the Kids

2005-04-11T09:57:00.000-04:00

The kid´s day parade took place on Sunday. What a trip!

We got down to Plaza Colon around 9AM, as instructed. Brave enough to come along with us was fellow Portlander Melissa, a friend of our friends Nicole and Matt. Melissa is in town as part of her epic South America trip.

The parade had already started, and we quickly met up with Jane´s class. Jane got dressed in her cute little school uniform of blue skirt and white-orange-blue polo shirt. We made our way to the parade ¨staging area,¨ and I use the term very loosely. Basically, it was complete mayhem.

Now, there is a parade every week in Bolivia. You would think they would be really, really good at parades. They are not. There was absolutely zero organization.

So the kids crowd into this narrow street south of the plaza, filled with other groups of preschoolers. We kind of nudge our way into the crowd and claim a place in the marching order. So do other groups. Some cut in front of us. Finally, after about an hour of jockeying in the sun, we start to work our way back towards the plaza.

Turns out there is no official staging area. It is every man for himself.

As we get to the plaza, a group comes in from the left and cuts in between our ¨parade car¨ (a beat up blue Toyota covered with paper flowers) and our preschoolers. A parade organizer does not understand why this is not a good idea, and tries to let this group cut literally in the middle of ours.

Things get heated. The directora of our school is yelling at the parade official. He yells back. One parent shoves the official and attempts to kick his ass. Other parents pull the official away before he gets hurt. Mind you, thirty 3 and 4 year old kids are watching this.

Me? I am videotaping the spectacle and laughing. It´s all about the kids, right?

We move a little closer to the start of the parade route and groups are merging in from a third direction. It is like when you are lined up to board an airplane, and people are just coming in from every direction. Madness.

Finally we get on the course. But many parents have decided they will march too, right next to the kids. So, we have 30 kids in two neat rows, COMPLETELY SURROUNDED by a cocoon of parents. Spectators literally cannot see any of the kids!!! And it is not just our group -- every group marching is like this. It is a kids parade and you cannot see any of the kids!! Looney!

Anyway, that was our day at the big kids´ parade. Tuesday Jane has to wear a costume to school because it is Kids Day. Lourdes said she can supply the costume, because her neices have some. Jane has her choice between dressing as a cholita or as a cat. Jane has dressed like a cholita before, and I think it is hilarious (a cholita is an indiginous woman, who dresses in the pleated skirts and wears a hat of some sort -- a bowler hat in La Paz, or a straw hat in Cocha). Jane wants to be the cat, though.

This Week in Bolivia

2005-04-07T10:38:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but I have been busy doing stuff like finalizing our travel plans for this summer. Trying to coordinate airplanes, hotels, cars, etc. when you are visiting 6 countries is a bitch. Thank god for the internet. I am also working on a story for a big U.S. newspaper, and that takes most of my remaining internet time.

There is a big parade here this weekend, where all the kids from pre-schools will march around town. Jane will be marching with her school. Of course, this means that we need to buy her a school uniform. We also have to pay to take part in the parade. Oh, and there is some holiday next week where we need to rent Jane a costume. And for some reason we need to pay for all or a portion of the school´s gardening bill this month. Can´t figure that one out.

Jane´s school is great, but every damn day they tell me I need to pay more money or buy something. Last week I had to buy a white glove. Just one. The week before it was ribbon. The week before that it was blue and green jello. And they always need it immediately, which can be impossible since most of the stuff I need to travel half way across town and spend 4 hours tracking down. Don´t forget that huge list of crap I had to buy her at the beginning of the school year. It is nuts.

We´re into fall here now, and to be honest I can´t tell that much of a difference. Every day is the same: Cool and sunny in the morning, warm bordering on hot in the afternoon, cooling back down around dinner time. The weather is actually pretty nice here, I will give Cochabamba that.

Cool Little Moment

2005-03-30T09:02:00.000-05:00

I was sitting in Cocha`s central plaza yesterday, doing some writing and enjoying the nice weather. The plaza is really nice, with lots of flowers and grass surrounded on all sides by cool old colonial buildings. It is always full of people talking, playing or protesting. It is the real heart of this city.

So Cocha is full of beggars, which one would expect from the poorest country in South America. The majority of these people are not from Cocha, but come in from Potosi department. You can tell they are from Potosi because of their native dress, which features black skirts with colorful designs on them and white felt hats. The average person in the campo survives on 5Bs a day, which is roughly 62 cents. So, begging is a good deal for them.

As I was sitting there, two little girls came up to me. They were about 5 or 6 and from their dress obviously from Potosi. What they do is stand right in front of you and do this cute little native dance and sing songs in their high pitched voices. They keep going for however long it takes you to give them money. They were adorable, and I just cracked up at their dance. I gave them all the change I had.

A few minutes later they came back up to me and sat down. They asked what I was doing. I could not understand a lot of what they were saying because it was in Quechua, their native language (also the language of the Incas). But we understood enough to have a little conversation. Their names were Celia and Alvertina. I had them write their names in my notebook. After a few minutes, they continued their begging. But, it was just a nice little moment I thought. Darling little girls. If I had any more money, I would have given it to them.

Back ¨Home¨ Again

2005-03-25T12:33:00.000-05:00

We´re just back from 6 days in Sucre and Potosi. We took advantage of the two-week Easter Peace and its lack of blockades to get some travelling in, before the whole country goes to hell again. We´ve been to Sucre before (check the archives for 2 blogs and plenty of pics of Sucre), but this was our first time visiting Potosi.

The highlights:

1. Phujllay Festival in Tarabuco. Tarabuco is a little village outside of Sucre that is well-known for its textiles. Beautiful little place. Phujllay is a huge Carnival-like festival featuring like 30 nearby indiginous communities. They all come in dressed in their native costumes and perform dances around the town. Normally our luck is such that we get to town the week before or after something like this goes down. We got lucky this time.

After wandering around town for a while, buying up half the place (4 Alpaca rugs, two purses, and a belt to go with the poncho, Jalqá tapestry and shawl we picked up in Sucre proper) we asked a woman outside a cobbler´s shop what time the parade started and where the route was. She told us that it started in a few minutes, went right by the shop, and that we were welcome to sit on the seats she was setting up under an awning. We then passed a few hours with this family of cobblers, talking and drinking the beers we bought. By the time we had to leave, the place was so packed we couldn´t move. The woman took us under her wing, and lead us out of the crowd, shouting at people to get out of her friends´ way. Bolivian indians are like this. Nice people and incredibly hospitable.

2. Convento de San Felipe Neri, in Sucre. Last time we just saw the outside, but this trip we got inside. This is the most beautiful building I have ever seen. Anywhere. Words do not do it justice. It takes your breath away.

Why don´t I post a picture? Well, I can´t. A woman in the administration at Megan´s school, who also happens to be a part owner of the school, is mad at me for some bizarre reason. So, she has effectively banned me from using the school´s computer lab (only connection in town fast enough to allow photo uploading). She also banned me from using the school´s library, meaning I have no access to English language books. And that´s not even the worst of what she has done by a long shot. What a rotten bitch, pardon my French.

But I digress.

We learned that a series of tunnels connect most churches in Sucre, including San Felipe Neri. They were used back in the day so that monks who were not allowed on the streets could circulate around town and clean all of the church buildings. Turns out the tunnels were also used by priests and nuns to ¨hook up,¨ if you know what I mean. Worse, pregnant nuns would go in the tunnels to have their babies. They would then kill the babies; scores of tiny skeletons have been found down there. So you see, the hipocrisy of child molesting priests has a long history in the church!

Anyway, they hope to have the tunnels open for tours by 2010 (they partially collapsed in an earthquake in the 1940´s and need to be repaired).

3. Potosi. At over 13,500 feet, Potosi is the highest city in the world. And it is a good size city at like 120,000 people. It is like they plopped a city down on the moon -- not much grows up that high. The highlight was the Convento de Santa Teresa, a carmelite nunnery dating to 1692 (it operated until 1973). The nuns entered at age 15 and never left. Literally. The nuns were burried in crypts under the floor of a room next to the main church. Part of the crypts is now covered in glass so you can look down at the bones. The nuns not only could not leave, but they were not allowed to see anyone from the outside. Their family could visit once a month, but were hidden behind a black screen. The convent itself is an amazingly beautiful building, featuring a maze of interesting rooms. Again, wish I could show you a photo, but . . . .

In contrast, the Casa de Moneda (the old mint), which is Potosi´s most famous museum, was somewhat disappointing. It was beautiful and interesting, but lacked the ¨wow¨ factor that Santa Teresa packed.

Lowlight:

Nos. 1, 2 and 3. Freaking food poisoning. Again. When am I going to learn? Sweet Jesus I am soooooo f$%king sick of food poisoning. I spent a sleepless night with a raging fever thanks to the nasty-ass food at San Marcos Smelter. To make matters worse, that meal also gave me stomach amoebas. Again. The famous ¨Bolivian Two-fer.¨ Thankfully, we do not let the kids eat at restaurants that are not owned by foreigners (only foreign-owned restaurants here practice concepts of basic hygene). So, the kids were fine. And Meg dodged the bullet. Anyway, the stomach amoebas will help me on my quest to get my weight down to 135lbs, which looks real nice on my 6 foot frame.

Out.

Who knows what is going on

2005-03-17T09:09:00.000-05:00

One of the funny things about Bolivia is that no one ever really knows what is going on. If you hear about a parade happening today, and ask 4 people about it, they will tell you it is taking place (1) at 9AM; (2) at 11AM; (3) tomorrow; and (4) what parade?

So, from what I have heard this morning and gleaned from the newspaper, a compromise of some sort has been reached and -- at least for now -- the blockades will be lifted. This is all subject to change at any minute and depending on who you talk to. But good news -- at least for now.

The Slap and the Banana Magnate

2005-03-16T08:44:00.000-05:00

Well, what to say. Blockades continue to intensify. Food shortages are starting to be reported in the major cities, of which Cochabamba is one. The price of my apples, I noticed today, has doubled.

President Mesa is calling for early elections in August to replace him. He said that it is the ¨only way to prevent a bloodbath.¨ Opposition leader Evo ¨King of Coca¨ Morales was at the Cochabamba airport yesterday when he was slapped in the face by Miguel Zambrana, Bolivia´s ¨King of Bananas,¨ who rightly accused Morales of ruining Bolivia. Needless to say, this pissed off Morales.

I was down at the main plaza, Plaza 25 de Mayo, yesterday and it was packed with marching and screaming indians. I took some shots and will try to upload them later today. Apparently ¨anti American sentiment¨ is developing amongst the protesters, but everyone was cool to me.

Next week is spring break here (or, really, fall break, as winter is on its way). We were going to go to Potosi here in Bolivia, but fear the blockades. We may go to the beach in Arica, Chile, if those roads are clear. Who knows.

Now, please allow me to editorialize just a bit: This place is pretty well f$%ked right now, if you ask me. When your president calls for elections as ¨the only way to prevent a BLOODBATH¨(my emphasis), that is a pretty good sign that things are not going well. When Banana Magnates start slapping around Coca Kings, that is another sign that, well, you might just be circling the drain.

Anyway, I always wanted to know what it would be like to live in a Third World country as it dissolved into chaos, so at least I can cross that off my ¨To do by 40¨ list!

Another Day in Blockade Land

2005-03-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

So, the blockades continue.

The one place we most want to visit during our time here in Bolivia is the city of Potosi. We planned to go in two weeks. But at last check, the road to Potosi was blockaded, so we may not get to go. Pity.

Since we have no television, and I can´t read the newspaper, I get most of my news on Bolivia on the internet. The best source is www.boliviatimes.com, which collects Bolivia stories from English language news sources.

In fact, here is an interesting story about Bolivia´s poverty I picked up ther. I features some good photos, too:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4265295.stm

Also, I found out that ex-President Goni (U.S. backed, not surprisingly) has been brought up on charges of genocide stemming from his ordering the shooting of people during the last major protests here. He faces 30 years in prison if convicted.

On a more pleasant note, as the country falls apart, we are finally going to get to see ¨Sideways¨(¨Between Glasses¨ is what it is called here) tonight. It opened last night. They have some really, really nice U.S.-style theaters here with stadium seating and the whole bit. It costs $2.50 to get in (cheaper during matinees) and a huge tub of U.S.-style popcorn, complete with authentic fake butter, costs $1.00.

Los Ninos

2005-03-09T14:34:00.000-05:00

Just had a few recent pictures of my cute kids, and thought I would share.

photo: Lil' Papi looking fly.

photo: Jane goes for a swim, well protected.

photo: Handsome boy.

photo: Beautiful girl.

Crisis Averted (for now)

2005-03-09T08:55:00.000-05:00

Mesa is back in office. Everyone is happy. Coca King Evo Morales says the blockades will be dissolved. Let´s hope it lasts.

UPDATE: Apparently Morales has NOT agreed to dissolve the blockades. In fact, if anything Mesa´s gambit pissed him off even more. The opposition is now promising worse blockades. We´re stewed, basically. Read about it here:

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/3077408

Our friend Jenette´s husband is still stuck in La Paz (going on 2 weeks). A lot of the products at our supermarket here come from Argentina. I´ve noticed that those parts of the shelves are pretty bare today -- the trucks can´t get through.

Bolivia Falls Apart (Update)

2005-03-08T10:00:00.000-05:00

So I was going to go downtown this morning and try and find some good protests, but I realized our water bill was due yesterday. So, instead I went to the bank and paid it.

On the way home (¨home,¨ that is what I call the internet cafe, I guess), I stopped at Supermercado Real to get some enchilada sauce. Earlier, Lourdes had told me that in la cancha, which is the large outdoor market where 99% of the city buys its food (the other 1% being rich gringos like me who go to places like Real), there was no meat and very little in the way of veggies or fruit. This is because of all of the blockades around the country -- trucks can´t get in with the food. Anyway, Real was pretty fully stocked and had some meat too. I wonder whether that will change if the blockades continue.

As an aside, I am well tired of taking taxis here. It is just a pain in the ass and they are always tring to rip you off. And when they put the new interchange in, all of the buses stopped running by our house. So, I usually run wherever I need to go. I ran down to Real and picked up two cans of enchilada sauce, two cans of beans, some tortillas and two liters of milk. I stuffed it in my backpack and ran a few miles back to the internet cafe. Try jogging with a backpack full of canned goods some time. I think I blew out a knee.

Anyway, if you would like to read some news reports about the imminent collapse and complete destruction of Bolivia, see the links below (Ok, it is not that bad. This will be only the 194th regime change in Bolivia´s 154 years -- I kid you not. They are really, really good at regime change! And only 80 people died the last time we had a change, 15 months ago.):

http://www.indystar.com/articles/5/227616-3065-010.html

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12474980%255E2703,00.html

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-03/07/content_422596.htm

Jees, what a freaking mess

2005-03-07T08:27:00.000-05:00

Well, Bolivia´s president Carlos Mesa resigned today, after 18 months in office. Mesa, formerly VP, had taken office after his predecessor Goni was kicked out. By most accounts Mesa, a historian by trade, is a decent guy but not a great leader. There was a lot of what the news wires would probably call ¨bloody unrest¨ that lead to Goni´s outster, with dozens of people being killed in violent protests. How a country with a MAJORITY indian population elected Goni in the first place, who speaks Spanish with a North American accent, is beyond me. Stuff like that happens here.1

Anyway, this country has essentially been shut down for a week. The spouses of some friends are stuck in La Paz right now and can´t get out. Soccer games have been cancelled. The reason is the bloqueos (or, ¨blockades¨) which are the form of protest most favored here.

What happens is that groups of angry people use cars or buses and sometimes tons of large rocks to completely block main arteries, including roads to airports. You cannot pass these blockades, so the effect is the country grinds to a halt. No one can go anywhere. Now, why doesn´t the government adopt a zero tolerance policy with the blockades and just come in and arrest everyone responsible and break them up? Good question.

Why are people so mad? It´s almost like Portland in that people here will protest anything. Someone is always mad about something. Around Christmas they were mad about the rising price of gas and diesel. Now they are mad again about the distribution of profits from Bolivia´s huge natural gas stores. I´ve seen a lot of protests here about indiginous peoples´rights. There is a lot to be mad about down here.

So, the effect is that the country is without a leader today. Lourdes was telling me that one of the former presidents may step back in (Goni was even mentioned!!) or a military leader may take over (yeah, that is always a good idea). Huge protests are going on in La Paz.

In Cochabamba, we are today blessed by the city´s incompetence. Our friend Jenette and her kids came over for dinner the other day. Jeanette is a La Paz native who recently moved to Cocha. Very nice person. Her husband, actually, is stuck in La Paz right now and can´t get out. We were asking Jenette about blockades in Cochabamba. She said that Cochabambinos, among other things, are known for their inability to cooperate. The problem is that Cochabambinos are only out for themselves. So, people here can´t even get a decent blockade together. If you get 5 bus drivers together, they will be thinking of nothing but how the blockade can benefit them and how they can also screw over the other 4 guys. That´s how they think. The result is that we don´t get any good blockades here. A blessing and a curse, these Cochabambinos.

So, in Cocha today, there are still a lot of protests downtown and supposedly a fair amount of blockade attempts. Most schools are closed. I notice a lot less traffic out on the roads. It is very quiet. This morning my supermarket had its ¨riot guards¨ up. That is, the front of the store was blocked off with huge gates, and you could only enter and exit from a narrow opening. A guard with a shotgun stood nearby. I´ve never seen them with their riot guards totally deployed.

The bottom line is that we are very thankful we do not live in La Paz. Things here are quiet and as safe as always. On the other hand, it appears that Bolivia is probably entering another period of unrest. And it hasn´t been very stable for a long time, to begin with.

A Day in the Life (3/2/05)

2005-03-03T08:29:00.000-05:00

This is what I did yesterday, March 2, 2005.

3:00AM Wake up from a bad dream. I dreamed that I was in a couple of fist fights and killed two guys. Where the hell did that come from? I haven´t been in a fight in 20 years. In the dream I was all worried about being locked up in the joint and not being able to see the kids for 10 years. Anyway, the neigborhood party that was going on when I went to sleep is over, and most of the dogs have gone to sleep, so it is quiet outside.

4:30 I am still awake. I can´t get back to sleep. Jane wets the bed and so she comes to our bed and cuddles up next to me. Now I smell like pee.

6:07 I am still awake. Megan gets up and goes out for a run. It is dark and drizzly outside. She is brave.

6:25 Jane makes me get out of bed and make her breakfast. I put on some Ray Wylie Hubbard on the boom box and pop 3 asprin for my sore shoulder. My shoulder has been in constant pain since 1994, though the doctor says nothing is wrong with it. Jane and I have strawberry yogurt -- hers with cereal in it. Ray Wylie sings ¨I´ve got a heart that´s torn in two, so everyone can see it.¨

6:37 Jane spits in her yogurt. A few minutes later I notice she is not eating it. ¨Why aren´t you eating your yogurt,¨ I ask her. ¨´Cause nothing,¨ she replies. ¨Is it because it has spit in it?¨ I ask. She nods her head yes. We discuss why it is not a good idea to spit in your own food. She seems to get it now. But ever since she has been going to a Bolivian school, she has picked up soooo many bad habits. Bolivian kids aren´t raised with the same standards of discipline, behavior and respect that we use. They are basically wild animals, and it is rubbing off on Jane. Great.

6:45 Megan is back from running. We talk about what to do for our 5th anniversary, which is on Friday. We think. We can never remember what day our anniversay is.

7:04 Mac wakes up. Megan gets him from his room and brings him downstairs. She hands him to me, which pisses him off. He looks at Megan and screams ¨Daddy!!¨ He still thinks Megan´s name is daddy.

7:27 Megan leaves for work. I am on my own until 5PM. Or at least until Lourdes shows up.

8:17 Lourdes shows up with her son Jheyson, who just turned 7. I have Lourdes ¨do¨ Jane´s hair, because I don´t know how to. She does this every day. Lourdes loves Jane and Mac to death. She spends a lot of time reading and talking to them. As a result, Mac understands and speaks as much Spanish as he does English. Lourdes calls Jane ¨hermanita,¨ or ¨little sister.¨

8:32 Jane and I leave for her school. I do not have any small change for a taxi, so we have to walk. No big deal. I put her on my shoulders so we can go faster.

One of the crazy things about Bolivia is that no one ever has change. If something costs 10B, or about $1.25, and you pay for it with a 50B bill (about $6.25), they will have a heart attack. No one would have the $5 change. Worse, if you take a 4B cab ride and try to pay with a 5B coin, often they have no change. It is insane. One time we took a cab to dinner. It cost 7B. We paid with a 10. No change. We went into the restaurant -- one of Cochabamba´s fanciest -- and asked them to break the bill. They had no change either. The cabby then spent 20 minutes driving around trying to find change. He finally came back to the restaurant and gave us our 37 cents change.

