Yoga at 14,000 feet

I still haven´t figured the connection between the quality or variety of marijuana and the effects. The problem is I just don´t smoke enough to do a proper scientific study, there´s never enough data to control for environmental factors. For example, yesterday I smoked a joint of some brown, not so tasty stuff. I felt a bit out of it, somewhat uncomfortable and annoyed. Today, I smoked some greener, fresher stuff, and felt invigorated, inspired, everything pot should do. This could be differences in the plant, but it could have something to do with the fact that yesterday I was hanging out with a shiesty local swindler and today I was on a mountain with the sun shining on me and beautiful views of the countryside all around.

In any case, I got inspired enough to do some mountain top yoga. It was interesting, the spot I was, on top of a huge slab of uneven rock, left standing poses the only option, so I had to change around my routine a bit. The other good thing about yoga at 14,000 feet is that you have no choice to pay attention to your breath.

I also realized that over the years, I´ve gotten well acquainted with various idiosyncrasies of my body. That tendon that does the poppy thing when I move my leg a certain way, that shoulder muscle that reminds me of its existence when I have pressure on my arm at a certain angle. I wouldn´t say we´re friends at this point, but at least we´re on speaking terms. Lots to look forward to, right?

Engañado

I met Javier yesterday, he came right up to me on the street and struck up a conversation. His English was extremely broken but that didn´t hinder him in the least in speaking a mile a minute. It took me about 45 minutes of me speaking in spanish before he gave it up and spoke in spanish himself. I didn't have anything important to do, so I hung out with him for a few hours, good spanish practice and got to see some parts of the city I wouldn´t have otherwise. It was obvious that he saw some dollar signs in my 6 foot choco and backpack wearing figure, so I tried (quite unsuccessfully) to make it clear that there was no money to be made from me, but I´d still be happy to hang out and maybe go on a hike. He tried to sell me everything from pot to guided tours, enticing me with his two amigas that he just happened to have a date with--this magically turned to 3 ladies when we saw my friend Ronney later on. I paid for a lunch on the promise that he would by dinner (part of the culture, right?), and lent him 5 soles for something else. It should be apparent that I didn't get the best vibe from him, but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, he seemed like a nice guy, and I don´t like to prejudge people; he kept insisting that we were just friends, that was all. Later on, back at the couchsurfing crashpad, he suggested we (meaning me) buy some beer. I really had no craving to drink at that point so I told him he could buy it himself, or use the money he owed me already. Javier did not like this idea at all. After unsuccessful pleading in his barely intelligible english, he grabbed the 2 empty bottles left in a huff. He returned 5 minutes later asking for money again, though the price of beer had magically gone down. Still getting no luck, he disappeared again, this time for good. With our 2 bottles. This may not seem like a big deal at first, but at least here in Huaraz, it is nearly impossible to buy beer without returning the same number of empty bottles. There is a fabled store somewhere where you can just put down a deposit on the bottle, which is quite expensive, about half the price of the beer. But at all the corner shops, anywhere remotely near where I´m staying, they just won´t sell without getting a bottle.

I fumed for a long time, trying to quench my righteous indignation with the thought that this is just a part of my white privilege. In a world where some people can work for a month or two then travel for 8 months or a year through countries where a third of the population lives on less than $2 a day, this sort of parasitic relationship is bound to develop . This point was driven home when I blithely told Javier that I had 6 weeks left in Peru, no time at all. He replied that Peruvians would love to have a 6 week holiday. So really, I should be angry at the system, not at this pinche weon. But really, stealing our empties? That´s fucking low.

I did have a blast in Lima. Met some great people, and dropped in on some great classes at La Tarumba (the circus school that has been running in lima for over 25 years). But my main reason for being there, to scope out the city and school for potentially living there for a year or so and training at La Tarumba, turned out to be a dead end. They have limited space and recources, and so really aren´t flexible for that sort of thing. Besides taking evening classes for hipsters and hobiests, he only option would be to wait till 2011 and apply to the 3 year professional program.

So, I escaped from the monstrous city and headed for Huaraz, a small city on the edge of the Cordillera Blanca, an incredible mountain range which has Peru´s highest mountain, Huascarán, and Alpamayo, which, acording to UNESCO, is the most beautiful mountain in the world.