8:58 I drop Jane off at her school. I´m wearing my running clothes, and take off on a jog towards downtown. I need to go to the post office and to immigration. A block from the school, I stop and change $100 into bolivianos. Most busy corners in Cocha have money changers on them (necessary since Bolivia operates on a dual U.S. dollars/bolivianos system). These guys give good rates and are very convenient. Hernan is our guy -- we always use him to change our money and he knows us. We trust he will not give us bad bills (counterfeiting is a big problem in Bolivia).

9:28 I arrive at the post office. It is still threatening rain and the water table must be high -- I passed 3 overflowing sewers. Funny, the sewers don´t smell much different from the water that comes out of the tap. I mail a letter to my Dad at the post office.

9:32 Check e-mail at an internet cafe next to the post office.

9:57 Buy the new International Newsweek from a stand in the central plaza.

10:00 Arrive at immigration. The last time I was here, they told me I could not pick up my photo id card because I didn´t have my passport. So, I am returning with my passport so I can show them a 6-year-old picture that proves the person in the 2-week-old photo is me. Makes sense. But now they tell me that I also need to go out and find a copy machine so I can give them copies of random pages from our passports -- copies we have already given to this immigration office 10 freaking times. Oh, and I also need to return with the kids. They didn´t tell me any of this last time I was here. Best of all: They lost the photos of the kids we gave them, so we need to pay them AGAIN to take the photos. This is what dealing with Bolivian immigration is like. Wonder why we have been at it for 7 months?

At this point, I decide that I have officially had enough. I am just done with Bolivian immigration. I am not going to complete the immigration process this year. Screw it. It just isn´t worth the aggravation. Maybe we will have better luck next year. For starters, we will not involve Megan´s school in the process. They certainly f$%ked it up enough this year.

So, I storm out muttering various and sundry obscenties and head for la chancha market.

10:18 Arrive at la cancha, still pissed at the world. La cancha is Bolivia´s largest outdoor market. You have no idea. This thing is a sprawling, endless maze of crowded little alleys and passages, stuffed with food, clothes, furniture, jewelry, music, crafts, appliances, bikes; basically, everything under the sun is for sale here. It goes on forever. No one has ever seen all of it. I´m pretty sure it is the size of the state of Connecticut. I love the place as much as Megan hates it.

10:44 Leave la cancha. Scored an Iron Maiden t-shirt for $6 and two pairs of shorts for a total of $10. I walk back to the main plaza to try and find a cab.

11:06 Arrive at the main square. Check bootleg cds for the new Judas Priest. Nothing. Maybe next week.

11:17 Still at the main plaza. There are two protests going on simultaneously. One is a huge mob of indiginous people, undoubtedly mad at the government because they get screwed over on a daily basis. It is never a good thing in a 3rd world country when an ethnic majority is governed by a corrupt ethnic minority. The second group are bus drivers mad about gas prices. All the roads around the plaza are blocked off. No cabs. I keep walking.

11:25 Get a cab to IC Norte, the big gringo supermarket. At least I think I am in a cab. The sun was in my eyes and I just stuck out my arm. A car stopped and I got in. He doesn´t have a ¨taxi¨ sign in his window, like most cabs do. But he is heading the right way.

11:31 Arrive at IC Norte. I may have just paid some random dude 50 cents for a ride. In the market, I pick up a big bag of crusty, still-warm bread rolls. Rolls are a staple of the Bolivian diet. I get 12 for 25 cents. I also get a bag of pasta for dinner, and a couple cans of Taquina beer. Taquina is really bad beer, like all the beer here. The brewery is owned by Argentinians. The Bolivian National Brewery (BNB) is also owned by the same Argentinians. We were at the Taquina brewery two weeks ago and we asked what was the difference between Taquina, and the two BNB brands, Huari and Pacena. The brewery rep told us it was all the same exact beer, just packaged in different cans. Having tasted them, I believe that.

I have a few minutes to kill, so after checking out I sit in a park and read for a few minutes.

12:03PM Pick up Jane from school. We walk down the hill and look for a cab.

12:15 We arrive home. Lourdes and Jheyson leave. I make a lunch of quesadillas for Mac, and make him eat some funky fruit Megan bought (she later tells me it is papaya). Jane and I have cheese sandwhiches on the rolls I just bought. We also split a banana.

12:45 The kids and I kill some time reading books, playing on the swingset, etc. I also read my Newsweek and drink a beer in the backyard.

1:53 I put Mac down for his afternoon nap (Jane doesn´t nap anymore).

1:54 I do a little Spanish homework, then go in the backyard to read some more and drink another beer. Reckless Kelly are on the boombox now, singing about how ¨my first love was a wicked twisted road.¨

2:40 The trash man comes. We just got trash pick-up here 2 months ago. Before then, I had to haul all of our trash 4 blocks down the street to a big dumpster. A lot of people just threw their trash in the street. Many still do. The trash guys drive this rickety little 3-wheel pick-up truck. One guy drives and the other stands in the back clanging a piece of steel with a hammer to signal their arrival. When I hear them, I walk out and hand our trash to the guy standing in the back. What a crap job -- standing in the back of a Bolivian trash truck all day. Can you imagine how bad his shoes smell?

2:47 I am feeling ¨snacky.¨ I ask Jane if she wants some popcorn. Only I ask her in Spanish: ¨Quieres un poco de pipoca?¨ She says ¨si,¨ and we kill a few minutes saying ¨poco de pipoca.¨ Try it, it´s fun!!

But we do not have a microwave or hot air popper, so we have to do it old school, cooking the corn in oil. If you haven´t had popcorn this way in a while, you have to try it. It is soooooo much better this way.

4:20 Jane and I clean the mess in the living room that she and Mac made earlier. Meg normally gets home at 3:30 but has Spanish class today and won´t be home until 5. She likes a clean house when she gets home or she gets really pissed at me.

4:30 Wake Mac up from his nap. Mac, Jane and I spend some time cuddling in a chair. Mac has some raisins.

5:04 Start making pasta for dinner.

5:21 Doorbell rings. I get all excited shouting ¨Mommy´s home!¨ It´s not mommy -- it is one of our neighbors with a plate full of peaches from the tree in her yard. That was very nice of her.

5:30 I stop cooking. Where the hell is Megan?

6:00 Ok guys, if you are going to be late coming home, you need to call your spouse and tell them. They can´t be sitting around with dinner half made wondering where you are. We don´t have a phone in the house, so Meg can´t call me, but I am a bit worried and mad that my dinner is stalled.

6:03 Meg gets home. She stopped after class to call our friend Cath back in the states. Meg tells me that two uniformed policemen heckled her coming down our street, saying ¨Hey baby¨ or something like that. This is amazing only becuase you normally have to bribe a Bolivian cop to get him to do anything.

6:10 Dinner is ready.

6:43 After cleaning up our dinner, we put on the new Waylon Payne disc. When you do not have television, you have to make things up to keep yourself entertained. We do something called ¨kitchen dancing,¨ which involves everyone dancing around the kitchen waving a dish towel. Jane is late to the party, and when she comes into the kitchen, Mac immediately goes to the drawer and gets a towel and hands it to her.

7:31 Bath time for the kids.

7:50 Bedtime. I get Mac because if Megan puts him to bed, he freaks out when she leaves the room. He doesn´t like me as much, so it does not bother him when I leave. We read a bunch of books and sing his favorite songs, ¨Row your boat¨ and ¨Twinkle little star.¨

8:00 Kids are to bed. Meg and I get in bed and do some reading before falling asleep.

THE END!

La Paz Photos

2005-02-22T16:11:00.000-05:00

Finally, here are our La Paz pictures. We spent 10 days in La Paz, Tiwanaku, Copacabana and Isla del Sol (on Lake Titicaca) over Christmas break. It was a great trip, but it was all between 12,500-13,500 feet in elevation. To put that in perspective, that is more than 2,000 feet HIGHER than the summit of Mt. Hood. Our kids have a tough time with those altitudes, despite the fact that they are acclimated to 8,500 feet (which is what Cochabamba is). We learned the hard way that we really need to limit their exposure to those heights. Everyone coming down with stomach amoebas didn´t help much, nor did 10 days of eating horrible Bolivian food.

Pic: La familia at the Tiwanaku ruins (circa 700 AD).

Pic: La Paz skyline. La Paz is called ¨The Big Gash¨ because it sits in a valley dramatically carved out of the altiplano. At the lip of the gash is El Alto, which dukes it out with Potosi for the title of the World´s Highest City.

Pic: Jane and her Aymara friends on Isla del Sol. These native indians either descended from the Incans, or pre-date them. Forgive my lack of recall. Anyway, let me say that Aymarans are possibly the nicest people on the face of the earth. Isla del Sol was worth the hassle to get there.

Pic: Jim and his coca bag. Possession of this 25 cent bag of coca leaves could get me a long stretch in prison in the US. Chewing coca is the only way to deal with the altitude. Plus, you make a lot of friends by giving them a handfull of these magic leaves. The only time I got sick up here was when I could not chew coca due to a badly upset stomach caused by yet another delicious (gag!) meal of Bolivian ¨food¨.

View the rest of the pictures here. Just cut and paste this into your browsers window:

http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeAM2jls5cs2rC8g

Immigration Watch 2005

2005-02-22T08:55:00.000-05:00

For those keeping score at home, today I made our family´s 41st visit to immigration. And the process still isn´t over. I need to go back at least once more. So we are now in our 7th month of trying to get our 1-year visas, a process that so far has cost us over $1,300. 7 months, 41 visits, $1,300. Not that I´m saying the process is inefficient, or anything.

I won´t allow Megan to go to immigration anymore, because I honestly think she may hurt someone.

Yikes, this is scary

2005-02-21T10:09:00.000-05:00

A poll published in the current international edition of Newsweek asked U.S. high school students whether they agreed with this statement: ¨The media should be able to report what it wants without government approval.¨

51% agreed with the statement. Meaning that 49% (or almost half) of the high school students polled believe that the U.S. government should control (or, ¨censor¨) the media. Like the crap reported by the U.S. media isn´t slanted enough!

In the same poll, 17% of high schoolers said that people should not be allowed to express ¨unpopular opinions.¨

Leading Newsweek to comment that perhaps George W. Bush ought to direct his efforts at protecting liberty a bit closer to home.

Confessions of a Hopelessly Undecided Mind

2005-02-18T09:17:00.000-05:00

We´re going through an interesting excercise right now -- trying to decide where to live next. Considering the fact that between us we have spent more than 14 years living abroad in 4 different countries and in total have lived in something like 26 different cities, I guess you could say we aren´t really tied to any one place.

We are hoping to come up with a short list of 3 or 4 potentials, so that this summer we can visit them and do some up-close evaluation. Then, when it is time for us to come ¨home¨ in 18 months, we´ll at least have an idea of where home might be.

We started with a blank slate. Or I guess really more of a full slate, since it had all 50 states on it. The first to go were the Bay Area (too expensive and fast-paced) and So. Cal. (too plastic) followed by Arizona (I don´t care what y´all tell yourselves, ¨dry¨ or not, humans should not live in 110 deg. heat . . . and what´s up with no MLK Day? Even Mississippi celebrates that) and Florida (too many hanging chads). Our most recent home, Oregon, also took an early exit (you can never go home again, even if ¨home¨ is Portland, one of the greatest cities in the world).

So, that narrowed it down to 46.5 states (plus DC).

Megan once spent a night in a Weiser, Idaho motel room, sleeping in the bath tub to avoid getting hit by stray bullets from the meth lab bust taking place in the room nextdoor. She holds it against the entire state. Idaho is out.

I do not want to live in the great plains, so out go Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Iowa (to the extent those are actually different states -- I´m not sure).

We´re both terrified of the ¨deep south¨ (afraid I may get lynched with my high-altitude South American tan), so we next axe Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia and South Carolina (where some of our relatives had their house burned down -- twice -- because they were Yankees).

Now, there are some states that I´m pretty sure no one actually lives in and I do not want to be the first. Bye bye to the Dakotas and Wyoming.

Utah has some beautiful country. But, at the risk of pissing-off some nice people, all those Mormons freak me out (all cults remind me of Guyana for some reason). I´d always be afraid someone was trying to put cyanide in my kool aid. Plus, alcohol and caffeine are my two favorite substances, next to coca and yogurt. Hasta la vista Utah.

Alaska is beautiful, but I´m pretty sure bears would eat me. Hawaii? I´d lose my mind with all those tourists in socks and sandals telling me ¨shakka brah.¨ Nope.

Our list is getting more manageable, but it is still too long. Time to get irrational.

Louisiana is out because it is just too much cheap, bad alcohol served in giant take-out cups and too damn much deep fried turkey.

New York? Puhlease! F@#k the Yankees!!!! New Jersey? Yeah, I wanna live in a toxic waste dump with a bunch of guidos. Next.

Delaware? Can´t take that accent, so, no. Washington, D.C.? Let me get this straight: You elected Marion Barry AFTER he got busted for smoking crack? Can´t do it.

Nevada? Yeah, if only I liked gambling, hookers and oppresive heat (though it would be cool to go to Winnemuca and hang out at Winner´s Casino just once, wouldn´t it Terri?).

New Mexico? It´s like a ¨stealth state¨. I have always thought of New Mexico as Arizona-Lite. Which is kind of like Bud Dry. Plus, I prefer the old Mexico (hola, Zej).

Indiana? Two words: Peyton Manning. I´d rather shave my eyebrows off than live in a state that worships that she-male. Hey Peyton -- who´s your daddy? Archie? Nope, it´s Tom Brady. You know it. Come to think of it, Peyton Manning is reason enough to cross Maryland off the list too (still think of them as the Baltimore Colts). Enjoy your Marino-esque career of racking up fat yards and never winning the big one. Out.

So our list is getting more manageable, but still has like 18 states, mas o menos (as they say here in the barrio). Time for some rationality (mas o menos).

Our no. 1 criteria for our new home is that it absolutely must have a Spanish language immersion school for the kids. Luckily these are becomming popular and more and more are popping up every year. I did some on-line research and we can now cross Montana, West Virginia, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Missouri, New Hampshire and Maine off the list, cause these sinners don´t have such a school (a shame too, because otherwise WV, MT, ME, NH and VT would be on our top 10 list).

In addition to the immersion school, our new home has to be a place (1) we can afford and (2) we´d actually want to live. And so please say goodbye to Washington (until they put an immersion school in the San Juans, no desire), Virginia ($), Michigan (no desire), Illinois ($), Massachusetts ($) and the rest of California ($$) (thus ending my short lived dreams of living in Ukiah or Healdsburg).

So this is what our list looks like today, with at least one city still in the running in each of the following states: Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee (though that´s down on the list ´cause Peyton Manning went to school there), Texas, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Connecticut. And if Megan reads this, she will come home and say ¨Why didn´t you put Flagstaff on the list? I thought we talked about that!¨ And we did. So let´s humor her by listing it here. But between us, um, no.

So now Megan´s task is to evaluate each of the 26 immersion schools located in those 10 states and determine which ones she thinks are the best. That ought to weed a lot out. Then, we´ll apply additional criteria on our list. For instance, we really want to live near family for once. Unfortunately, most of our family lives in the Bay Area, Southern California and Arizona, which you will recall where the first 3 places to get cut (and our 3 least favorite places on earth). Maybe we were both adopted. Megan wants stuff like parks and museums and zoos for the kids. Women. Luckily I have my priorities straight, and am looking for things like a pro hockey team and good music scene.

We´ll keep you posted.

Dog Gone

2005-02-17T09:18:00.000-05:00

At first I wasn´t sure what it was. It kind of looked like a big brown and white fur coat. It was lying on a small ledge at the base of a deep, steep-walled drainage ditch. The ditch ran down the middle of a wide, 4-lane cobble stone road. It had been raining all day -- not that Portland mist, but a good heavy, big-dropped South American rain. The muddy, dirty water in the ditch was running high.

I walked closer to the upper lip of the ditch -- its almost vertical sides 7 feet deep and 10 feet across. As I peered down, I could tell it was a big dog. A collie. He was shivering from the cold. He was also stuck -- the water cut off his path forward and there was little room on the ledge for him to turn around. I shouted to him, ¨Hola. Perro!!¨ He didn´t move. I moved closer and shouted again, louder. ¨HOLA!!! PERRO!!¨ He looked around this time, but didn´t know where I was. ¨Up Here!!¨ I screamed. He looked up.

His eyes were milky gray discs, much like you see in scary old blind women in the movies. Or maybe more like the old master in the TV series ¨Kung Fu.¨ I know this dog. I walk past him 4 times a day, every day, on my way to and from Jane´s school. He sits on the sidewalk in front of his house. When I walk by, he looks up at me with his gray blind eyes. He always seems scared and maybe a little freaked out. He´s never been aggressive towards me, unlike most Cocha dogs. Still, there is a defensiveness to him that always makes me give him a wide berth.

The blind dog lives a few blocks up the hill from where he sits now, at the bottom of the river. Or maybe it is one block. Or three. I cannot remember. But it is obvious that for some reason he wandered across the street from his house and fell in the river. He made his way this far along the bank and is now stuck.

This is the part where I am supposed to tell you how I found an old piece of rope. I tied it around the trunk of a convenient nearby tree. I quickly fasten a harness, using my sailing knots, and rapel into the river. Knowing help is finally here, the dog gives me a thankfull bark as I approach. He lifts his blind eyes towards me and warmly licks my face. I fasten the harness around him, and a couple of the helpful on-lookers pull the dog to safety. A group of passers-by let out a cheer. Next, I am pulled to safety, patted on the back. The dog is whisked to the vet, where he is proclaimed to be in sound health. His owner comes to my house later that night. He thanks me profusely for saving his baby. A short time later, the dog has puppies. The owner gives me one. I name it Lassie.

Only that isn´t what happened.

What I do is walk across the street to one of the blocks I think the dog lives on. Like everywhere in Bolivia, the block is nothing but a huge beige 10 foot wall, alternately topped with broken glass set in cement, or barbed wire, or electrified wire. A few doors break it up. In front of one door is a security guard in a booth. I approach, and knock on the window.

I do not know the word for ¨blind,¨ so I ask the guard ¨Do you know the dog with no eyes?¨ He says, ¨Huh?¨ I ask him again, and he says ¨si.¨ ¨What house does he live in?¨ I ask. He shrugs his shoulders, and says, ¨I don´t know.¨ He pauses, then adds, ¨The dog is in the river.¨ Obviously this guy is not going to help.

So I walk up the block further and am met by another long beige wall. I cannot for the life of me remember what house is his. I walk past him 4 times a day for a month, but every beige wall looks alike after a while. What house is his???

Then, I do something I never would have done 6 months ago. I give up. I walk back down the hill, past the old blind dog, and go to the grocery store to buy rolls for dinner.

Why? Six months of having to deal with big packs of mean, mangy, potentially rabid dogs on a daily basis has made me callous. You can only be attacked and chased by vicious dogs so many times. At this point, I no longer feel any urge to risk my life jumping into a deep river to save a dog that may just bite me and potentially give me rabies. No one here cares about their dogs so neither do I. I´m sick of having to carry a huge batton with me every time I run. It is sad.

I never see the dog again.

Show her the money

2005-02-14T08:22:00.000-05:00

As many of you know, my baby sister Danielle is battling breast cancer. She´s already had a few operations and she started a 6-month course of chemo a couple weeks ago. She´s a tough kid and is really dealing with it well. Plus, she looks really, really good with her new short hair cut (don´t know how she´ll look bald though!).

Anyway, she is doing a Susan Komen 5k run/walk to raise money for breast cancer research. Below is a link where you can sponser her and donate money. Please do so if you can. Remember, the life you save may not be just my sister´s. It may be your sister´s or your wife´s or your daughter´s, too.

http://www.active.com/donations/fundraise_public.cfm?key=dfdelacruz

COMING SOON: I am gonna get our La Paz pictures up this week. I also have a fun story about my visit to the dentist that I should post later on.

A Trapper Keeper and some pencils

2005-02-02T08:56:00.000-05:00

So summer vacation is over and kids are heading back to school, including Janey. We switched Janey to a new school so that she will get more Spanish and less English. Speaking of which, we were at the medical lab the other night getting the kids 5,000th poop test results to see what the Amoeba of the Week is. The lady working there commented that Jane spoke Spanish with no gringo accent. ¨She sounds just like us,¨ said the woman. That made us feel good.

So anyway Jane´s new school is called Tierra de Ninos. She likes it because its name is similar to ¨Tierra de Osos,¨ which is what the Disney movie ¨Brother Bear¨ is called down here. Jane dug that movie. It is also one of the few preschools here that did not steal its name from Disney. There are several ¨Disney¨ preschools. There is one called ¨Walt Disney¨ and another called ¨Mickey and Friends.¨ There are also ¨Winnie the Pooh,¨ ¨Shrek¨ and ¨Simba¨ preschools, each decorated with large colorful paintings of their namesake characters. No, these are not licensed by Disney. Apparently ¨respect for the intellectual property rights of others¨ is not a concept taught to kids at this age. Well, at any age here, really. The markets are full of bootleg cds and dvds and other products. You can browse the internet from the Google Internet Cafe (same logo even) or eat at Chilis (oh, just a little different) or have some coffee at the Casablanca Cafe, decorated with stills from the movie. Don´t even get me started on Globo, the kids icecream place here that has people in Mickey, Donald and Goofy costumes dancing in front of the store everynight. Dirty dancing, I should say. Why you would have Mickey grinding his hips into Donald´s ass and think that is a good thing to do in a kid´s icecream parlor is just beyond me. But I digress.

On Jane´s first day her teacher gave me a list of materials we need to buy for school. Here is the list:

3 goma evas colores brillantes
2 paquetes de plastilina
1 caja de pntadedo
3 pilegos de papel lustre
1 caja de crayones grande
1 capricola grande 1/2 litre
1 capricola de color
200 palitos de helado
20 hojas de cartulina tamano oficio de colores
150 hojas de papel bond
2 mareadores gruesos
1 caja de colores
1 caja de marcadores
1 cintas de embalaje
1 archivador condor
1 cuento
1 tijera tramontina amarilla
1 lapiz negro
1 trajabador
1 borrador
1 pilego de papel crepe
1 pilegos de cartulina
2 pilego de papel celofan
1 cuaderno de 100 hojas anillado, rayado, ramano carta
1 tinta para decorar (Tulip)
1 pincel #5 punta planta
1 agua punta roma lana
1 individual
1 juego para el arenero
4 rollos de papel higienico blanco
1 crema dental con sabor
1 cepillo de dientes
1 peine
1 tohallita
1 jaboncillo
1 caja de Kleenex

Ok, now where do I start. Frist off, we´re paying more each month for this school than we pay our faithful sidekick Lourdes to come and clean up our crap 6 days a week. That´s a lot of dough, and I have to buy an entire stationary store too? Second, keep in mind Jane is 3. She´s two years away from kindergarten. That´s a lot of crap for a 3 year old to go through in a year. When I was in highschool, back to school shopping meant a new Trapper Keeper, a couple pencils and maybe a new pair of cords from the Gap.

Finally, I look at this list and I´m thinking ¨What in God´s name is a ´cintas de embalaje´ or a ´borrador´ or an ´individual´?¨ And even if I can figure out what they are, how am I going to find these needles in the haystack that is our sprawling market La Cancha.

So, I did what anyone in my position would do -- I punted. I gave the list to Lourdes, handed her a wad of money, and had her go to La Cancha and buy it all for me. It was a lot of crap, let me tell you.

IMMIGRATION UPDATE: We´re now at about $1,200, 6 months, 37 visits to various agencies, and still no visas. And no one at the school has been able to explain to us why we have to keep paying money, what exactly the money is for, or why we have had to go through the entire process twice. No one knows anything, which I think is part of the problem to begin with. To say that we are a little upset about it is, well, like saying Jane had to buy a couple things for school. We could have saved a lot of money by just taking a bus to Chile every 3 months to leave and re-enter on a new 90-day tourist visa. I would also imagine that the process would be much faster if school employees didn´t have to spend half of their days running personal errands for members of the school´s board of directors.

Finally Pictures of Oruro

2005-01-25T16:54:00.000-05:00

Photo . Pretty cool old adobe church outside of Oruro on the way to the Cala Cala rock paintings.

Photo . Some BIG country at Cala Cala. The plains here are at 12,000 plus feet. Pretty high.

Photo . Some local folk hanging out in Cala Cala

Photo . Another old church on the road from Cocha to Oruro and La Paz. I took this from the old bell tower. It's a pretty good shot, eh. Feel free to print it out and frame it. I won't even charge you for it.

VIEW ALL OF OUR ORURO PICS HERE : http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeAM2jls5cs2rC0A

Zzzzzzzzz (or not)

2005-01-21T09:34:00.000-05:00

Well, I have a ton of great photos from our trips to Oruro, La Paz, Copacabana and Isla del Sol. So where are they? Honestly, I am too exhausted to post them.

You see, to post photos I need to go to Megan´s school because the connections at Cocha´s 8,000,000 internet places are all deadly slow. Our house is at the bottom of a hill. To get to Meg´s school, I need to walk up our big hill, then walk 2km down the main street, then up a huge hill to the school. That is a lot of hills at 8,500 feet when it is 90 degrees out (summer here, remember).

Why so tired? First, Megan and I both are suffering from insomnia. Lots of great conversations at 3AM, at least. Plus, we all have stomach amoebas that we can´t shake. The amoebas make you feel full and bloated all the time, with no apetite at all. So, even though you are shaky with hunger, you can´t eat much. So, that fatigues you. And the food is so bad here that even if you soak everything in bleach and eat only from your own kitchen, you still get sick. The only real way to shake the amoebas is, well, to move back to the States. Meg and I have lost like 35 pounds combined in the past few months -- forget Atkins, I am going to market the Amoeba Diet when I get back.

So, we are just a bunch of amoeba-ridden insomniacs. Illegal immigrant amoeba ridden insomniacs, that is (despite 35 visits to immigration and related government entities, each visit taking up to 4 hours, with our children present each time, and the expense of over $1,000, we have yet to get our 1-year visas).

The Sucre Diaries (Part 2)

2005-01-11T10:26:00.000-05:00

The next morning we kill visiting Casa de la Liberdad (the ¨Liberty House¨), which is basically the Bolivian equivalent of Fanuel Hall in Boston. Now, you need to be careful when it comes to Bolivia and independence, as the question always arises as to ¨Independence from whom?¨ Bolivia has had something like 150 revolutions in its history, which may be more than one revolution per year of existence, but I am not sure. Anyway, this is the building where independence from the Peruvian bastards was cemented. Mac is in a pissy mood, so Megan catches most of the tour while I hang with the kids in the House´s beautiful courtyard.

Photo: Jane in the courtyard of Liberty House

After a quick lunch spent mostly deflecting the world´s most aggressive shoeshine boys -- I almost wanted to say yes to one to see how he shined my dirty suede hiking boots -- we hoofed it back to the top of the city. The view up here is just too much for words. Not just the best city view I have ever seen, but perhaps the best I may ever see. We stood there speechless for a good ten minutes. It is worth it to travel all the way down here just for this. The Monestary of the Recoleta sits up here too, and is supposedly beautiful and interesting. It was also supposed to be open, but it wasn´t. Our real objective, anyway, was the Museo de los Ninos Tanga Tanga (the children´s museum) next door.

Tanga Tanga was built by a gringo-lead foundation and looks it. Inside, it compares favorably to OMSI or any of the best US children´s museums, with one exception: it is broken. That is, despite being just a few years old, many of the exhibits are already broken and have not been fixed. We see this a lot in Bolivia -- there is just no money for regular maintanance, which leads to premature aging. For instance, we were shocked to learn that a restaurant we ate at in La Paz last week was just 6 months old -- how could it fall apart so quickly? Still, there is much to do here. We enjoyed the terraces behind the museum, which demonstrate and explain each of Bolivia´s diverse climates, from jungle to high mountains. Inside the museum, Jane and Chippy pass an afternoon painting, reading and playing with blocks. Many of the exhibits pertian to sustainable energy, which fascinate me (despite the fact that none of the exhibits work).

Dinner we take at Cafe Mirador, a certified first rate gringo hangout, which sits just behind the museum and features that great city view I told you about. We watch the sun set while enjoying bowls of delicious pasta (and it is very hard to make good pasta at this altitude -- the water doesn´t get hot enough to properly cook the noodles). A group of Tarabuco musicians play. We then walk home in the dark, stopping along the way to check out Iglesia San Lazaro (which dates to the mid-1500´s) and Iglesia San Francisco (circa 1539). The interiors of Bolivian churches are as fascinating as their outsides, usually featuring an enourmous gaudy alter of gold and intricate woodwork. The churches are heavy on idolatry, with as many as two dozen life-size statutes of saints installed at various points. I guarantee you have never seen anything like this in North America. I get a kick out of a sign in San Lazaro that pictures a cell phone with a line through it and the words ¨God doesn´t call you on your cell phone.¨ Amen.

After breakfast our last morning we run into a guy from Tarabuco, which is a nearby village famous for its textiles. He has a couple of their distinctive hats and wants to sell us one. We´re not in the market for a hat, but ask if he has any blankets. He does, and takes off a gigantic pack to show them to us. These are actual handmade garments worn by people in the village, and are just beautiful. We select one we want and quickly make a deal for it.

Photo: Jim, Jane and the Tarabuco man.

It is Monday and more things are supposedly open. We head to Iglesia La Merced, supposedly possessing the most beautiful interior of any church in Bolivia. Contrary to what the Lonley Planet says, it is closed. So too is Convento San Felipe Neri (circa 1795) across the street. Even from the outside, Neri is stunning, with its brown sandstone base and bright white towers. Too bad we didn´t get to see its famous interior courtyard.

Photo: Convento San Felipe Neri

We decide to walk a few blocks to the Museo Charcas, a trio of museums in a beautiful old colonial building. We first visit the colonial art gallery. Lots of religious related paintings and statues. I am impressed by the diverse range and sheer quantity of work attributed to the artist Anomino. It takes me to the end of the museum to realize that means ¨Anonymous.¨ Duh!

Our last afternoon is spent hunting for more textiles. We hit a row of artisania shops around the corner from our hotel. In one we spent almost an hour hunting through stacks of blankets. We probably took 30 out to investigate further, bringing many out into the street to see in better light. We even accidentally wake up the owner´s 2-year-old daughter who was sleeping on the floor in one corner of the shop. We are so preoccupied with finding the perfect blanket, that we don´t really negotiate the price much. The one we settle on is 200B, or about $25. Not bad for a handmade blanket. We go to the ATM to get some money.

¨Do you think it is too expensive,¨ Megan asks me. ¨Trust your guy,¨ I tell her, like always. So we take a left hand turn back towards our hotel. On the way, we see another guy from Tarabuco with a big sack on his back. We ask him to come back to our hotel and show us what he has. We quickly find a blanket we like. He wants 200B for it. We tell him 150. Eventually we settle on 170B.

As soon as we had struck that deal, yet another Tarabuco guy approaches us. He throws down his pack and immediately rips out a blanket. It is more beautiful than any we have seen. ¨Ooh, I want that one,¨ says Megan. ¨I´ll give it to you for 170 too,¨ says the guy. The guy is a bit aggressive, which flusters Megan. Plus, we already have all the blankets we intended to buy. Megan tells the guy, ¨100B. That is all we will give you.¨ With that, she scoops up Mac and Jane and disappears into our hotel, leaving me standing there with this guy.

This guy has a baseball-sized wad of coca in his cheek. I can smell the herbal aroma heavy on his breath. ¨170,¨ he pleads with me. ¨That is very cheap. Much work to make this.¨ He points out the admittedly beautiful detail. Green flecks of coca dot his lips.

¨100. No more.¨ I tell him. ¨My wife said 100 and that is all I will pay.¨ Only in my caveman Spanish it was more like ¨Wife say 100 no more.¨

¨160,¨ he says. ¨Much work!¨

¨100. No more.¨ I tell him.

¨OK. 150.¨

¨100.¨

¨140. Very cheap.¨

¨100. Wife say 100. No more.¨ It goes on like this for some time. Now, it is easy to negotiate when you do not have any more than 100B in your pocket, and your wife has told you not to spend any more anyway AND she is still pissed at you for losing $100.

¨120.¨

¨No.¨

Finally, ¨Aargh. Ok. 100.¨

I hand him 100B, about $12.50, and take my beautiful handmade blanket.

¨120. Beautiful. Much work,¨ he pleads one last time.

I start to hand him back the blanket and reach for my money. Reluctanlty, he puts the money in his pocket and starts reassembling his pack. I quickly dart inside the hotel to show Megan my bounty, leaving the peddlar at the door.

Note: If you scroll back through the archives, you will find a link to all of our photos from this trip.

Keep On Rockin´ in the Third World

2005-01-10T12:29:00.000-05:00

A little dose of perspective for those whose day was ruined because Starbucks put too much foam on their caramel latte.

We have been working for 6 months now to get our one year visas. Yeah, 6 months to get a one year visa and we still have a long way to go. So we go to the police station this morning to get some paperwork done for the kids. HUGE lines wrapping around the building. Guess they have to do with a Bolivia-Spain immigration crisis. So our guy bribes a cop to let us go to the front of the line. Mission one accomplished. We then go to immigration. The department we need to transact with decided not to show up today. No one knows why. Our guy says he will go there tomorrow and see if they are in. If so, he will come get us. We are starting to wonder whether Megan´s two year contract will be up before we get our immigration straightened out.

Most of our appetites are coming back as the anti-parasite medication kicks in. Megan still cannot eat much.

I am on my way to the supermarket. I hope the lines are not too long. You see, there is going to be a national shutdown tomorrow because of all of the protests over the rise in gas and diesel prices. No stores will be open. We´ve been warned to stay well clear of the protests, which should not be a problem because they will be downtown and we are a few miles north of there. Bus fares have already gone up 50-75% here as a result of the rise in gas prices.

Did I mention that Mac chipped one of his two front teeth pretty badly? Has nothing to do with living in the third world, but he looks funny. We are calling him ¨Chippy¨ now.

Later . . . .

Down to Earth

2005-01-07T10:38:00.000-05:00

We´re finally back from an exhausting 10 day trip to La Paz and Lake Titicaca. I´m going to get some pictures up later this month, along with the Oruro ones. To me, the bloggable part of the La Paz trip was our return from Isla Del Sol, on Titicaca, to La Paz. There was a nationwide transportation blockade that day, and it made for an epic trip. Unfotunately, the trip was marred by a rather scarry and disturbing incident that day in the hills above Titicaca, and Megan has asked that I don´t write about it so I won´t.

Otherwise the 2 minute drill on the trip is as follows:

La Paz is an unremarkable city set in one of the most amazing locations on earth. An interesting contrast of beauty and ugliness. Better food than Cocha, though. Oh, and most of the museums were closed for the holidays. I mean, people don´t travel at the holidays, right?

Copacabana, on the shores of Titicaca, has one of the most beautiful churches in the world. Rest of the town is an unbelievable s&#thole. Surprising, that one. For those who live in Bolivia, we have dubbed Copa ¨Quillacollo by the Sea.¨

Isla Del Sol is beautiful, tranquil, and filled with the kindest, warmest human beings on earth. But at 13,500 feet, the altitude killed us.

This is the trip that keeps on giving, as that delicious, clean Bolivian food has given us all stomach parasites. And we came home to find a dead and rotting frog had washed into our water tank. Still, it is great to be home. In the future, we have decided that we will not take the kids on trips of more than 5 days here. The bad food and high altitude are too hard on them (we spent a good portion of the ten days at over 12,000 feet).

Coming next week: Sucre Diaries Part 2

The Sucre Diaries (Part 1)

2005-01-07T09:32:00.000-05:00

Our trip to Sucre, ¨The White City of the Americas,¨ got off to a pretty bad start. Somehow I had lost $100 between the airport in Cochabamba, and our hotel in Sucre. $100 is a serious wad of cash when you are travelling down here, and Megan was piiiisssssed at me. ¨That´s it. You are no longer allowed to carry money,¨ she tells me, and promptly stuffs what remains of our bankroll into her bra.

We´re in our room at the Grand Hotel, an old but nicely restored place a block off Sucre´s main plaza. The 20 or so rooms are set around a beautiful courtyard filled with plants and a big fountain. A sign in one corner of the courtyard commemorates the night Che Gueverra spent here all those years ago. $12.50 a night for the 4 of us (including breakfast) -- not bad.

It is 6pm on a Friday and despite having a depleted bankroll, we are all hungry. We decide to head out for dinner and start by consulting the Lonely Planet guidebook. First mistake. The concensus amongst ex-pats here is that the people who wrote the Lonely Planet Bolivia book have never actually been to Bolivia. Or if they have been here, they were on mushrooms at the time. Otherwise, there is no way to justify all the wrong information (¨Sparkiling??¨ Megan says in digust as she reads the guidebook´s description of one hotel we stayed at in La Paz. ¨Nasty is more like it.¨). Still, we keep giving them the benefit of the doubt because there really is no other English-language source of information on this place. Stupidly, we decide on a place called Repizza, aparently ¨popular¨ for its ¨excellent wood fired pizzas.¨

Once in Repizza we order two beers and a milk and the waiter brings us two milks and a beer. Ok, only because I get the beer. We also ordered a large cheese pizza. I am excited because this pizza is going to be ¨excellent¨ and ¨wood fired.¨ When it arrives at our table a few minutes later I get one whiff of it and tell Megan, ¨Um, I have a bad feeling about this.¨

The pie has Bolivian cheese, and you cannot make anything resembling a pizza with Bolivian cheese. The good places here all use imported mozarella. The sauce is sticky sweet. The spices taste like sour cream and onion potato chips. The crust is a very bad ¨ready-made¨ crust bought from the supermarket. I am starving but cannot choke down more than two bites without gagging. In short, in a country known for having horrible food, this is the worst meal I have had in my entire life.

And even those two bites are a mistake. I am up all night with horrible diarrhea and nausea. The next day is saved from being a total bust only because I had my prescription for ciproflaxin with me. Trust me on this: do not travel to a 3rd world country without your ciproflaxin. The single best and most effective drug in the world. Not to get too personal on you, but in 10 minutes ciproflaxin took me from horrible diarrhea to not having a bowel movement for 3 days.

With me all fixed up, we make a quick trip Saturday morning to Sucre´s market, which is partly open-air and partly housed in a building that resembles a parking garage or maybe a decrepit old northeastern hockey rink. We pick up some bread and fruit and have a small breakfast back at the hotel.

After breakfast, we decide to visit El Museo de Arte Indigenia ASUR (the indiginous textile museum). Now, we have to call our shots carefully. Sucre is perhaps Bolivia´s number one tourist destination. But Bolivia, being either comfortable in its own skin or just stupid, depending on who you ask, isn´t willing to go out of its way for anyone. I mean, tourism is really Bolivia´s only shot at escaping its chronic poverty. This place is a tourism goldmine waiting to explode. But with the exception of 3 hours on Saturday morning every tourist attraction in town is CLOSED ON THE WEEKEND. I mean, Saturday and Sunday aren´t big days for tourism, right? Reminds me of the line in ¨This is Spinal Tap¨ when the band´s Boston gig is cancelled. ¨Don´t worry, Boston´s not a big college town,¨their manager assures them.

Photo: Sucre!

Anyway, by daylight Sucre´s beauty is clearly apparent. Set in a valley at about 8,600 feet, the town climbs the hillside. Buildings are all old, colonial and painted white. Streets are narrow and often cobbled. The roofs are all red tile. Ancient churches dot every other corner. This is without question one of South America´s most beautiful cities.

ASUR is near the top of the city. We start climbing in a light drizzle. Jane is on my shoulders and Mac rides in the Kelty on Megan´s back. As we climb higher, the city unfolds below us. It gets more amazing with every step. We finally get to ASUR at 9, and it is closed. Suckers -- we relied on the Lonley Planet again. The museum doesn´t actually open for another half hour.

We kill time by walking across the street to the Santa Theresa convent. Santa Theresa is home to an order of cloistered nuns. The concept of cloistered nuns freaks Megan out. ¨You mean they can´t leave? Ever?¨ The building dates to 1655. My favorite thing in the world is Latin American churches. So, Sucre is heaven. The church is closed, but we poke around a bit. Alongside the convent is a lovely gas-lit alley. Until the 1960´s the alley was paved with human bones in the pattern of the cross, apparently to help you contemplate the inevitability of death. It is now paved in cobble stones. I look closely, hoping some bones have been left behind, but see none.

ASUR is finally open so we ramble back across the street and go in. Megan and I both love Bolivian textiles -- the designs, the colors, the craftsmanship. My favorite kind of art. So, ASUR for us ranks up there with Bath, Maine´s maritime museum as one of the best museums we have been to (and we have done all of the Smithsonians). Like Bath´s museum, ASUR succeeds in bringing the art to life.

Apparently at one point Bolivia was in danger of losing its textile history. That is, no one was making this kind of art anymore. What ASUR did was succeed in reviving these traditions. They found an expert who could teach local workers how to make textiles in the traditional manner and designs of their ancestors. The expert taught a group of artisans, who in turn each taught other groups. Today there are some 1000 artisans creating textiles in the ASUR program. ASUR, in turn, sells the artisans´ work at the museum and returns the majority of the proceeds to the worker.