I just got back from my first adventure, climbing at Hatun Machay. At 13,700 feet, its the highest sport climbing in the world, in a place aptly named "Bosque de Piedras" (Forest of Rocks). Having been sport climbing only once before, I was quite bad, and had a few moments of "shit this is scary i dont want to fall what the hell am i doing here?". But by the 3rd day I was significantly better than the first, did my first (and second) lead climb, and was no longer questioning why I was there.

So now I´m back in Huaraz for a couple days. I´m staying with Victor Hugo, a local mountain guide that I found on couchsurfing. He has a whole seperate apartment for couchsurfers, where I just ran into trekking guide I had met in Guatemala. Though it lacks a kitchen and a hot shower (and we´re not just talking cold shower, at 10,000 feet this is a glacial runnoff shower), its a great place to crash and meet people. And to prepare for the next adventure, a trek up and accross a glacier, among some mountain lakes, preparing the body for the altitude and the climbing of peaks that will come later.

Its been a long time since I´ve written anything here, funny how settling in one place (Cochabamba) makes things seem more banal and less worth writing about. Getting stoned and watching The Yellow Submarine seems much more exciting just because it happened in a brand new city, La Paz. Which was an amazing city, I will really have to come back and get to know it better than I did staying in a grigo punk rock crash pad apartment for 3 nights and wandering around the city a bit.

Never was able to get my visa extended without traveling great distances and paying large sums of money, which doesnt seem worth it right now. It worked out though, after 3 months I was ready to leave, hard as it was. I loved the work I was doing; the more I got to know the kids I was working with the more I liked them. I had made some good friends, and really liked the city itself. I even met lovely lady (a Smith college graduate by coincidence) in my last week there, who I would have loved to get to know better (and hopefully will some day). But I had realized something during these 6 months of traveling: I really love circus; acro and juggling especially, and that means that I need to be somewhere where there are people far better than me to learn from. Cochabamba is not that place.


Luckily, in Cochabamba I had met Carlos, a teacher and performer from La Tarumba in Lima. La Tarumba is a circus school with over 25 years of experience, and judging by photos, videos, and seeing Carlos´stunning corde lisse act and taking his trapeze workshop, very high quality. And, get this: their 3 year professional program is free. Unheard of! I don´t know if i´m ready to live in Lima for 3 years, and besides, they're next class doesnt start until 2011. So i´m hoping i´ll be able to work something out to do a residency or something, for maybe a year. Not sure how flexible they are yet. But I´m pretty excited about La Tarumba.


So that´s why, after a few days in La Paz, I blew straight past the "can´t miss" tourist spots at Lago Titicaca, Cuzco, Machu Pichu, and came straight to Lima. I can always go back. I´m going to stay here in Lima for about a month to get to know the city and the school, spend another few weeks hiking the Cordillera Blanca, then head back to the states. I'll visit as many of y'all as I can in a couple months, replenish the bank account, then see about coming back to South America...

Inca Road

I´m reading Rob Gifford´s China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power. I expected a dry account of China´s economic and political policies, but its actually a fascinating and engaging account of a 3000 mile journey across Route 312, China´s "mother road." The author talks to everyone he can, taxi drivers, farmers, engineering students, immigrants, Taoist monks, and communist party members. From all these anecdotes, put into the context of thousands of years of history and culture, you get a great feel for the Chinese psyche.

In Lima, i´m meeting tons of people through couchsurfing.org. Right now i´m staying in a spare bedroom of a family that I would otherwise probably never exchange words with. Besides other travelers, young liberal activist types and circus folks, the people I would normally hang out with, I´m meeting upper middle class families, military types, adventure sport guides, etc. Reading China Road makes me realize what an opportunity this is to get a feel for the Peruvian outlook on their country. Unfortunately, I don´t the encyclopedic knowledge of Latin America that Gifford has of China, so its harder to put things in context and ask the right questions. I never was much interested in history in school, and hardly learned a thing about Latin America. Maybe because the United States is so stable, history never seemed so important. The political situation in South America, in contrast, seems much more raw and young. Peru is on its 5th constitution since 1900, and there are clamors for a new one; Bolivia´s current constitution is 5 months old. And though they´re all technically democracies, its a lot less "civilized" than the US. In the last couple weeks, demonstrations protesting recource extraction in the amazon left 50 dead (23 of them police officers), but did succeed in repealing 2 contraversial laws. It seems much more important to have an understanding of history to be able to sort it all out. Unfortunately, just as I start to learn a bit of the history of the country i'm in, I then move to a new country and have to start from scratch. Of course that is also what is fascinating about South America: there are so many countries side by side, sharing (to a greater or lesser extent) a cultural history, but with so many different models for governance and development. My reading list is huge, the availability of books in English is one thing i´m really looking forward to when I come back to the states. (Of course I should be reading more in Spanish, but its so slow right now i´m sticking with newspapers, novels, and other easy reading.) So much to learn!