The museum itself displays artifacts dating back to 400 AD. The antique pieces are interspersed with examples of modern work and explanations of how the textiles are made. There is something in the red and black chaos patterns of the Jalq´a region that I love, while the bright colors and symetry of the Tarabuco pieces draw Megan. In one part of the museum 3 artisans work on looms creating pieces and are happy to answer your questions.

Photo: Little Papi gets up close and personal with a Tarabuco artisan.

Now, I´m not going to tell you Mac is Brad Pitt Jr., but the kid is a chick magnet. Everywhere we go, girls can´t leave Little Papi alone. An artisan from Tarabuco won´t rest until Papi sits on her lap for a spell. He reluctently agrees.

On our way out, we stop at the museum store and are stunned not just at the quality of the work for sale, but at the prices -- dead reasonable for a museum quality piece. We go back and forth over whether we want a Jalq´a or Tarabuco piece. We later decide that on our next trip we will get one of each.

Back at the hotel, Mac is met by the Little Papi Fan Club, Sucre Division. One girl takes him from Megan´s arms and disappears into the courtyard. Everytime we return to the hotel, Mac is met by a throng of friends. People love kids here, so Jane and Mac really break down a lot of barriers for us. In fact, we are pleasantly surprised by the warmth and openness of the people of Sucre -- in sharp contrast to the cold and unfriendly Cochabambinos.

After a bit of rest, we walk up to the main plaza to catch something called the ¨Dino Truck,¨ which is the only thing open on Saturday afternoon. The Dino Truck is an old farm truck with a bunch of seats thrown in the back. Packed with a mix of Bolivians, Aussies, English, Chinese and Yanks, the trucks huffs and puffs its way up Sucre´s steep hills to Cal Orka, right outside of town.

Cal Orka is the world´s largest paleontological site; in layman´s terms -- dinosaur tracks! Cal Orka is also home to the National Cement Factory. A few years ago, workers here uncovered a nearly vertical rock face covered with almost 5,000 (yes, FIVE THOUSAND) dinosaur footprints from over 320 different dinosaurs. The gray wall is the size of 4 football fields.

Photo: Part of the wall. Can ya see the tracks? No? Squint!

The theory is that this wall was the shorline of a massive lake all those years ago. Dinosaurs would come to the shore to drink water, and leave their footprints in the mud. Whatever killed the dinosaurs off killed them off, and the prints were left frozen in time. Until this site was discovered, scientists did not know that so many different types of dinosaurs were alive at the end of the dinosaur age.

The wall is everchanging. It is very fragile, so layers of the wall are continually sloughing off. ¨Last week there was a huge T-Rex print right there,¨ says our guide, pointing to an empty spot on the wall. On the other hand, as layers come off, more prints are often uncovered beneath. It doesn´t help that this site is still a working cement factory. Our guide tells us that the explosions from mining and the vibrations from the heavy equipment accelerate the errosion. If nothing is done to secure the wall, the prints will be completely erased withing 50 years. They need money to save the wall, and the government either doesn´t have it or isn´t willing to spend it.

Now, I am no dinosaur geek. But it was pretty cool to stand there and look at a 100 foot long set of prints left by a brontosaurus and her baby millions of years ago. . . .

NEXT: Jim bargains for textiles with Tarabuco locals . . . and will the Filiault´s find something to do on Sunday??

Making the Best of the Train Situation

2004-12-26T12:54:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday we were enjoying bowl after bowl of Osama´s amazing fish curry when his wife Christina announced they were driving to Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia´s legendary (and very remote) salt flats the next day. ¨You guys should come!¨ she suggested. You don´t have to invite us twice, so we quickly signed on.

So Sunday around noon, Meg, me, Janey, Lil´Papi, Osama, Christina and their kids Rahim (in town from Portland), Karim and Jasmin piled into their Izuzu Trooper and headed for Oruro, in the altiplano, where we would stay a night before taking a train another 8 hours to Uyuni.

We arrived in Oruro around dusk. The altiplano is just that -- ¨alti¨ (or altitude) ¨plano¨ (or plane). The base elevation of the high altitude plane is 12,500 feet, with big mountains rising up out of it. Oruro itself is a mining town of about 200,000 set along the base and lower sides of a strip of mountains. The city is one of the most ¨alive¨ places I have been to in Bolivia, with people crowding its narrow streets at all hours. Like most of Bolivia, it puts Cochabamba to shame. They´ve been mining these hills for 450 years (mostly tin, but gold too). Anyway, when we got there it was freaking freezing cold.

Well, the short story is that they changed the train schedule and we were unable to get out to Uyuni. But we had an amazing 4 days. We´re getting ready to head to La Paz and Lake Titicaca tomorrow, so I don´t have time to blog the whole thing but here are some highlights:

* The drive from Cocha to Oruro crosses a 15,000 foot mountain pass and passes many beautiful adobe villages. It was like going back in time. You could also see many beautiful churches from the road, as well as tons of llamas grazing on the hillsides. The drive alone was worth it.

* We visited many of these old churches, including some in the remote countryside. I love old Spanish-style churches, and these were the oldest and most beautiful we have seen.

* Oruro has a mining museum that is housed in an old mine shaft that runs beneath the main church. It was pretty damn cool.

* Seeing Meg develop a good coca chewing habit. To deal with the altitude of the altiplano, you really do need to chew coca. It helped us all out quite a bit. In fact, after Jane puked for the 5th time on our way to Oruro due to altitude sickness, she asked ¨Daddy, can I have a coca leaf?¨ We gave her one, but she didn´t like it and spit it out.

* Visiting the Japo Village textile museum and store and watching Osama and Rahim instead buy the clothing literally off the backs of the artisans. They got a nice hat and coca bag from one guy for a song.

* Driving out to the remote village of Cala Cala to see the cave paintings they have there. On the way back, we came across 3 shepherds and their herd of llamas. Osama bought a beautiful llama wool slingshot from one of them. The countryside was unbelievably amazing.

* Jane´s excitement at watching Shrek, dubbed in Portugese, from a Brazillian tv station on our hotel´s cable tv.

* The colored tin roofs of the adobe and brick houses that climb the red-brown hills above Oruro.

* Chewing coca in the city´s main plaza one morning while Jane, Mac, Jasim and Karim played and fed the pigeons.

* Merciless group taunting of Rahim, who seemingly did nothing but call, or talk about, or buy things for his girlfriend Kate, a med student in Florida. Ok, he wasn´t that bad, but he did still get taunted mercilessly, especially by his dad.

* Again at the Japo museum, watching two young indian girls in full native dress, huddle 2 feet from us as we ate lunch, mesmerized by Christina´s nose ring.

* Dancers and musicians roaming the streets the first night we were there, practicing for Oruro´s famous Carnival celebration.

* Choking down typically horrid Bolivian food every night, while we all laughed about it and dreamed of Sole Mio (the best restaurant in Bolivia, and well, also the only decent restaurant in Cochabamba). The day we came home we all met up again at Sole Mio for dinner.

I have a ton of great pictures from the trip. I will upload them as soon as I can and post the link.

Rug Hunter

2004-12-16T10:22:00.000-05:00

¨We stop here. This is where we buy the bullets,¨ says Osama (not his real name), our leader. We are in the market town of Punata, some 50km southeast of Cochabamba. It is dusty and already too hot at 9:30 in the morning.

We get out of Osama´s faded red Toyota crew cab pickup. The oil leak already appearing in the dirt. Cristobal, a Boliviano and our defacto hunting guide, eyes the assembled villagers arriving at the market suspiciously. ¨Someone might steal our spare tire,¨ he announces, eyeing the bald rubber remnant that sits in the truck bed.

¨Stay with the car, Jim,¨ says Osama. ¨Don´t worry,¨ he adds with a laugh in his clipped Pakistani accent, ¨We can get a very good price for you at the market.¨ Cristobal just smiles. They both disappear into the mass of humanity that is marching towards the center of the town.

Photo: The dusty market of Punata.

The market branches out in every direction, like a spider´s thin, crooked legs. A motley fleet of pick ups and big ancient trucks surround us. As each arrives, it unloads an unbelievably packed cargo of villagers and their wares. Some bring melons stuffed in their aguayos (large colorful blankets used as backpacks). Other groups have corn. Still others, shoes and other domestic products. After the people get off the trucks, livestock follows. Cows or pigs. Many are bringing sheep to market -- their legs tied together, they are tossed out of the trucks like bags of wool.

I am the only gringo. A lot of tough dudes eye me curiously as they pass, but most pay me no mind. Still, if someone challenges me for our decrepit spare tire, I am somewhat comforted by the two shotguns sitting in the back seat (even if Osama and Cristobal aren´t back with the bullets yet).

Ostensibly our plan today is to hunt partridge on land owned by Cristobal´s family. I am no hunter and, in fact, have never held a gun in my hands. Still, I would fell a unicorn if it would get me out of the damn house for a day. I´m game.

Before too long, Osama and Cristobal return with some boxes of shotgun shells and bags of food -- bread, cheese, tomatoes. Osama starts the truck and we rumble through town, kicking up a cloud of dust in our wake.

Osama, 50, is a former Silicon Valley semiconductor engineer. He is now a dealer of Persian rugs and antiques, with stores in Guatamala, Paraguay and Ecuador. He cannot visit his stores right now, nor can he go see his family in the U.S. because, due to the similarity of his surname to that of a well-known terrorist, and no doubt, because of the color of his skin, he is on the ¨no fly¨ list. Crazy.

We make a quick stop at a smaller market for a warm cup of api, a syrupy kind of chicha made with sweet purple corn, lemon, cinnamon and sugar. Cristobal also picks up a big bag of coca leaves. You do not want to be handling firearms without chewing coca leaves, trust me.

Back in the car, Cristobal is the only one who knows where he is going. He directs Osama with a flurry of ¨left, right, straight, left, etc.¨ and we wind our way out of the village, past row upon row of ancient adobe houses, in-filled with a smattering of ugly new brick construction.

Soon enough we are in the campo, or countryside. Osama pulls the truck into the shade of a grove of trees bordering an irrigtion ditch. To our left sharply rises a hillside covered wih cactus and low scrub. On the other side, farmland stretches across the valley to distant hills. This is Cristobal´s land.

We gear up and Osama and Cristobal take the rifles. I am deemed worthy of the more important job -- I get the coca bag. Before we leave, Cristobal puts the spare tire in the backseat of the truck. Guess it is not safe anywhere. I fill my mouth with the sweet leaves and take a bite of legia (the activator). I pass the bag and the hunt has begun.

Photo: Osama and Cristobal gear up.

A quick word on coca -- it is a great substance. What you do is take a leaf, put it in your mouth and bite the stem off. Keep doing this until you build up a nice wad in your cheek, like chewing tobacco. Except you swallow instead of spitting. The effect is a mild soothing of the nerves. It also eases digestion and takes away your appetite. Cristobal explains that the workers in these fields will chew coca all day so they can work without breaks and earn more money. Coca also lessens the effects of altitude -- essential in a country where a lot of the terrain, including major cities, is above 12,000 feet. Despite the fact that coca is such a vital part of the culture here, the U.S. has decided that the way it wants to approach eliminating the crack problem in the states is to take away Bolivia's coca. Bastards.

We work our way up the hillside, through a painfull thick underbrush that quickly turns my bare legs into hamburger. Thankfully the coca takes the edge off. As we go, Cristobal throws rocks into the brush to try and scare the birds out. At one point I look back and Osama and his rifle are following me. I take a photo of him and his gun, telling him that if it turns out he IS a terrorist, I can sell the pic to CNN for a lot of money. This gets a good laugh out of him.

¨KABOOM!!!!¨ In an instant my intestines are in my throat. Cristobal broke the seal and shot at a bird. I had no idea a gun was so freaking loud. It sounded like a cannon, not a little pop like you hear on TV.

Cristobal missed, so we keep walking. My nerves settle a bit. Only now Osama hands me his gun, because it is getting in the way of his coca chewing. I´m honestly not all that into holding or shooting a gun -- especially after hearing how loud they are. But I´m out in the campo with guns and coca, and don´t want the other guys to make fun of me. ¨We´re going to make a man out of you,¨ Osama teases, as he bites off another clump of coca leaves.

Photo: Jim and firearms.

I am surprised at how heavy the gun is. Osama gives me like a 3 second primer on how to shoot. ¨Keep the gun pointed up so you don´t accidentally shoot me¨, he warns. ¨And take the safety off before you shoot.¨ It isn´t much, but seems like a lot to remember.

Cristobal contines his marching and rock throwing. Osama begins to taunt him a little. ¨No hay Cristobal,¨ he yells to him (¨there aren´t any,¨ he is saying). It cracks me up, because Cristobal is so earnest about this hunting. But I don´t join in, making it a practice not to taunt people with guns. I secretly pray I don´t have to shoot this thing. I´m a big girl.

We finally descend the hill, coming out in a corn field. Now, it didn´t take me 5 minutes to realize that I´d rather be holding the coca bag. so I convince Osama to switch back. I needed more coca, anyway.

We stalk through the cornfields like they are rice paddies and we are back in ´Nam, spread 3 across, guns drawn. Cristobal scares up one more bird and again misses. They fly so fast I couldn´t imagine shooting one.

There really aren{t many birds around, so after a quick lunch, Osama announces ¨Let´s go look for some rugs!¨ Punata and its neighboring villages are known for producing some very nice, handmade wool rugs, usually with bold zoomorphic patters and bright colors. There aren´t any stores as such -- you need to know someone who makes the rugs and go to their house.

Now, while Cristobal would have been content to hunt all day, Osama and I are gung ho for carpets. How gay is that? We ditch the fire arms, coca and campo to head for town and look for throw rugs. We couldn´t be any gayer if we were wearing tights and singing show tunes. No matter . . . .

On the way back to town, Cristobal shouts for us to stop. He´s spotted an old woman tending to a half dozen cows next to the remains of an old adobe house. With her are her husband and grandson. ¨She makes good carpets,¨ says Cristobal. He jumps out of the truck and runs up to talk to her. A few minutes later Cristobal, the woman and the boy return. ¨She has some for sale,¨ says Cristobal.

The old lady directs us back to town and down a few narrow alleys to her workshop. The building is a century old, with thick adobe walls. Behind the old, ornate door it is cool despite the heat. The high ceiling is lined with old exposed beams. To our right are two big looms with half finished work on them. Our host is quickly joined by two other old women, all wearing traditional cholita clothes.

Photo: A rug in process.

Osama and I unravel the first rug and it is beautiful, about 6.5 by 5 feet, featuring a pattern of some birds and a cholita woman with an alpaca. It is all handmade with natural, hand-died wool. I want it.

¨How much,¨ I ask Osama. He turns to the woman. ¨200¨ he translates. ¨Dollars?¨ I ask. ¨No, bolivianos,¨ he says. This beautiful piece of work is only $25. But recall that Osama is a rug dealer by trade. This is his element. ¨Let´s see if we can get her down to 150,¨ he says.

Osama tells the woman 150 and she comes right down to 180. 200 would be a bargain. He points to me. ¨My friend here has 150. No more.¨ She sticks to 180. ¨Let´s leave,¨ says Osama. I panic. I want the rug. ¨We will sit in the car and threaten to leave,¨ he instructs. Cristobal, the local, stays behind. After a moment, Cristobal comes out to the truck with the rug tucked under his arm.

Photo: Our rug!!

¨We got it for 160,¨ says Cristobal. He hands it to me. ¨Let´s get out of here before she changes her mind,¨ says Osama. With a waive we are on the road again. I just bought what Osama values as a $500 rug for $20. ¨She was mad. She told me that next time I show up I
better have 10 more B´s for her,¨ laughs Cristobal.

Back in the village I decide we need a bag of ice cold beer for the ride home. Cristobal and Osama, native and fluent Spanish speakers respectively, figure it will be more fun for me and my caveman Spanish to find the beer. I hit a series of restaurants that only have beer in returnable bottles, which they won´t let me take with me, before I find a tienda and get some cans. Soon I am back in the car and we are toasting a good day with some icy Pacena.

I ride all the way back to Cocha with a beer in one hand and my rug in the other.

Hola Gringo! Chica!

2004-12-10T08:42:00.000-05:00

We´re packed almost shoulder to shoulder on one of the narrow, dusty, cobbled streets that surround the main cemetary in Cocha. Today is Todos Santos Day. It is hot and dry. The sun is roasting us. And I am on my third gourd of chica in about as many minutes. I struggle to drink it, balancing in my hands an ornate basket made of spun sugar and a plate of small breads, both gifts from the mourning families of the recently deceased.

The chicha is a gift too. It would be impolite to decline. So I first spill a little chicha, as is custom, offering the first sip to the gods. Then I down the rest of the foul corn liquor in one quick sip.

Photo: Megan balances Jane, a cup of wine, and a gourd of chicha outside the cemetary.

All Saints Day is something else in Cocha. 700 police are out in force -- sensible when you have 100,000 people drinking all day in the hot sun (note: despite these numbers, police report no significant problems all day). Ringing every inch of both sides of the roads circling the cemetary are little shrines to the recently deceased. A family will stake out a 10 by 10 plot or so, then decorate it with photos of the dead, and various forms of bread and fruit. Some have simple breads, such as rolls. Others have more elaborate breads, made in the shapes of ladders and even little people. Some have baskets of spun sugar. The most elaborate of all have cooked pigs heads and cooked chickens that are propped up to look alive. Or as alive as a cooked chicked propped up on sticks can possible look.

Photo: A woman dressed in her black mourning clothes holds vigil over the shine to her recently deceased husband.

The way it works is this. Many people, particularly poor peasants, go from shrine to shrine, offering to pray for the deceased . . . for a price. Usually it will be for a handfull of bread. Others will barter for the cooked chickens. When the prayers are completed, the family of the deceased will give a handful of bread to the prayer-giver, who will stuff the bread in a large sack he carries. This bread will feed his family for weeks.

If this sounds a lot like Halloween, that is because the western commercialized version of trick or treating traces its roots to this practice.

Almost every shrine is also stocked with chicha, Cochabamba´s ubiquitous corn liquor. Passers by are invited to drink a gourd in the deceased´s honor. There are 100,000 people here, but as far as I can see we are the only gringos. We kind of stand out. So, we are more often than most hailed in for a gourd of chicha. ¨Hey gringo!¨ we hear. ¨Chicha!,¨ as they raise a gourd for us to take. It is a constant chorus of ¨Hey Gringo! Chicha!¨ as we tour the shrines. And it is said in a good natured way, with a big smile. The people here today are incredibly warm and friendly. Or maybe they are just plastered. Probably a little of both.

Our first stop was not actually the stalls outside, but the inner tombs of the cemetary. We are here with our friends Alma, from Puerto Rico, and Giovanni, a Boliviano. Alcohol is forbidden within the cemetary walls, so things are much calmer inside, if no less festive.

Giovanni first leads us to his mother´s tomb, set high on a wall near the main gate. We pause for a moment. The tombs are set 5 high, and some 30 across. Row after row. Each tomb is fronted by a small glass box, containing essentially the headstone and usually some flowers and a photo. For today, the glass cases have been filled with some of the deceased´s favorite things, too. I notice one with a cup of chicha, a glass of wine, bread and a cigarette. I tell Megan that I want some fish n chips and a pint of Bear Republic´s Racer 5 in mine.

Photo: A row of tombs in the cemetary.

Giovanni also points out a tomb that is covered with little bugs. I ask why, and he points out the date: The body has been entombed for just two days.

Back outside the gates, I am certain that if I don´t start politely declining the chicha with a ¨no mas, gracias,¨ they will have to carry me out of here.

In fact, in colonial times, that is just what they did. On Todos Santos, the bodies were dis-interned, dressed in fine clothes, and paraded around, before being re-burried. Giovanni explained that it didn´t matter what condition the body was in, either. I normally do not like it when a culture loses old customs, but perhaps that is one best left in the past.

NOTES: Coming in the next couple of weeks are blogs on our trip to Sucre, and a recap of my gun toting, coca chewing day in the country with my favorite suspected terrorist.

Also, send your prayers out to my little sister, who is battling breast cancer (but they got it early and she is tough so she will be fine) and to the family of Diamond Darrell Abbott, a good guy senslessly murdered.

Meet Little Papi

2004-12-08T08:45:00.000-05:00

Mackey Boy. Macintosh. Monkey Boy. Little Papi (an homage to my hero David ¨Big Papi¨Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox). The kid has a lot of knick-names, as does any cool kid. His given names come from my grandfathers (Mac and Rosaire) and from Megan´s great-grandfather (also Mac). Mac is short for nothing. Just Mac.

Photo: Little Papi always with a smile on his face.

Moving to Bolivia is of no consequence to Mac. He has no idea where he is, anyway. He just rolls with it. He knows that where ever your family is, that is home.

Mac´s best friends here are Jehyson and Hattie. Jehyson is the 7-year-old son of our personal assistant, Lourdes. Jehyson comes to work with his mom most days and plays with Mac. Jehyson is an only child and says he always wanted a little brother; now Mac is his little bro´. Jehyson proudly tells everyone in our neighborhood that the little gringo kid is his friend. Mac´s other good friend, Hattie, is just 9 days younger than he is. Hattie´s parents are missionaries here with New Tribes. Her dad flies small planes into the jungle, delivering supplies to the missionaries. Mac and Hattie get together almost every week to play.

Mac isn´t Little Papi for nothing. The dude is TINY. He is a year and a half old, but is in like the zero percentile on the growth chart. He weighs about 20-21lbs, AND he is short. He still fits in some 6-month clothes. 12-month clothes hang off of him and you need to roll up the pants legs.

But Papi EATS! Lourdes is amazed by what he puts away. He once ate an entire pineapple, by himself, in one sitting. His other favorite foods are strawberries, papaya, kiwi, bananas and apples. Basically, he loves all fruit. He starts moaning and grunting when he sees it. Mac got his Dad´s and Grandpa Bob´s metabolism and build, the lucky devil.

When Mac waves goodbye he says ¨Ciao.¨ That is how people say goodbye here -- not ¨hasta luego¨ or ¨bye bye.¨ He also says ¨Shrek,¨ ¨truck,¨ ¨car¨ and ¨fish.¨ Other than that, he doesn´t say much. He does, however, understand a whole lot of Spanish because Lourdes and Jehyson teach him a lot. So, he can´t talk in two languages.

Photo: Sorry Mac, but this pic cracks me up. That´s Jane´s hat that I made him wear for the picture. He didn´t like it and ripped it off a second later.

Mac calls Megan ¨daddy.¨ He is a bit confused on that one.

Papi is also everybit into books as Jane was and is (having no television facilitates that). He will go and grab a book out of the stack and hand it to you, then seat himself in your lap. He will do this for hours.

Mac likes to ¨roar¨ like a lion. In fact, when he gets really mad or frustrated, he will let out a roar instead of crying. Though he is very sensitive, he is also, as Lourdes says, ¨muy tranquilo.¨ He is a good kid.

Lourdes loves Mac to death. Sometimes I think the only reason she puts up with me, the dumb gringo with the caveman Spanish, is because of Mac. She recently took Mac and Jane to her neices birthday party so she could show off her gringo kids. The best thing I can say about Lourdes is that she treats Mac as if he was her own kid.

I spend my whole day with Mac and I´m very lucky in that regard. He is a very cool little dude.

Sucre Pictures

2004-12-06T16:22:00.000-05:00

While you all wait for the next exciting installment of this brilliant blog, check out the photos from our trip to Sucre. I have them set up as a Shutterfly slideshow here:

http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeAM2jls5cs2rClA

Bad, Bad Gringo (the sequel)

2004-12-04T09:27:00.000-05:00

No sooner had I posted the blog about my run in with one of Cocha´s 7 million vicious, evil, mangy dogs than our buddy Dan is out for a run. He comes upon a guy walking his german shepard -- on a leash, no less (must have been imported). The dog takes a look at Dan, aparently decides he likes white meat, and attacks him. He broke the leash away from the owner, and took a chunk out of Dan´s thigh. Bloodied, but unbowed, Dan managed to finish his run. So, I wasn´t joking.

In fact, as I was telling this story to my Spanish teacher Toni, she told me how the other day her students could not get to her house because a neighbor was letting his vicious dog patrol the neighborhood. The dog would not let anyone pass. ¨But he needs his room to roam,¨ the owner told her. ¨But he is vicious and dangerous and is threatening people,¨ Toni told him. Crazy.

But back to Dan. This incident raises a few questions. First, what the hell is this owner doing walking what he must know to be a vicious dog. He should either leave the dog home or have it put down. Second, if the guy knows his dog is vicious, as he must, why did he not take extra precautions when Dan approached. Why not yell out a warning? Take an extra wrap of the leash? The answers are just that your typical dog owner here does not give a crap about his dog or about anyone else, for that matter. Sad.

Meg and I are going to get our rabies shots this week as a precaution. We also both run with a big hunk of wood that resembles a police baton now.

Upcoming: If I can work that photo voodoo, I have the Mac story and a recap of our Sucre trip to post this week. Sucre was amazing.

Mail Jail

2004-11-30T08:10:00.000-05:00

All of our mail goes to the school´s PO box (or, ¨Casilla¨). Why? Because unlike in developed countries, there is no mail delivery here. That is right -- no one brings the mail to your house. If you sent a letter to our street address, it would sit at the post office forever, unless we went down there and convinced someone to find it for us. And by ¨the¨ post office, I mean that in a city of 600,000, there is one post office. And it is always empty, because everyone knows the mail system does not work, so why use it?

We had not received any mail in 2.5 months, even though we knew a lot had been sent to us. Juan Carlos is the guy at Meg´s school who collects the mail from the casilla. He is supposed to get our packages when they arrive. So, eventually Meg asks him if we have received any mail. He pulls out a boleto (or mail ticket) and gives it to her. The way it works is that if you get a package, the post office puts a ticket in your casilla. You then need to collect the package from the package office. At last, we have something!!! Not wanting to wait for Juan Carlos anymore, Meg takes the ticket herself and gives it to me.

So, I take the boleto to the post office. I have no idea where I have to go, and still speak barely any Spanish. But at this point, I don´t care. I just do things anyway. I´m an English speaking bull in a Spanish speaking china shop. So I go down there and am directed to an alleyway behind the post office where I find the package department. I give the guy the boleto and he is like ¨Filiault?? I have a ton of packages for you!¨ He whips out 3 more boletos. We have 4 packages waiting! I check the dates -- some packages have been sitting there for 2 months!! Juan Carlos has not been collecting the packages or telling us they have arrived! And a lot of this is important mail -- our bills from the US, etc. I am pissed. I am even more pissed when I realize I need my passport to collect the mail. I do not have my passport because Juan Carlos has it for immigration purposes! No passport, no mail.

So, one week later Meg and I go down together to get the mail. We finally have our passports back. We wait in the line at the package office. When we get to the counter a woman takes the 4 tickets and fills out a long separate form, by hand, for each one. Meg shows her passport and signs each form. We are informed that because some of the packages have been there so long, we are fined 50 centavos for each day they have been there. We also have to pay miscellaneous other fees for what we are not sure. It comes to 56B, or around $7.

The woman then instructs us that we have to go to another department to pay duty on the packages. We go to another line. We still do not have our packages. And the woman who works in this department is on break. Finally, after 10 minutes, she shows up. Now, this whole time Megan has been talkin s&%* like a sailor. ¨This is bleeping idiotic. . . . What a bleeped up system . . . blah blah blah.¨ I´m telling her to cool it because you never know what people understand. I do not speak much Spanish, but can understand if I am being cussed out. Well, the woman arrives and speaks perfect English. Meg scans her memory and hopes she didn´t put her foot too far in her mouth.

So in the second line, another form is filled out for each package. Meg signs each one. Another fee is levied for something or other. But we cannot pay the fee here. We need to go to the national bank 5 block away and pay it. So, we run to the bank. It is close to noon and the package office, like all of Bolivia, is closed from 12-2 for lunch.

We get to the bank and wait in another long line. We pay the second fee -- 153B, or about $17 --and get our forms stamped. We run back to the post office and . . . the package office has closed early. It is 11:57 and the doors are locked. It is also Thanksgiving Day, and we need to be at a friend´s house at 2 for lunch. No packages today.

The next day we return to the post office. We wait again in the second line. We show the woman our bank receipt and she stamps our forms. We then take the forms back to the original line. We present them to the woman and she leads us to a back room where we collect our packages.

Now allow me to recap: 4 packages, 5 lines, 12 forms (including the original boletos), 2 fees, 3 different governmental agencies, and 2 days. Just to get our simple mail.

Now for some commentary. Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in the world. It is desperately in need of economic development. Despite being in the top 10 in the world year after year in terms of aid received from foreign nations, Bolivia remains in the crapper. Think about it: If you are looking for a place to open your South American headquarters, would you do it in a country where you cannot even reliably or easily receive your mail? No, of course not. And if it is this difficult to get your mail, imagine how hard it would be to process the other aspects of your business. That is why companies are based in Brasil and Argentina, not Bolivia.

Having said all this, WE LOVE GETTING MAIL!!!! You have no idea how isolated we are: to television, no newspapers, no telephone. We are cut off. Getting mail is wonderful. My Dad sends us not only our forwarded US mail, but People Magazine and Sports Illustrated. Meg´s parents put together little packages for the kids, with books and games and M&M´s. Meg´s Aunt Janet and Uncle Roger sent us a great package that had something in it for every member of the family. And our friend Nicole just sent us a package with pictures of Jane and Mac and their buddies, and a bunch of artwork from their friends. That was awesome. Somewhere in the pipeline are packages of CD´s from my buddies JP and Scott. We cannot thank you all enough for this!!!!

Mail us: Megan Filiault, c/o Colegio Calvert, Casilla 1395, Cochabamba, Bolivia. Think of all the fun I will have getting your package out of hock!

Mail Tips:
*Do not send anything over 2kg. Over 2kg requires more forms and fees.
* Envelopes are better than boxes. Smaller envelopes are better than bigger (better chance of being put in the casilla, avoiding the boleto mess).
* Put the lowest plausible declared value you can on the customs form. Duty here is high.
* In addition to writing the number of the package´s value, spell it out. E.g. in addition to $10, write ¨ten.¨ Otherwise, it is easy for Bolivian customs to change the numbers. For instance, I mailed a package and declared a value of $10. Bolivian customs changed the number to $90, thus increasing the duty we had to pay.

.Bad, Bad Gringo

2004-11-29T08:24:00.000-05:00

So I am out running at around 6:30 the other morning. My legs feel like two chunks of lead. They always do. The thing is you never get used to running at 8,500 feet. Supposedly it takes 6 weeks to build up the extra red blood cells your body needs up here. But from the folks I talk to, you never stop being out of breath and tired all the time.

I´m dragging myself along the normal route. I run along this ¨green belt¨ near our house. Basically, this is a block wide stretch of open space that is a few miles long. It is lined on either side with streets and rows of houses. I use the term ¨green¨ rather losely, as the belt is really dusty brown dirt covered with broken beer bottles and spotted with the black-charred remnants of the occasional trash fire. At one point the green belt crosses a trash choked dry ¨stream bed.¨ I often see cabbies coming out of the stream bed with a roll of toilet paper in one hand. In the rainy season, people wash their clothes in this stream. And you wonder why I am always getting sick.

I´m still running along the green belt when I come upon 2 dogs. One is a big german shepard. The other is a schnauzer. The owners are standing right nearby, having a conversation with a security guard (rich people hire personal guards to protect their homes). This is a residential street, and the gate to the dogs´ house is open, I notice.

Now, before we get to the hot action, let me give you a bit of context. First, there are something like 200,000 dogs in the city of Cochabamba (pop. 600,000). That is a lot of dogs. The place is thick with dogs, who are usually mean and aggressive and often run in large packs of 5 or 10 dogs. People keep the dogs not as pets, but as protection. So, these mean traits in the dogs are not discouraged. And let´s not forget the approximately 30,000 stay dogs in Cocha. These dogs are even worse. Furthermore, the dogs are allowed to run free all day long. There is no such thing as a ¨leash¨ in Cocha. It is a mess of dogs.

Second, there is a rabies epidemic here, brough about because the dogs are not properly cared for and vaccinated. And it is not just dogs -- people here are dying from rabies too. So, the threat of coming upon a rabid dog in this city is very real.

Back to the hot action.

I come upon these two dogs and their owners and I give them a wide bearth. I´m not looking for trouble. The dogs are on the sidewalk. I´m in the middle of the street now.

In an instant the german shepard is on me. He is inches away. Barking. Snarling. Growling. Showing me his teeth. The hair on his back is up. He doesn´t want to play fetch, I don´t think.

I stop in my tracks and instinctively look for a rock. Rocks normally litter Cocha streets but there isn´t one in reach. A tinge of panic goes through me. With no rock, I do the next best thing and fake it. I reach for a phantom rock and the dog hesitates. I move to the right and quickly pick up two rocks.

Now, this whole time, the owners have been standing on the sidewalk silent. They have made no move whatsoever to call of the dog or to control it. Not a damn thing. This pisses me off. This, and the fact that I have had it about up to here with dogs in this city. I´m after the german shepard now -- the best defense is a good offense. With my rocks, I chase him into his yard. I stop at the gate. I´m not going to follow him in there. It is his lucky day.

I turn, rocks still in hand, and continue my run. I´m willing to put it behind me. Cocha and dogs, I´m used to it. As for the owners, Cochabambinos have a reputation in Bolivia as being positively lousy people for the most part (though we have certainly met many great folks from here). I´m not surprised.

Neither owner has still moved an inch or said a word. Despite the fact their huge dog was going to eat me.

So I am continuing on my run, and the schnauzer decides he wants some of me. He comes running after me. He is chomping at my heals. The owners are still standing dead still doing nothing.

I stop, take the medium rock, and feign a throw at him. Normally this is enough. Not this time. He is still coming. From 4 feet away I launch the rock. It misses him by inches. The rock breaks in two. The schnauzer goes scurrying away.

¨PERRITO!¨ (losely translated: ¨little dog¨) screams the dog´s female owner. She is apparently now aware of my presence and outraged that I dared throw a rock at her precious Fifi. She is pissed. Apparently it is OK for her german shepard to attack me. Hell, that is funny. But throw a rock to protect myself from what as far as I know may be a rabid dog, well, that is horrible. And if the dog is rabid, keep in mind that there is no guarantee that any hospital in town will have the rabies antidote should I get bitten (¨But Jim,¨ you say, ¨Since there is a rabies epidemic, shouldn´t the hospitals be well-stocked with antidote?¨ And in response, I say ¨Welcome to Bolivia!!¨).

¨Perrito! Perrito!¨ she continues to scream, along with a bunch of other stuff I do not understand, but by her tone get the gist. She is apparently trying to tell me that it is not OK to throw a rock at a vicious, attacking dog unless it meets certain size requirements. There is nothing about this in the Lonely Planet guide book, so how should I know? I´m sure I could bribe a local official 100 B´s to get the restriction lifted. None of this enters my mind at the time, however, since I was being attacked by two dogs as their owners looked on and did nothing.

Now the other owner, a big guy with a big gut, is pissed at me too. ¨Perrito¨ he yells. These folks must be really mad, because they are apparently at a loss for words. He yells a bunch of other stuff too that I don´t understand.

¨Control your freaking dogs,¨ I yell back. Only I didn´t say ¨freaking.¨ I am now stopped, and standing in the middle of the street.

Now, Gordo is about to make it racial, as all intelligent people do when faced with an untenable position.

¨Gringos out of Bolivia,¨he yells in English. And to make his point clearer, he points forcefully. Apparently he is showing me the way out, as he points in the direction of the airport. Maybe that was luck on his part. But this is kind of funny. He turns to the side as he points skyward, but not quite vertically. More like at an angle. And he claps his heels together at the same time and kind of tenses his whole body. ¨Gringos out of Bolivia,¨ he repeats. And he does the pointing thing again. The effect is that it looks like he is doing a heil Hitler salute. He even has a cheesy little moustache. Dead serious.

¨Control your freaking dog,¨ I say again. Only again I don´t say ¨freaking.¨

¨Gringos out of Bolivia,¨ he repeats. Another Hitler salute.

I´m not witty enough to say something in return like, ¨Sure, and we will take our billions in aid that keeps your country alive with us.¨ Or, ¨But who will provide running water to your poor people since your government won´t do it.¨ Or even, ¨Yeah, but your food sucks¨(as Bolivian food is the worst in the world, that would have been a good one). Best I can come up with is ¨Get a freaking leash.¨ Only I don´t say ¨freaking.¨ Weak, I admit it.

I´m not going to get anywhere with Hitler, so I turn and continue on my run. I look over my shoulder every once and a while to make sure I don´t get sucker attacked by Gordo but I don´t.

At this point, I´m fed up with dogs in Cocha. I have no sympathy for them. Come after me, and I will happily stone you to death. I´m like Bronson in ¨Death Wish.¨ But not the original, more like ¨Death Wish 4¨ when he got to the point where he just liked killing bad guys for no real reason. It also sucks that Megan, a hard-core runner with something like 7 marathons under her belt is positively terrified to run here becaus of the damn dogs. As for irresponsible pet owners, I would gladly turn the stone on them were it not for my fear of being deported (which would REALLY piss off Megan).

11-23 UPDATE

2004-11-23T07:59:00.000-05:00

I haven´t had time to log on in a week now. I´ve spent my mornings dealing with immigration and mail issues. Ok, in the case of immigration I have wasted my mornings, waiting around the house for the school´s immigration guy to come get me. He flaked every damn time. I also went with Janey´s class on a field trip to a farm. That was lots of fun.

We just got back from 3 days in Sucre. What an amazing city. It reminded me a lot of Boston in that it had lots of great architecture, history and culture. What a beautiful place. In comparison, Cocha is like Phoenix -- a wasteland. I took a ton of pics which I hope to get to Shutterfly today or tomorrow.

In other news, a Typhoid Fever epidemic is sweeping through our circle of gringo friends. Wendell, Molly and Paula have Typhoid, and before we left for Sucre it looked like Julie and Alex may have it too. You can get a typhoid immunization, but it is only like 50% effective.

This week I hope to get up my Mac update, and a blog on Todos Santos. Next week will be my epic 2 part Sucre blog.

Creeping Towards Tarata

2004-11-15T08:31:00.000-05:00

We´re barrelling out of Cocha, 21 souls packed into a mid-80´s Japan-issue Nissan Caravan minivan, headed for the small town of Tarata, some 35K distant. Well, ¨barrelling¨ may be a relative term. The van´s engine is taxed with its payload at this altitude to hit 35 miles an hour. But the chofer is wringing every ounce he can out of this beast, like Hans Solo and the Millenium Falcon striving for warp speed with Darth Vader´s henchmen on his tail.

21 people in a minivan. When and if we get to Tarata, I half expect them to unload us in a circus tent. Let me note here that personal hygine in Bolivia is not quite what you would expect back home in the E.E.U.U. Nor is the concept of ¨personal space¨ one that is acknowledged here. The van stinks. Janey is sitting on my lap. So is a 65 year old man. I remind Meg, who is sitting in front of us with Mac (aka ¨Little Papi¨) that we are on this micro because it costs just .87 cents for the trip. A full $2.13 savings over taking a taxi. At least Janey and I (and the little old man) have a window seat.

Leaving Cocha I am struck by a few things. First, the common building material out here is adobe, rather than the bricks you see used in the city. Many of the adobe houses look like they have been there for a thousand years. The second thing I notice is all the cacti. You have to remind yourself you are at 8,500 feet. Cacti are everywhere and the dry, scraggly brush-covered hills remind me of Baja.

I also notice that like Baja, the road is dotted with little shrines. These shrines are put here by the families of people who died along the road. In Baja, you find these clustered around turns, where the poor bastard failed to make the turn and sailed on out into the great oblivion. Here the road isn´t particularly winding and the shrines are on straight-aways. So I figure some dumb-ass stepped out in front of a car. Not as cool as flying off a cliff. I´m also somewhat relieved to see that the shrines are without exception dedicated to one person each. I do not see any mass shrines, leading me to believe that if our little bus crashes most of us will survive.

As we continue towards Tarata, people get off the bus one by one, many seemingly in the middle of nowhere. By the time we get to Tarata´s Plaza Principal, we are the only ones left on the bus. Well, us and the one old guy sitting in my lap. 16 freaking people have gotten off the bus but this guy can´t move to his own seat. Maybe he liked the way I smelled.

Tarata is another world. I love it. I can´t imagine it has changed much in the last 200-300 years. Tight, winding cobblestone streets lined seamlessly by rows of wonderful, if largely decaying, colonial-style adobe houses. I feel like I´m on the backlot at Universal Studios.

Photo: A row of houses on a Tarata sidestreet.

Tarata is best known as the hometown of insane ex-President General Mariano Melgarego, who ruled Bolivia from 1866-1871. The town´s name comes from the abundant tara tree, whose fruit is used in curing leather. (If that sounded canned, I stole it from the Lonely Planet guidebook.)

The Plaza Principal is like most others in Bolivia. The main church, circa 1788, anchors one full side. A beautiful colonial-style government building takes up another. The remaining sides are taken by an assortment of simple restaurants and tiendas. A pavillion sits in the middle of the square, and the grass is fenced off under threat of fine.

Photo: The church in Tarata´s Plaza Principal.

After a quick lunch, which I spend chasing Mac around trying to keep him off the grass, we spend some time walking the small streets that branch off the plaza. The streets are incredibly charming. A block off the plaza, we come to Litoral street. Or, in Spanish, Calle Litoral. Or, as is the common abreviation displayed on the street sign, ¨C.Litoral.¨ Think about it. The 13-year-old in me finds this hilarious and I take a picture. Next, we try and get into the church but it is locked up. We later find out that it supposedly houses the head of Melgarejo, and promise to return.