Immigration Reform and Donkey Milk

I had a glass of donkey milk the other day. Fresh. Really fresh. Straight from the udder into my glass. It didn't taste all that good, but it is supposed to be an elixir of youth.  

Cochabamba is treating me pretty well, and I´m slowly settling in. I bought a bike the other day. I´m moving into a new place tomorrow, a boarding house is the best way to describe it, its like a hostal but geared to long term (by the month) visitors. Most of the folks there (about 7) are volunteer workers from Europe. I have basically my own studio apartment, private kitchen and bathroom, for $100 a month.

I´m working with 2 NGOs, teaching circus arts classes and putting together circus shows with kids. Performing Life works with kids who live or work on the street. Educar es Fiesta works with kids from various backgrounds, teaching gymnastics, music, theater, and circus with a philosophy of nonviolence and the promotion of "buen trata," good treatment. Its lots of fun, fulfilling, and keeping me quite busy.  

The only problem is that I´m here on a 90 day tourist visa. Bolivia and the US have terrible relations, and one of the consequences is that its difficult and expensive for estadounidences to visit and stay. Personally, i think that putting obstacles in the way people coming to visit, study, and work with local NGOs is not the way to promote mutual understanding and better relations between countries. Of course, given how hard it is for Bolivians to even set foot on American soil, I can´t claim any injustice. I do have a couple avenues to pursue. The brother of the director of Educar es Fiesta is the director of the immigration office here in Cochabamba. Also, since my predicament has become a topic of discussion in the group, I´ve received 2 marriage proposals. I think things will work out one way or another.

Welcome to Bolivia

After a stop for a couple days in Potosí, I made my way to Cochabamba, where I plan to stay for at least a couple months. I had been doing research ahead of time to find NGOs to volunteer with, and in my first couple days I met up with 2 groups. Performing Life is a small and relatively young organization that teaches circus arts to street kids, giving them an opportunity to make money as well as express themselves artistically. They have recently expanded with music classes and a video and documentary film making project. Infante Bolivia is a well established group (21 years) that works for the "promoción, defensa y restitución de los Derechos Humanos de niños, niñas, adolescentes y mujeres" (I think even non Spanish speakers can understand that. Derechos=rights.)

I toured Infante´s several projects to see where I might be able to help. The kids from the Casa de La Adolescente were had a theater workshop that day with an other organization, Educar es Fiesta, so I tagged along to check it out.

Turned out that the folks at Educar es Fiesta had a new project called Tapeque, a social and educational circus. I went over to check it out and arrived just in time to help raise the beautiful new circus tent off the ground. I spent most of the rest of the week with them, setting up the stage, lighting, seats, etc., for their inaugural show.

The show turned out to be amazing (A welcome contrast to the terrible circus show I had seen in Potosí), with a talented group of kids from Educar es Fiesta and a handful of international artists, among them Carlos from Peru, who did a stunning aerial rope act. It was also rich with theater and dance. I was able to take a great 2 day trapeze workshop with Carlos, who works at Tarumba, a social as well as professional circus school in Lima Peru. Looks like I´ve got another stop in my itinerary.

On Saturday I did a circus arts and games workshop with one of Infante´s "comités," groups of kids that get together every Saturday to learn skills to be "transformative agents of their social environment through their educational work with parents, teachers and leaders of their communities, promoting a culture of respect for children." They´ve got me scheduled each Saturday for the next 2 months.

The other night I was in the central plaza, and joined a group crowded around a speaker. The young, charismatic speaker was going through a history of civilization through the colonization of the Americas. It was intelligent, well reasoned, and interesting, the kind of thing you read about in books but is always a thing of some more ideological past or other world.

This morning, realizing that I might end up staying her longer than I had originally planned, I tried out juggling at a streetlight, something that seems to be a standard way to make money throughout latin america. In two and a half hours, I made about enough to live on for 2 days (if i´m frugal).

In other words, Cochabamba seems like a good place to be.