Megan isn´t as into looking at old buildings as I am, and quickly becomes bored. I´m in the mood for a crisp, refreshing Taquina, as it is about 90 deg. out. We duck into a little drinking place (not sure what it was; they only sold beer and soda -- to go or to drink there -- but it wasn´t really a bar). I´m about to grab a Taquina when I notice a poster for a beer called El Inca. It is a beautiful black beer with a proper tan head. Can it be that there is a decent beer in this country. Meg and I are giddy.

We order a big bottle of the El Inca. It is then that I notice that it is called ¨bi cervecina.¨ Hmmm. When the woman brings us the bottle and glasses, I quickly pour two lovely black beers. Megan asks the woman in Spanish what is the significance of ¨bi cervecina.¨ ¨Dulce,¨is her reply. Sweet. I taste it. Yuck. The beer has a nice taste, but it is quickly followed by a sticky sweetness. It tastes like unfermented or partially fermented beer. In homebrewing we call a beer like this a mistake and throw it away. We are sick with disappointment.

At this point there is nothing to do but leave. The ride back to Cocha again has 21 people crammed into the same Nissan van. The only excitement comes when our Kelty baby carrier, which is the single most valuable thing we own, flies off the roof of the van. Luckily no one runs over it. It picks up some road rash, and is strapped back to the roof. Thankfully, I only have Janey on my lap for the 45 minute ride into town. Janey sleeps in my lap the whole way home.

Janey Girl Update

2004-11-11T08:39:00.000-05:00

Moving to Cocha was tough on Janey at first. Life in Portland was great for her. She had her posse of Pilar, Grant, Noah, Misha, Sophie, Jonah, Jake, Jeremy, Quinn and all of their wonderful parents. She had her great room with its Maisy murals, and tons of toys. Her mommy was home all day.

Slowly all of that changed. Her toys were packed up or sold. Her bunkbed was sold. She left her friends. She spent a week driving down the West Coast, living out of a suitcase. She gets car sick, so the ride was no fun. Every step of the way she was a trooper. Eventually, after almost 18 hours of flying, she landed in Cocha. You should have seen the death hug she gave her mommy.

Our plan was to keep her out of school for a couple of weeks, but Jane was adamant that she would start immediately. ¨I want to meet my Bolivia friends¨, she said. So, after being here 3 days Jane started school. She goes to Colegio Calvert, which is the school Meg teaches at. Jane goes to school M-F from 7:30 to noon. Mom takes her to school in the morning, and Dad and Little Papi (Mac) pick her up. We all have lunch together before going home.

Jane´s teacher is Ms. Monica. Her classmates include Jorge (her best friend), Susanna and Adrian. The kids are all Bolivian, but accept Jane just fine. None of the kids speak English, so Jane is learning lots of Spanish. The instruction is about 75% English. For Cochabamba Day, Jane dressed up like a cholita and danced in front of the school. The gringo cholita was hilarious. We´re going to move Jane to an all-Spanish school in February (after summer vacation), so she can learn even more Spanish. Jane also picks up a lot of Spanish from her babysitters, and from our housekeeper Lourdes and her son Jehyson.

Pic: Jane as a Cholita. That is Jorge in the background.

Jane loves taking the bus. She even holds out her hand to flag it down. She prefers the bus to taxis, because she ¨likes watching the people.¨ She also likes to stand on the wall behind our house and look for pigs, cows and goats in the riverbed.

Since Mac is her main playmate outside of school (kids don´t have play dates here like they do in the US), they have become really close.

Recently we bought Jane a pair of purple flip flops at the Saturday feria. She wears them everywhere. We also bought a nice swingset for Jane and Little Papi, and they play on it every day. Since it is summer now, we also have a little swimming pool that they use.

Perhaps because mom isn´t home during the day, Jane seeks out bonding time more. ¨We´re having girl time now,¨ she will tell me. ¨The boys have to stay downstairs.¨ I´m not totally excluded. ¨Let´s have blue-eyes time,¨ she will tell me.

Jane reads as much as ever. ¨Kindergarden Kids¨ is her favorite book. Her school just had a Scholastic Bookfaire and we bought a big stack for her. We also shipped a lot of books. She particularly loves having her mom read her books in Spanish. Jane will read in any language. When we visit our friend Christina, who is Austrian, Jane makes her read Disney books in German. Doesn´t matter to Jane.

Jane loves Friday nights, because we always go to Sole Mio, a pizza place owned by a surly, grumpy couple from Naples, who turn out pizzas made with ingredients imported from the old country. The pies are as good as any I´ve had.

Jane loves music. Her favorites are Sesame Street and Jim Lauderdale (she prefers his country stuff over the bluegrass collaborations he´s done with Ralph Stanley). What a cool kid. She was requesting some Lauderdale the other day and I told her that we were going to listen to Lucinda Williams. ¨Oh, he sings the backups,¨ she said, correctly noting that Lauderdale did all the back up vocals on the Lucinda record. Cool kid. She also likes to do what she calls ¨Princess Dancing.¨ We put dish towels on our heads and dance around the kitchen to Thin Lizzy (only Thin Lizzy). She loves that.

Our good friend Nicole made us these photo collages that are laminated and about the size of placemats. One is of Jane´s friends, one of Mac´s friends, and one each of the moms and dads in our circle. We taped them to the wall where Jane can see them. One day I came downstairs and saw Jane sitting cross legged on the floor looking at them. She was sucking her thumb and playing with her belly button, like she does. I watched her for a minute. She just sat there expressionless, staring at the pictures of her friends. ¨Are you sad,¨ I asked her. ¨No,¨ she said. ¨I´m just looking at my friends.¨ It breaks my heart every time I think of that, but she wasn´t sad at all. Still, she is very excited about going back to visit her friends this summer (. . . if we go back).

The bottom line is that Jane is doing well. She will be bilingual before she leaves here, and that is the single best thing you can do for a child´s development and intelligence. She is being exposed to different cultures and people. She is learning that people live differently. Not eveyone lives in a tract home, eats at Chilis and shops at the Gap. And that is OK. People view the world in different ways. They celebrate different holidays and rituals. They have different religions. The whole world is not rich and clean. But despite all of this, people are generally the same in any way that really matters. Knowing these things will make Jane a better person.

Short Hits

2004-11-10T08:13:00.000-05:00

I need to run off to La Cancha and get back in time to make lunch for everyone and bring it up to Meg´s school, so tomorrow I will post my Jane story.

* In Spanish, ¨German¨ is ¨Aleman¨ and ¨Germany¨ is ¨Alemania.¨ How cool is that? Hey, I´m Aleman. I mean, I AM an Ale Man! Of course, my buddy JP would correctly suggest that Germany is more properly Lagermania, and that the UK should be Alemania. In contrast, the U.S.A. down here is E.E.U.U., or ¨Ewww.¨ I didn´t make that up.

* This month the local government here in Cocha is going to round up all dogs found wandering the streets and kill them. If that sounds harsh, you don´t live here. It´s a great idea. Too many mean, starving, maimed dogs depending on dumpsters for survival here. Most importantly, it is a necessary measure to help control the continuing rabies epidemic.

* Remember those really cool old-school Toyota Landcruisers from the ´70´s? Before the Landcruiser became an enormous, stupidly overpriced yuppie mobile? Well, they still make those cool old-school trucks. Our local Toyota dealer has 3 brand new ones sitting on the lot.

* Not much to do with Bolivia, but the one radio station here that plays English-language music was ¨We are the World¨ in heavy rotation. You remember the all-star famine releif fundraiser? It featured every major music star of the mid-80s. Got me and Meg talking about whether participation in USA For Africa put some kind of curse on these artists. Of the solo vocalists, only Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen remain either commercially or artistically viable. Of course, it could be argued that even at the time these 3 were the only ones with artistic credibility anyway (though I must profess that I love Journey´s Steve Perry and have a soft spot for the more soulful work of Hall & Oates).

* My best buddy and Fox News disciple JP reminded me that had we not fled the U.S., it would be coming up on time for the 4th Annual Filiault Family Winter Ale Festival. He also rattled off the names of a handful of fine winter ales he has sitting in his fridge. The bastard. We look forward to hosting the belated 4th Annual when we return from exile in 2008.

* A friend of ours here, who I will not name to protect his privacy, has been banned from travelling to the United States. Why? Because he is originally from a country in the middle east region and has a name to match. Apparently U.S. consuls around the world have been asked to generate lists of such persons living in their territory. Those on the list can´t fly to the U.S., despite having no other reason to suspect them of terrorism than their name. Our friend was travelling from Bolivia to the U.S. to visit his ailing father, who like the rest of his family (including his children) lives in the U.S. I´m not sure what bothers me more: What this says about the state of our constitution, or what it says about the current state of our intelligence network. Sad, either way.

* My apologies to our friend Julie. I suck at remembering names. In a photo credit for the Tiquipaya story I spaced on her name. Julie was good natured about it, noting that I managed to remember her home town but not name. It has been corrected. Julie is a sweetheart and is here doing volunteer work until the end of the year. She´s then going to return to New England and college, where she will bask in the glow of our dual reigning world champions, the Pats and the Red Sox.

It´s MS. Bitch to You

2004-11-04T08:54:00.000-05:00

Pic: The crew descends on Tiquipaya, l to r Javier (Volunteer Bolivia), Maya (from Portland), Julie (from Cohasset, MA), Carlye (Portland), Molly (Acton, MA), Selena (in back, from CT), Dan (Redding), Wendell (Portland) and Eddie (Cocha).

We´re sitting roadside in Tiquipaya, with its somewhat hardscrabble downtown. The streets are narrow but paved, and lined with a mixture of old adobe buildings and newer, more modern ones. People are everywhere. We´re watching the most colorful parade you have ever seen. Tons of dancing, music, colorful traditional costumes. A Bolivian parade is more of a rolling party than anything else. There is a freedom of spirit here that is sorely missing in a country such as the U.S.A., which is controlled by the conservative religious right. You can feel that ¨soul¨ eeking out of every pore of the people here today.

First comes a group jamming traditional pan flute music. Drums. Flags. Dancing. Color. Every one of us has a smile plastered from ear to ear. I find my self thinking, ¨I cannot believe I am seeing this.¨ It is one of the most electrifying and magnificent things I hve ever seen in my life.

pic: the pan flute group

After 10 minutes of music and celebrating, the parade has covered about 5 meters distance. And it stops. It is hot, as summer has started to show its claws here. Probably 90 deg. F. People peel off what parts of their costumes they can. And out come the drinks. Beer. Buckets of chicha. Everyone drinks and talks. Moms hug sons. Girls talk to their boyfriends. After a while, a whistle sounds. Costumes come back on. Drinks are finished. The music and dancing starts again. That´s how it goes for the next 6 hours. Dance a little. Socialize a little. Drink a bit.

There is so much heart and soul on display here it makes me embarassed to come from a place where the Rose Parade or Macy´s Thanksgiving Day Parade are considered fun, rather than pathetic. This parade has no corporate sponser. Well, it might as well be Taquina. We downed enough $1 liters of Taquina to keep them in business just a little while longer (no, they don´t put you in jail here for having a beer on the sidewalk).

pic: One of the many colorful groups of dancers.

At one point our group comandeers a few tables along the route. Nice because a waiter brings you your beers and food. During a break in the parade, a big burley guy walks by in a T-shirt he can´t read that says ¨Cheerleader.¨ This prompts a few laughs and a discussion about the funny shirts you see here.

Ever wonder what happens to thos shirts you give to Goodwill? Eventually then end up down here and in other 3rd world countries where they are sold in the open air markets.

It is interesting to walk around town and see a shoeless guy wearing an ¨Old Orchard Beach Maine¨ shirt, or a 7 year old at a soccer game with a ¨Life Begins at 40¨ shirt. So, the discussion arose as to the funniest shirt.

Selena had the winner. Despite being just 26, Selena has lived in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Costa Rica, Columbia and now Bolivia. She recounted the time she was out in the country in Costa Rica and saw a big, rugged farmer working the land wearing a shirt that read:

¨It´s MS. Bitch to You.¨

You´ll never beat that.

To see more great photos of this wonderful day, go to www.wendellandcarlye.com. Click on ¨photos¨ and then ¨another Tiquipaya festival.¨ They also have some shots up from dinner at our house, featuring pics of the kids and of our kitchen.

We attended the Todos Santos festivities at the local cemetary on Tuesday. I´ve got pics and a story of that coming next week. Also, I´ve got pics and a story of Jane coming up.

E-mail us at filiault68@yahoo.com or meganfiliault@yahoo.com.

Vote, F%&#*r

2004-11-01T08:20:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is election day in the U.S. VOTE! If I can get my absentee ballot in from a country with a non-functioning postal system, you can walk down the street to fill out your ballot.

I´ve got a blog about a recent festival and parade we attended in Tiquipaya coming up. It was honestly one of the most amazing things we have ever witnessed. I have a couple of pictures, too. But, we went to another festival in Tiquipaya yesterday afternoon and I ate some bad trout. So, I am feeling pretty horrible today, still getting over the food poisoning. I´m going home to bed.

In the meantime, go to www.wendellandcarlye.com. These are friends of ours here. Check out the pictures section of their site, in particular the shots from ¨another Tiquipaya festival.¨ Lots of great shots from the day, including ones of Jane and Mac.

Drinking Gasoline

2004-10-30T10:18:00.000-04:00

There we were, sitting in the ¨Green Room¨ at Christina and Tanveer´s house in the foothills of Tiquipaya (some 20 minutes outside Cocha). The lot of us hailed from the U.S. (or E.E.U.U., as it is called here), Holland, Bolivia, Belgium, Columbia, Honduras, Austria and Pakistan. The occasion was Tanveer´s 50th birthday. Or, at least that was as many years as he was willing to claim. He looks older than our friend Dan, and Dan is 57. But I believe whatever Tanveer tells me. Who would question the veracity of a Pakistani rug dealer? Exactly.

We´d spent the afternoon gorging on Tanveer´s amazing Pakistani food, including the best lentils you´ve ever tasted. Jane ate lentils until the elastic on the waistband of her shorts groaned in protest. We´d had a ton of beer and wine too. But, the heavy artillery had been saved for last: Chicha.

Tanveer drops a huge yellow 5 gallon gas can on the low table in front of us. ¨Are you ready for the chicha,¨ he challenges us. Me? I think he´s joking. We´re really going to drink this crap out of an old used gas can? Then he produces the gord. Of course, you can only drink chicha from a hollowed-out gord, right?

Chicha is basically Bolivian moonshine. It is fermented corn juice. Legend has it that part of the process involves people chewing up the corn and spitting it out. The corn spit is what is fermented. Others say that practice has been discontinued. Chicharia´s infest every neighborhood in Cocha. They are at first discreet. You can´t tell it is a chicharia just by looking at it. Looks like a normal house. Then one day a white flag is hung up in front and the music starts and before you know it people are passed out on the curb at 9AM.

We have a couple chicharias in our neighborhood, including one at the end of our street. Megan and I are waiting for the U bus to take us to Plaza 14 de Septiembre one morning. Some guy, drunk out of his mind, stumbles out of the chicharia and crosses the street to talk to us.

For a few minutes he talks to Meg, telling her how beautiful she is. Now, this is during our water crisis (see below) and Megan has not washed her hair in 3 days. So, I KNOW the guy is drunk! He then looks at me with is glassy eyes, which strive for focus for a minute. Then he says, ¨Hey, you´re the guy with the kid on his back.¨

I carry Mac all over town in a Kelty kid carrier back pack. In Bolivia, there is nothing more feminine than carrying a kid on your back. I mean, the equivalent would be me walking around Portland in a bra and panties. And whereas the typical Bolivian woman carries her kid in a $3 blanket, I´m an obscene gringo lugging my kid in an over-engineered, disgustingly expensive high tech gizmo. I had always suspected that I was known in our neighborhood as the crazy gringo with the kid on his back and this drunk guy has just confirmed it.

So, the gourd of gasoline is being passed around the room. As people are taking hits off of it, Florentina, who is from Honduras, is talking about the last time she got plastered off chicha. ¨I couldn´t see right for five days,¨ she is telling me. ¨FIVE DAYS!!¨ ¨Oh, Jesus,¨ I am thinking.

By the time the magic gourd gets to me, I´m too psyched out to do much more than kiss the liquid, taking a timid sip. It´s no Stone IPA, but it also is much better tasting than tequilla or whiskey. It is a very primative thing, though, a bunch of people from around the world stuffed full of Pakistani curry sharing a gourd of Bolivian moonshine. It is like smoking a peace pipe, and if only for a minute the rest of the world assembled here forgives the Americans for George Bush (even if none of us voted for him).

When the gourd gets to the end of the line, the Belgian drains the thing, confirming my suspicion that all Belgians are bad asses (an impression formed by watching Belgian cyclists). I also make a mental note not to accept a ride home from him.

Post script: I´m humbled some weeks later when our friend and fellow Portlander Wendell recounts the time some stranger pulled him off the street into a chicharia. They eventually kicked him out when it looked certain he was going to deplete their stocks, barely catching a buzz in the process.

How ´Bout Them Red Sox?!?!?

2004-10-21T09:20:00.000-04:00

This has nothing to do with Bolivia, but having the Sox rally from down 0-3 in the series to spank the Yankees is pretty sweet. I just know that my Uncle Dennis up there in heaven has been lobbying The Big Guy for the past year or so and he´s finally gotten through. Thanks Denny!!!!

World Series starts Saturday at Fenway.

El Dia de No Agua

2004-10-19T10:27:00.000-04:00

It´s mid-morning on a Tuesday and I´m sipping my 3rd cup of bad, luke-warm coffee, leafing through the Sports Illustrated NFL Preview issue, when Jason, our housekeeper´s son, comes running in. ¨Caballero!!!¨ he yells (that is what he calls me; it reminds me of that bad Steve Martin/Martin Short movie, so I had to look it up to make sure he wasn´t insulting me; it means ¨Sir¨). ¨No agua,¨ he says, and motions for me to follow him.

Jason leads me out the backdoor and around to the laundry room, where his mom Lourdes is doing our laundry. She says something in Spanish that I don´t understand. Of course, much of what she says short of ¨buenos dias¨ I don´t understand. But she turns on the faucet and nothing comes out and even I understand: We are out of water.

My immediate thought is ¨This isn´t 1592 nor are we in West Virgina - how the hell can we run out of water?!?¨ Together, we got to the front of our house and check the tanque (cement hole where the water is kept). Sucker is bone dry.

Now, at this point let me recap what I understand of the Cocha water system. Water is a touchy subject here and has caused riots. But the way it works is that you have a tanque burried in your yard. It is much like a septic tank, only Bolivian water is dirtier. Ta-dump-dump. Ocassionally, SEMAPA, the water utility, will release water. It is not like in the U.S. where water is constantly delivered on demand. Ideally, every 3 days water is released and it is collected in your tank. When the drought inevitably hits, SEMAPA doesn´t release any water. When you need water, an electric pump (called a ¨bomba de agua¨) pumps the water from the tanque into your house. If you use more water than the city releases, then you have to buy more. A truck will come to your house and deliver it. Of course, the result of such a system is that rich people always have water. Those less well off will have a tanque but no bomba, so they lack running water. Really poor people have no water at all, and must wash their clothes in dirty riverwater.

Let me backtrack. Last week, Meg got up early to go running and noticed a garden faucet was on and water was flooding the street. Apparently our gardner had left the faucet on -- I mean, it couldn´t have been ME. This is easy to do, however, because that faucet only discharges water while the city is delivering water. At time, we weren´t too concerned because we did not understand that we only got water every 3 days, at best, nor did we know that we only drew water from the tanque. We thought the tanque was a back-up

Now, Lourdes is kind of pissed. She is in the middle of doing the laundry and has soapy clothes everywhere (remember -- no washing machines or dryer -- it is all done by hand). I can see her thinking ¨I can´t believe I work for such dumb-ass gringos¨. She´s nice enough not to say anything but I know she is thinkig it.

When I break the news to Megan at lunch time that we are out of water, her eyes roll back in her head and her hair catches fire and she takes the word ¨Bolivia¨ in vain several times. Last week we ran out of cooking gas. Our telephone runs out of ¨minutes¨ and stops working every other day, usually while Megan is in the midst of trying to get something fixed. And she had just finished the monthly nightmare of paying our bills, which includes visiting each utility personally and paying in cash. Including the f$%&ing water bill.

Aside: Why does Megan have to do everything? Because she is the only one who speaks Spanish in a town where no one speaks any English at all. I´d do it if I could -- honest.

So, I manage with the help of Jane -- strong as hell for a short 3-year-old -- to pull Megan from the taxi she is trying to take to Wilstermann Airport. I make her repeat the mantra ¨You can´t change Bolivia to suit you¨10 times, and we make her ¨shotgun¨ a can of Taquina (Jane´s idea).

At the end of the day, Megan heads off to buy more water. Now, we´ve only been without water for like 6 hours but it is a bitch. You need water for everything it seems. For instance, did you know that you can´t flush a toilet without water? And living ina 3rd world country is a nonstop battle to keep your intestines and stomach on an even keel. 6 hours is a long time without flushing a toilet, comprende?

30 minutes later Megan shows up, having hitched a ride back in the cab of a rickety old tanker truck. A seam on the tank is busted, and water is gushing out. I´m wondering whether any will be left for the tank. I mean, what would it cost here to weld the seem? 50 cents? Anyway, Meg has the guys start filling our tanque. It takes all of 3 minutes.

¨Is there more water,¨ she asks the guy after the tanque is filled. ¨No,¨ he says. ¨Maybe only a little.¨

Meg tells me that it took them 20 minutes to fill the tank. We figure we have 17 minutes, less what has leaked out of the seam, left in the truck. And we´ve paid for it.

¨Well, let´s make sure,¨ Megan tells them. ¨Pump it into the back yard.¨ Reluctently, the guy patches together a strink of odd size PVC tubes and gets the water close to the backyard. He opens the lever and for 15 minutes water gushes into our backyard, soaking the lawn. Parts of the yard are in 6 inches of water. It´s great -- our lawn needed it. Water even spills down the hill into the trash-strewn gully behind our house.

Releived that our own personal drought is over, we return to the house and triumphantly turn on the kitchen faucet. Nothing. Well, maybe we need to let pressure build. We wait a few more minutes. Still nothing. We investigate. The bomba de agua is not making any noise, but it smells like the hand controller of slot-car race track that has been running flat out for too long. Yeah, the bomba de agua´s electric motor has just burnt out. Megan promptly shotgun´s another Taquina. She goes to sleep despondent, unwashed, but a little buzzed.

The next morning Lourdes shows up at 8:30 and I tell her in my pidgen Spanish ¨no agua.¨ Her eyes roll back in her head. I offer her a shotgun-ready Taquina, but she angrily waves me away. The poor woman is forced to do her job by lowering a bucket into the tanque and hoisting water up. Everytime I pass her she is muttering ¨no agua¨ under her breath. When she shows up for work the next day I am relieved.

After lunch our landlord´s son Ricardo shows up with the repairman. At least I think it is the landlord´s son becaus he looks just like him, only younger and a bit heavier. Ricardo had to drive the repairman to the house because that is how it works here. Repairmen have no union, so they don´t get paid what they do stateside. They can´t afford vehicles. You know how in the US your plumber shows up in a $50,000 truck loaded with a fortune in tools and parts? Here, our plumber is a guy who carries a backpack and takes the bus. He hopes you have the tools he will need.

That afternoon, Ricardo and the repariman show up with a new pump. It is installed and we have running water. When Ricardo comes in the house to check if the water is working, he looks around and makes a comment that I think was ¨Don´t you gringo freaks have any furniture?¨ We have like $10,000 worth of kids books, which we paid more than replacement cost to ship here, and no furniture save one cheap La Cancha couch. And it is wicker. I hate wicker. Priorities.

Now that the new pump is up and working, Ricardo hurridly runs around the house flushing toilets (my stomach is feeling better, thanks). He next tries to tell me something about how the bomba works. I do not understand, but I take it he is asking me not to break this one too.

AFTERWORD: As I write this, the street is flooding again. The city is delivering water. Our tank is full, but it appears that the water delivery pipe to our house is busted. Water is gurgling up out of the ground. Our neighbors must think we are such idiots, flooding the street everytime water is delivered. The bomba de agua continues to work. We are out of Taquina.

Killer Pictures!

2004-10-14T10:51:00.000-04:00

While I continue my never-ending quest to get pictures up on the blog (cut me some slack-- I haven´t even been here 2 months), I have found this website that has tons of killer pictures, including a lot of Cocha.

Check it out: http://tunari.tripod.com

Also, Capt. Chuck Eichachchcherererererrrrr -- please shoot me an e-mail at filiault68@yahoo.com. I lost your e-mail and want to catch up.

More Lies from the Bush Administration (And Other Stuff)

2004-10-08T09:23:00.000-04:00

* Ok, maybe the discredit for this, like everything else, belongs with the evil puppet-master ¨Dick¨ (oh, his momma knew . . . ) Cheney.

Got to www.usps.com, click on the international shipping calculator, and tell it you want to send a 34lb box to Bolivia via air parcel post. It will tell you that the box will take 4-10 days to arrive at a cost of $122.25. Well, they must have been searching for weapons of mass destruction in my boxes because it took 50 days for them to get here from Portland. This time length is typical of others experiences, and is just one more reason Bush has to go. ;)

In the current administration´s defense, the large envelope my Dad sent here only took 22 days to arrive, or just 12 more than Bush promised. Lies, lies, lies.

* We ate at La Granja the other night, one of the best restaurants in town. Run by a very nice guy from Peru who speaks perfect English. He kinda reminded me of Gunther from ¨Friends¨ crossed with a touch of Col. Clink. The restaurant has a ¨farm¨ theme, and all the waiters dress like American farmers with denim overalls, checked shirts and straw hats. Good pasta, but the speciality de la casa is carne. The meat smelled so good I almost ordered some beef. Forget that all 4 of us gorged, including two beers and a glass of wine, for about 10US.

What was curious to me was the bathrooms. On one door was a carving of a chicken holding an umbrella. On the other was a chicken holding a cane. I checked closely; one was not a rooster. Neither chicken was wearing pants or a dress. They were androgenous chickens. On my second try, I learned that the chicken with the cane was the mens room. I am not sure how I was supposed to get that by myself.

* This is a pretty cheap place to live. But yesterday I went shopping for a sprinkler. The cheapest sprinkler I could find cost more than we pay our housekeeper per month. Strange. Equally strange to me is lemon-flavored mayonaise, which comes here in giant plastic bags. People love lemon-flavored mayonaise.

* Speaking of our housekeeper Lourdes, the water company came to shut off our water today because we haven´t paid the bill. We can´t get this bill paying thing down (see earlier blogs for details). Luckily, Lourdes talked the guy out of it. Or at least I think she did. Lourdes doesn´t speak English, I don´t speak Spanish (todavia!!). I don´t know what she said to the guy. Maybe she told him I was DEA and would erradicate the guy´s secret coca plot if he didn´t leave. I don´t know. All I know is that she talked to the guy and the water still runs. Thanks Lourdes!

COMING SOON!

2004-10-05T09:44:00.000-04:00

Coming this Spring (or Fall for those of you in the other hemisphere) to your favorite BLOG:

* Thanksgiving in Sucre and Potosi (Or, ¨Will Mac Puke His Guts out at 13,500 Feet?¨)

* The Dog That Loved a Duck (and Vice Versa) (C´mon, could I make this up?)

* Hiking in Tiquipaya with Tanveer, My Favorite Pakistani Rug Dealer

* In Search of Juan Valdez (Or, ¨Will Jim Ever Find a Decent Cup of Coffee?!?!¨)

* All About Buses and Taxis (Or, ¨Holy Shit I´m Gonna Die¨) (Or, ¨Car Seat? Hahahahahahaha¨)

* An Interview With Megan (Or, ¨Will She Kill the Neighbor´s Freaking Parrot?¨)

Plus, featues on Jane and Mac, and pictures of pretty churches.

Cochabamba Price Index

2004-10-05T09:32:00.000-04:00

I thought it would be fun to list what some things cost here. I´ll update it from time to time if the mood strikes.

1 gallon of milk: $1.50

1 can of beer: $0.50

Loaf of bread: $0.42

Kellogg´s Cornflakes (200g): $1.12

Kraft Mac n Cheese: $0.94

Bottle of good quality local
red wine: $2.00

4 gallon bottle of pure
drinking water, delivered: $1.25

Newsweek (English edition,
if you can find it): $3.12

Los Tiempos (Spanish language
daily paper): $0.37

1 hour of time at an
internet cafe: $0.37

Taxi ride, anwhere downtown: $0.50-0.75

Bus ride, within city limits: $0.12

Best seats in the house at Felix
Capriles Stadium for a
professional soccer game: $2.50

Popcorn at soccer game: $0.12

Beer at soccer game: $0.50 (I smuggle it in in, you can´t buy beer at the games)

1 dozen long stem red roses: $1.25

Diapers (24 count Huggies): $2.73

Old El Paso refried beans (1 can): $1.87

Dinner for family at best pizza
place in town, with 2 large pizzas,
2 beers, and 2 ice creams: $8.13

Maid, 4 hours a day, 6 days
a week (for one month): $31.25

Suzuki Gran Vitara 4x4 sport
utility: $25,000

Nice 5 BR house in good
neighborhood: $75,000

3.5 months of time every year
when all four members of our
family are on vacation and
together: PRICELESS

Is There an Events Coordinator in the House?

2004-10-01T10:20:00.000-04:00

So after dinner last Friday we decided to go see a concert that some friends had told us about. It was taking place at Pasaje Catedral, which is a nice little courtyard behind Cocha´s main church. The church itself was built in 1571, way before most of you were born. Outside, the church is somewhat workmanlike, but inside it is beautiful. It is set on Cocha´s main square -- Plaza 14 de Septiembre. I love Latin American churches and plazas, and have quite a few pics to post which I hope to do next week (camera´s card is almost full; once I burn it to disc uploading will be easier). But I digress.

Pasaje Catedral used to be a horrible alley where people went to urinate. Thanks to a Cocha civic group, of which our friend George is a member, it has been turned into a lovely courtyard with a nice fountain, lights, etc. It´s nice.

The night began innocently enough, with a chamber orchestra playing a somewhat lopsided version of Vivaldi´s ¨Four Seasons,¨ played at various tempos, one of which may have been correct, and with each instrumentalist chosing his own pitch, again, one of which may have been correct. Now, I know what you are thinking. ¨Jim, how the hell do you know the name of a piece of classical music.¨ Megan told me, that´s how. We were sitting up on the top landing of the church´s back stairs and had a wonderful view of the courtyard and the musicians. Mac kept trying to eat rocks, which was only acceptable to us because if he wasn´t eating rocks he would be roaring like a lion. I don´t know if I have posted this here, but my son apparently thinks he is Simba. Now, through the back door of the church we hear a band tuning up. We assume it is part of this same concert, and make a mental note that it is kind of rude to loudly tune up while a chamber orchestra is playing 30 feet away.

Next up is the youth choir from the Hughes School, a local English language K-7. They are introduced as the ¨¨Ew-Guess School.¨ Ok, now if you have ever wondered why a facility such as a church has an events coordinator, we´re about to find out.

The poor Ew-Guess School kids launch into a spirited version of Queen´s ¨We are the Champions.¨Now, allow me to digress for a second. The Hughes School instructs in English, but that doesn´t mean these kids have necessarily mastered the language. Their singing reminds me of the scene in ¨A Christmas Story¨when Ralphie and family are forced to go to the Chinese restaurant on Christmas Day, and the waiters are seranading them with carols. If you´ve seen the movie, you get the gist. I do not mean to make fun of anyone´s language ability, and have no right to because whenever I try to say something in Spanish to our maid, she looks at me like she´s just realized that I don´t have a nose.

So ¨We are the Champions¨is going just fine when the fireworks start. Kids in the Plaza are lighting them off. Lots of ´em. These are big ones too, that make a lot of noise and light. Boom BOOOM BOOOM champions boom keep on fighting boom to the end BOOM. Then the church bells start ringing. Loudly. Keep in mind we are in a courtyard bordering the church. CLANG CLANG CLANG champions BOOM BOOM fighting till the end CLANG BOOM.

Why are the bells ringing? Because a funeral has been taking place in the church, it is now over and people are leaving the church. And did I mention that the dearly departed was apparently a fan of mariachi bands? And that in his honor, the bereaved are being serenaded by an 8 piece mariachi band, which is set up on the front steps of the church 30 feet away? An AMPLIFIED mariachi band, that is playing the version of all versions of Simon and Garfunkel´s ¨Sounds of Silence¨(I´m not making this up)? CLANG BOOM champions hello darkness my old friend CLANG BOOM BOOM. And so on. The result is like 6 cats fighting in my head.

To make a long story short, I´m a sucker for a good mariachi band. We discreetly as we can --with a 1 year old who is now roaring because we took his rocks away -- take our leave and go watch the mariachi band.

10 Great Things

2004-09-28T18:37:00.000-04:00

Megan thinks some of the stuff I write is too negative, but that´s probably because she´s privy to the entries in my journal that will never appear here. All the ¨I´m afraid to leave the house and just want a good, hot cup of coffee¨ stuff. Ok, the coffee riff will probably show up here. Alas, my kingdom for a cup of Stumptown coffee!! I´d hate to think that most of what I write is negative -- I just like to write about what interests me.

Anyway, in no particular order, here is a list of 10 cool things about Bolivia and Cocha.

1. Natural Beauty. Bolivia is the most beautiful country in the world, period. The others can just give up now. Green valleys, jagged mountains, jungle, altiplano, salt flats, ancient Incan ruins, colonial cities. No other place on earth has all of this. Stunning in its diversity and its beauty. And what is perhaps most stunning of all is that the rest of the world doesn´t even know what´s here. A shame.

2. Produce. Great, fresh, cheap produce, grown locally. Our kids eat 4 kiwis each, every day. You´d faint if you knew what we pay for a kilo of these.

3. Ades juice. Ok, it is actually made in Argentina, but you can get it everywhere here. It is soy juice. Or is it fruit milk? I don´t know, but we drink a liter a day. The manzana is our favorite, but fruitas tropicales is good too.

4. Tranquillo. Let´s face it, that report that your life will absolutely end if it is not done by the end of the day -- in the grand scheme of the world, it doesn´t mean shit. Really. Who cares? It can wait until tomorrow. Cochabambinos get this. Better you should take 2 hours to go home and eat lunch with your family. Everything else can wait.

5. Milk. Milk here comes in 1 liter plastic bags, and does not need to be refrigerated until opened. I´ll take their word for that -- we keep ours in the fridge. Anyway, you cut open the bag and pour it into a plastic jug and decant it that way. Cocha has the best tasting milk I´ve ever had. It is very fresh and clean tasting. You can´t take good milk for granted. Japan, for instance, has milk that tastes like dead samurai farts. Really, the first time I had milk in Japan I sent it back, telling the waiter it was rotten. No, that´s just how Japanese milk tastes.

6. Cows walking down the street. Maybe it is me, but I love the fact that I live in a place where a herd of cows can walk down a main Avenida in the middle of the day, and no one blinks an eye. I also love it that you can ask a cab driver to strap 5 live goats to the top of his cab and he´ll do it. Try that in New York some time.

7. La Cancha. Bolivia´s largest outdoor market is a sprawling, endless wonder. Meg hates it. I love it. Need 200 kilos of angel hair pasta? La Cancha has it. A haircut? Check. ¨Shrek 2¨DVD? Yeah, got that. TV? Check. Stove? Check. Patio furniture? Virginia Tech baseball cap? The whole head of a cow? Check, check, check.

8. Micro buses/Trufis. The go everywhere you need to go, stop anywhere you want, and pick you up anyplace you ask. One comes by like every 2 minutes. All for 12.5 cents.

9. Coblestone Streets. Many streets here in town are cobled, including ours. They are cobled with natural stones in interesting patterns. It is real craftsmanship. In fact, the main road that we live off of was cobled until last year, when they paved over it. Go a mile past our house and it reverts to cobles. I suspect many of these roads are being paved over in the name of progress, but I live the quaintness they give.

10. Indiginous people. Maybe I´m simple, but I like to be reminded that I live in an exotic location. Many indiginous women in Cocha still dress in the old style, with layered peticoats, colorful shawls, bowler hats and colorful blankets which are used to carry things. People say that this may be the last generation to dress this way, which is a shame.

Hello Sam, Goodbye Mitchell

2004-09-22T09:51:00.000-04:00

Our Bay Area friends Ed and Nico White welcomed their first child on August 31. Little Samuel Howard White is healthy, happy and suitably keeping his parents up nights. Congratulations! August 31, of course, is also our Janey´s birthday. Good day to be born.

Unfortunately, my stepdad Chuck´s best friend Mitchell passed away last week. Mitchell had suffered a massive stroke a couple of weeks ago, from which recovery was impossible. He was taken off life support last week, surrounded by friends and his wonderful wife Judy.

Now, anyone who knew Mitchell for 5 seconds loved the guy. He was bigger than life, and at least to me it seemed like Mitchell lived every second to the fullest. He was the kid of guy who you heard coming 10 minutes before he actually arrived -- one of the few people who could out-talk my brother Jeff. Mitchell ¨got it¨ in my opinion. He realized that life isn´t up around the corner. Life is under your wheels right now. Had Mitchell put off living his life until retirement, he would have never gotten there.

Anyway, if you are religious, please keep Mitchell´s wife Judy in your prayers. If you´re not, just send her some good thoughts.

Where´s Megan?

2004-09-22T09:45:00.000-04:00

Several people have asked whether Megan will post anything on this blog. The answer is a very strong ¨maybe,¨ but I wouldn´t hold your breath. Personally, I think it would be great if she´d write something, but don´t see it happening for a couple of reasons.

First, she doesn´t have the time. Unlike me, she actually has a job. When she is not working, she is handling a lot of B.S. that I should be doing. Problem is, my Spanish is limited to useless right now. As our only Spanish speaking representative, Meg has to do things like call the landlord to get the toilet fixed, order drinking water, find an exterminator to kill the spiders, deal with the maid, etc. All of this stuff takes a whole lot of time -- more so than it would in the U.S. In addition, she is still adjusting to the fact that she is not with the kids all day. When she gets home, she wants to spend every second with the kids -- not writing some crap for the blog.

Second, I just don´t think that Meg has much interest in writing stuff for the blog. Maybe that will change as life starts to calm down and we begin to assimilate a bit here.

So, if you want to talk to Meg about her experience here, your best bet is to send her an e-mail and ask her. She is good about checking her e-mail regularly.

Is that dog just happy to see me, or is it rabid?

2004-09-20T09:11:00.000-04:00

When we went to the travel clinic to get our immunizations prior to coming down here, they asked if we needed a rabies vacine. (Side note -- want to see the very pictue of utter, profound confusion? Go to a travel clinic and tell the nurse you are going to somewhere other than Canada, Mexico or Costa Rica and watch her face. It would be funny were you life not in her hands). First, I didn´t even know such a thing as a rabies vaccine for humans existed. I thought that pretty much you get rabies and then have to get those horrible shots your mother always would tell you about to scare you. You know -- 65 shots in your scrotum with a needle that looks like something you knit with. I didn´t know you could prevent it up front. Still, I kind of laughed. Rabies? Who gets rabies.

Well, 93 Cochabambinos have gotten rabies in the past 3 months. There has been a huge epidemic here. Why? Two reasons. First, there are dogs everwhere. I may have mentioned this here before, and I have certainly shared this in e-mails and phone calls. But there are dogs EVERYWHERE. Big ones. Small ones. Medium ones. Muts. Purebreads. All kinds. Sometimes they run in big packs of 6 or 8. Others are more the lone wolf types, going it alone. There are no leash laws here, of course. At night, it often sounds like you are sleeping in the dog pound, with a non-stop cacophony of howls, barks, screams, fights, etc.

The second issue is that, with a few exceptions, most of these dogs are not well cared for. They are largely mangy, underfed and unkempt. People do not generally feed the dogs, letting them forage for themselves. They do not bathe or groom the dogs. And they certainly do not immunize them, including getting the rabies shots. There is a big push on now to educate people and get the dogs immunized, but it is probably a losing battle.

To be fair, most of these dogs leave you alone. But not all. I run most mornings, and always do so with a big rock in each hand. A day doesn´t go by that some dog doesn´t come after me. Learning, as I did this weekend, about the rabies outbreak, certainly makes me a little more cautious though. Almost wish I had gotten that shot.

In other critter news, we are experiencing something of an outbreak of spiders in our house. I´m not talking cute little California or Oregon spiders. No, I´m talking South American S-P-I-D-E-R-S. Suckers are have like 2-3 inch wingspans, but when you are facing one of those bad boys down and he is challenging you from the ceiling, it may as well be 2-3 FEET. I´m freakin´ terrified of spiders, and so is Megan. We call ourselves the Arachnaphobic Pest Control Team. ¨You kill it!¨¨No, YOU kill it!!¨ We´ve been averaging 1-2 of these monsters a day. Even worse, I´on my way to the internet cafe this morning and I look in the shoe I wore yesterday for some reason (first time I wore the shoe in a month), and cracked in the toe of the shoe are the remnants of a monster spider. I mean, the pieces were almost like the pieces of a lobster. It was in my shoe yesterday when I put it on to go to the soccer game (GO WILSTERMAN!!). I must have just crushed it. I am afraid by the size of the pieces it was a scorpion, which we have here. Glad I got him before he got me.

In yet MORE critter news, we have a mouse living in our kitchen. He lives under the cabinets in the corner near the gas locker. We see him every night when we are having our bedtime tea. He pokes his head out, looks around, and scurry´s here and there. One night last week, there was a stray piece of rotelli left over from dinner. Sitting on the floor about 2 feet out from the cabinets. Dude sees it. Looks at us -- we´re only 6 feet away or so, sitting at the table. He scurries out to it. Pauses, as if to say ¨You´re not gonna eat this, are you?¨ Picks it up in his mouth, and scurries back. Let me tell you, Dude may be small but his balls aren´t.

Finally, as mentioned above, we took in the hometown Wilsterman vs. Real Santa Cruz football (soccer) game last night. Lots of barbed wire keeping the players and fans separate, but the stadium is in a beautiful location with the wonderful hills above town framing one side and the Cristo statute framing the other. Despite the fact that the team´s main sponser is major brewer Taquina, there is no alcohol served in the stadium. Bummed me out, but probably a good idea. I hadn´t seen sports in probably 5 weeks, so I actually enjoyed a soccer game for once.

This week I need to extend my visa and the kids´from 30 to 90 days, ´cause the visas are up this week. Boy, that should be fun.

Later.

Drinking Cocaine

2004-09-15T09:10:00.000-04:00

Cochabamba is both a city and a state -- kinda like New York. In Cocha State is the coca-growing Chapare region. It is supposed to be beautiful, though a gringo with a crewcut probably doesn´t want to venture too far into the fields, lest he be mistaken for a DEA agent. Speaking of which, the DEA has spent a fortune trying to erradicate coca in the Chapare. I forget the number. It´s tens of millions or maybe over a billion bucks. Anyway, the dollars are freaking huge. Still, you can get yourself a big old baggie of coca leafs in any outdoor market in the country. The coca leaf is very much a part of Bolivian culture, and is chewed both for its relaxing effect and because it helps deal with the altitude (remember, some cities in Bolivia are over 14,000 feet -- freakin´HIGH.

Despite the fact that Bolvia has used the coca leaf responsibly forever, the USA has decided that the coca leaf has to go because a bunch of stupid Americans insist on smoking crack. Nuts. Lets not spend the money dealing with WHY people are smoking crack. Let´s instead ruin the livelihood of a bunch of peasant farmers. And we wonder why the whole world hates us. Anyway, I don´t want to get all political on you.

I bring all of this up only because you can buy coca tea in the supermarket here. It is 100 percent coca leaf, put in a nice little tea bag. I bought some last week and have been drinking it ever since. The package says that it gives you an active mind, settles your stomache and helps with altitude. Personally, it just makes me jittery and makes my nose run. Hah -- I´m kidding. I really don´t feel too much from it. It tastes like Japanese green tea. Mostly I feel kind of naughty drinking cocaine.

It´s Like The French Have a Different Word for EVERYTHING!!!

2004-09-12T14:21:00.000-04:00

First off, some interesting things I have seen in the past few days.

First, Jane and I saw a herd of about 100 sheep and goats grazing in the riverbed below our house. We see this herd all the time, being sheparded by one indian woman.

Next, Jane and I saw 6 or 7 big (150-200lb) pink pigs grazing in the riverbed today.

Then, on our way home from a busted trip to Tiquipaya (paper said HUGE ARTISAN FAIR. Tiquipaya knew nothing about it), we saw two donkeys, unattended, grazing on side of the street.

Finally, in Tiquipaya´s Plaza Central, the obvious loser of a brutal bar fight, blood still oozing from his wounds, cased us for a while. Eventually he approached, showed us his doctor´s prescription, and asked for some money to pay for the medicine. I gave him a B (12.5 cents, the going rate for beggars, more or less).

Now, I thought it might be interesting to share how things are done differently here. This is definitely not to say the Bolivian way is bad or inferior in any way. Just that it is different.

1. Bills. A guy comes to your house, rings the bell, and you let him in. He reads the water meter or electricity meter, puts the numbers in a handheld computer, and out comes the bill. He hands the bill to you. Now, your obligation is to go to the utility company and pay the bill in person, in cash. No checks. No mailing things. You have to go in person and stand in line. For each one.

2. Mail. Mail? What mail? There are no mail boxes here, and I have yet to see a postman. We get what little mail we do receive through the school´s post office box. If we want to mail stuff, we either wait for someone to fly to the US and mail it for us, or we have to go downtown to the central post office. Oh, and if you ask US Postal, they will tell you it takes like 4-7 days for airmail to reach Bolivia. Bullcrap. It takes 4-5 weeks OR MORE for airmail to get here.

3. Gas. We cook with, I think, natural gas. There are no gas lines running to your house. Instead, you use what looks like a big propane cylinder. How do you get more gas when the tank runs out? From the gas man. Big old open-backed trucks that look like 1950´s Fords roam the neigborhoods, with one guy up on the back of the truck clanging and empty cylinder with a piece of metal. It´s like the ice cream man with gas. So, you hear him, run out to the curb, and swap out your cylinder.

4. Laundry. Rich folks have washing machines. No one has a dryer. We have a little open-air room attached to our house, next to the maids quarters. It has a big sink in it, and you wash your clothes in that. We have a woman in her daughter who comes and does our laundry every week, but sometimes they don´t show up (such is Bolivia). In those cases, Jimmy is the laundry man. Regardless of who washes it, after it dries on the lines, it is stiff as hell. So, I have to spend a morning ironing every piece of clothing we own to try and soften it up.

5. Drinking water. You wouldn´t want to wash your dog´s ass in Bolivian tap water. Even Bolivians don´t drink it. So, you have the drinking water guy deliver water. By the way, a huge 20litre bottle of pure water costs $1.25. Anyway, these guys aren´t like the Arrowhead man or the Sparklets guy. In the states, once you get the water service they drop off two bottles every week whether you like it or not. 6 months into your contract you have so much water you could fill your pool with it but you just can´t stop it coming. Not here. Here you run our of water, then call for a week before you can convince them to bring you more. A friend of ours said it took her a full year to get them to come on a regular basis.

6. Trash. There is no trash service here. Your options are (1) burn it, as many do; (2) throw it in the gully behind our house, as many do; or (3) walk it down to one of the giant green dumpsters that are randomly scattered throughout the city (which we do).

Photos, believe it or not.

2004-09-09T16:56:00.000-04:00

Ok, so as per my last post I do not have the time to get things all pretty and figure out how to put photos in the blog -- I will get to that. But I do have a Shutterfly slide show all set up. Cut and paste this in your browser and you should get there --

http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeAM2jls5cs2rCWA

We have a lead on a full-time maid. I am excited. Enjoy the pics.

p.s. Special thanks to Vitter at Colegio Calvert -- without his technical expertise I could not have gotten the pics

Incommunicado

2004-09-09T09:23:00.000-04:00

Well, this is the 3rd time I have had an opportunity to log on to the internet in almost 3 weeks. I am finding that I just have no time to do it, since the first break in my day comes at 7pm, and we go to bed at 8. It is impossible to go to a internet cafe with Mac, because he screams the whole time.

This is compounded by the fact that the connections here are slow. An hour of internet time can mean reading and responding to 5 e-mails.

So, we are in the process of looking for an empleada, which is a person who will either live with us or spend the day with us, doing the cleaning and taking a role in watching the kids. We are told that it will be difficult to find someone, but eventually we will. So, untill we find that person, my prescence on the web both at this blog and in responding to e-mails will be sporadic, at best.

It is easier for Megan to get on the web, since she can do it from school before she leaves each day.

I have a ton of great picutres I hope to post as soon as I find a decent speed connection.

Strangest thing I have seen so far; A taxi with 5 live goats strapped to its roof. I´ve seen this twice, so obviously it is a common practice. There is also a farmer who heards his 8 cows down to the river everyday, so I often see him and the cows strolling down Avenida Circumvalacion. Imagine a guy hearding 8 cows down Sandy Blvd. or Steven Creek Blvd. and you get the picture. Strange.

Mac is finally getting over the cold he caught in LA. Jane loves school and has lots of friends. I start Spanish lessons on Friday.

First Impressions

2004-08-28T15:43:00.000-04:00

The flight went great until we started landing in La Paz. In fact, both Jane and Mac slept from Miami to La Paz, leaving me alone to watch the horrible ¨Starsky and Hutch¨ movie. Anyway, as we are landing in La Paz, Mac is cuddling with me. I feel something hot on my side -- Mac is vomiting. Mac kept vomiting as we landed. He also became feverish and very lethargic. He had altidude sickness due to La Paz´s 12,000-13000 feet of elevation. Oh, and it is 5:30 in the morning and 30 deg. F outside. And the kids are dressed for Los Angeles weather. Luckily the plane crew gave us some blankets or the kids would have froze. Well, we hit immigration and I´m dead last in line. An immigration official comes over and takes us aside. He then takes our passports and documents, brings them to the front of the line, has them stamped, returns them to us and lets us pass. This is the kind of treatment I have so far received from all Bolivianos. It´s the kids. They love kids.

So, we are covered in puke (me especially -- Jane had puked on the way to the airport in LA because of my Dad´s crazy driving), freezing and exhausted. We finally collect our 5 huge bags, clear customs and get our boarding passes for the flight to Cocha. We´ve got 2 hours to wait, so I put the kids to bed on some seats. Poor Mac´s blanket is so covered in puke that I can´t put it on him. A security guy comes over and gives me his jacket to cover Mac with. I settle in for a couple hours of watching ¨Good Morning Bolivia¨or some such. Finally it´s time to get on the plane to Cocha. Security comes over and gets me, takes me to the front of the line without asking, and gets me on the plane. They even carry Mac for me all the way to my seat.

A nice guy named Elias sat next to us on the plane. He is Boliviano from La Paz, but has spent the past 15 years in Salt Lake City. He speaks perfect English, and is married to an American citizen. Elias is travelling to Cocha to scout out opportunities for the non-profit he is starting. He´s trying to help the indiginous people with literacy and, eventually, with starting their own small businesses. Elias was a wealth of information on what to expect in Bolivia and Cocha, and filled me in on a lot of customs. He helps carry my bags off the plane, while I struggle with the kids. (Post script: The next day, Elias stops by our house for an hour or so. He has decided to relocate his family to Cocha, so we eagerly await their arrival in a couple months or so).

At baggage claim, Meg sees us and literally barges her way through security and scoops Jane in her arms. Mom is in tears and Jane holds on for dear life. Finally, they let go and Mac gets the mommy treatment. We leave the ¨secured¨area and meet Robert and Mary Jo, the school counsler and director, respectively. Robert is a native of Cocha and we need his local knowledge as we leave the airport in his Jeep Cherokee and are immeidately stopped by a rolling blockage of Minis (local buses). They are portesting gas prices. We cut through alleys. Back track down streets. It´s like being in a video game, because the blockades keep popping up. These are pretty common here, but as long as you don´t try and go through them they are peaceful. Anyway, we finally get to our new house.

Oh, by this time, Mac is feeling much better. The drop in altitude helped him a lot (Cocha is at 8,000 feet).

My first impression of Cocha was ¨Wow, we´re not in Portland anymore.¨ The architecture is a mix of Colonial, ¨modern Latin¨and rubble. A disintegrating hut of a house will stand right next to an amazing 6,000 sq, ft. mansion, with glass shard and barb-wire topped walls and armed guards. Every house -- even ours -- is surrounded by 10 foot tall security walls. I love the indiginous women you see everywhere, with their bowler hats, colorful shawls, and layers of petticoats. It makes me feel like I am living in an issue of National Geographic. I am also struck by the racial diversity. Robert, the school counsler, is a local but is as white as I am. Most people look either hispanic or indian, but there are all shades of people here from white to brown to black. Our favorite local restaurant, Sole Mio, is run by a couple from Naples, who import all of their ingredients from Italy. They came here to adopt a child and never left!

We´re very much in a third world country, though. Poverty is everywhere. So is trash. At the nearest roundabout on Cicumvalencion (the big street we live off of) lies the rusted out hulk of a car, and it has been there for a long time. The nearest park has playground equipment not seen in the US since the rise of the tort lawyer, and they sit amidst equal parts rocks and broken glass. Herds of dirty, mangy dogs roam the streets. It´s a trip.

The other thing about Cocha is that NO ONE speaks English. No one! So, I will learn some Spanish or suffer.

Our second day we went to La Cancha, the biggest outdoor market in Bolivia. It´s a trip, but more on that later.

Mac is walking now. He´s such a little man.

We´re still working on getting a phone. We will probably get a cell phone, because our house does not have a phone line. You need to ¨buy¨a phone line here, and it costs like $1,000US. So, only the rich have phones. Everyone else needs to use pay phones.

I´ve got a book full of notes on what I have see so far, and will post more in coming weeks. This place is amazing and scarry and depressing and beautiful. I also have a ton of pictures, but need to find a computer with a fast connection and a USB port so I can upload them.

Also, I can be e-mailed at ¨filiault68@yahoo.com¨ and Megan at ¨meganfiliault@yahoo.com.¨ We have no telephone, no television, no English language newspapers ´(can´t even get USA Today here), no English radio -- our only connection to the outside world is the internet cafes. So WE LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU!!!

Ciao (that´s how they say goodbye here).

Cocha Leaves Me Breathless

2004-08-25T12:51:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note to let everyone know we arrived safe and sound. I´ll give you the full report later, but briefly:

* 17 hours of travel
* Mac got altitude sickness in La Paz. We arrived there at 5AM and it was 30 degrees out. At 13,000 feet!! Mac puked from the moment we landed until we left for Cocha.
* I can´t breathe. I´m constantly winded and dehydrated at this altitude. It will take some getting used to. Meg says she still can´t run more than 10 minutes.
* We can see Megan´s school from our house. We can also see the famous Christ statue that overlooks the city (it´s taller than the one in Rio).
* The city is a bustle of cars, buses, little buses, and a billion taxis. The population is very diverse, with native Bolivianos who look like me, and lots of indiginous women in traditional Cocha bowler hats and colorful shawls.
* We are getting a cell phone since our house does not have a land line and getting one installed would be hugely expensive.
* We do have a physical address -- e-mail me if you want it. (Mail here is impossibly slow. US Postal says that airmail to Bolivia takes 5-10 days. Well, it may take USPS 10 days to get the letter to Bolivia, but it takes Bolivia postal a month more to get it to your house.

Like I said, more later. We´re here.

Goodbye, America!

2004-08-21T23:16:00.000-04:00

We've made it as far as Los Angeles. God, I hate Los Angeles. It must be the most depressing place in the world. All of its natural beauty has either been paved over or turned into some silly "master planned" development with artificial greenery. Everything about it is so fake. It's strange that two of my favorite people in the world -- my Dad and my buddy JP -- live in a place I hate so much. Oh, well.

The trip down here was insane. Getting moved out of the house took longer than I expected. Luckily, a killer crew turned up on moving day -- Chuck, Larissa, Adam, Nate, Chris, Susan, Mark, Jenny and my "rocks" Scott, Simon and Terri, who stayed until the bitter end. I still had 3 trips to storage, 1 to the dump, and 1 marathon $502 visit to the post office before I could leave. On the last day, our neighbor and friend Wendy was nice enough to cancel some meetings and keep her daughter Sophie (one of Jane's best friends) home from preschool so she could watch Mac and Jane. That was a lifesaver -- without her, I'd probably still be in Portland packing!

By 2pm on Tuesday, I finally got the minivan packed up (and it was filled to the roof) and we hit the road. At the end, I had to go through the house with a bunch of trashbags, throwing everything that wasn't nailed down into them. I figured I'd sort it when I got to my moms. With the van gassed up, I hit interstate 5. 45 minutes later I pulled into the first rest stop and napped. I was that tired. It was the first of 4 really bad naps I'd take (or try to take) during the trip.

The trip from Portland to Discovery Bay took 14.5 hours, Mac cried most of the way. Jane napped on and off, but from about 2AM on, she stayed awake "So I can help you go the right way," she said. We finally arrived at 4:30 in the morning, completely exhausted. We spent the next day hanging out and swimming in the delta. My mom's house is right on the water, so you go out the back door, walk down the deck, and dive in. It's a fun place to hang out. Mac, in particular, enjoyed his time with his Grandpa Chuck, my stepdad. Chuck and Mac have a special bond, and Mac napped much of the day on Chuck's chest. My mom impressed Jane by diving into the delta with her clothes on. Way to go granny!

We got up the next day and at 9:30AM were back on the road to Santa Cruz. Jane puked about 30 minutes into the trip -- she gets car sick. An hour and a half later we pulled into my brothers house, where we were to meet my Dad and drop off the minivan for Jeff to sell. My dad lives in LA, but works in San Jose. Insteady of flying home like he normally does on Thursdays, he rented a car and agreed to drive with us. This was a huge help. My dad laughed when he saw how much crap we had -- he never thought we would get it all into the car, but somehow we did. The car was so packed that Mac and Jane couldn't see each other in the back seat. We also go to say hello to Juno, who is staying at my brothers. Juno seems to be loving her new home, and is being spoiled rotten by my brother (thank goodness!). Well, 30 minutes out of Santa Cruz Jane puked for the second, but not last, time. We eventually pulled into the "Giant Artichoke" restaurant in Castroville for lunch. It has a giant artichoke in front of it, and serves a lot of artichoke dishes (Castroville is a farming town and, yep, artichokes are the big crop). The ride to LA ended up taking 10 hours. In Santa Barbara, Jane said "Daddy, I need to frow [sic] up." Unfortunately, we were stuck in gridlock traffic at the time. Jane pretty much emptied the contents of her stomach all over the car. That was barf no. 3. It was gross and funny. At least it was funny until I had to spend 45 minutes cleaning it up in some Starbucks parking lot. Some 60 year old guy walked past us, smiled, and said "Ah the joys of parenthood. I've been there many times." And walked away. I'm thinking that I'm gonna want to have a bag ready as we land in La Paz next week.

Yesterday I got to spend some time with my buddy JP, and enjoy some fine ale (that Marin Brewing IPA is a tasty one) while blasting the best of the Wildhearts (greatest rock n roll band in the world at the moment.)

Today we rested around the house, and got to spend some time with my sister, her husband Hector and their kids Janelle and Audrey. Jane and Janelle had a good time playing on the slip n slide in the back yard. My dad's girlfriend Judy made some very tasty Mexican food for us.

On the Cochabamba front, Megan has found us a house. It is 10 minutes from school, and on a quiet street (which apparently is rare in Cocha). The house is unfurnished, which in Cocha means no stove or refrigerator, either. Meg went to the Cancha, which is the gigantic open market in Cocha, and bought us some furniture (and a stove and fridge). She even managed to find some Shrek sheets for Jane. Megan says the house is really nice, and is very excited about it. It is nice that we won't have to stay in a hotel when we get there.

We will spend tomorrow making the final preparations for Bolivia -- getting everything packed and making food for the plane. Our Portland friends Terri and Simon are in town, and will come by and visit tomorrow. We're all really looking forward to that.

The next posting will be from Cocha. I will try and get some pictures up then.

Game On!

2004-08-07T14:07:00.000-04:00

Well, Meg is in Cochabamba. She's a bit beat and can't find a phone that takes her international phone card so we haven't had more than a minute on the phone. But, she said the trip was looooong and she is tired. Here are her first impressions of Cochabamba from an e-mail she sent me:

"Cochabamba is mellow. The driving is very calm. I am
relieved by this!! It seems to be very nice and
relatvely quiet for being a large Bolivian city. We
are going to like it here. It is drier than I
expected. The people are all very hospitable and
kind. They have been understanding about my slow
Spanish skills. I love it because they speak the same
Ecuadorian Spanish that I learned. I can understand
people much better than I can of people in Mexico.
Another relief! I am going to be in a hotel for the
next week. It is clean and safe. Another teacher is
also still in the hotel, so we can hang out a bit if
we get lonely. Mainly I want to rest. It was a long
trip."

I'll pass along more when I get it. I will start putting more up here after I move out of the house. Until then, it is going to be insane.

One last word, though. I have to say that I am humbled and blown away by the support I have received from my family through this whole process. From day one, it has been nothing but "What can we do to help you." The things my brother Jeff has done and has offered to do are beyond belief (well, not if you know what kind of guy my brother is). Both of my parents have done everything they can to help out and make the process easier, from buying plane tickets to establishing contacts for us in South America to taking time off of work to see us off safely. My sister cancelled a vacation so she can see Jane and Mac before they leave. More on all of this later. I know not all families are like this, so I do not take it for granted. My family are great people. I hope I can return the favor some time.