trade-offs in life

Last week I went to Amsterdam for a three-day meeting.  A long way to go, 18 hours getting there and 21 hours getting back, and the airport experiences were particularly bad this time.  In Amsterdam perhaps they were jittery after the Paris attacks, but I counted six times I had to have my passport seen or scanned, neither the automatic check-in or luggage check-in machines would accept my booking or my luggage, my hand luggage was swabbed and emptied out for examination and I had to be interviewed by a personal profiling agent.  The queues were awful too - though I suppose the flight itself wasn't too bad as at least I got to see the Amy Winehouse documentary and finish a book.

Then in Atlanta the usual rigmarole of having to go through immigration into the US and then straight back out again to catch the connecting flight.  I do not understand how the US has failed to grasp the concept of transit, as used by the rest of the world for several decades.

Checking in for my return leg to Panama is never straightforward, as Panama does not, at least in theory, allow non-residents in without a return (outwards) ticket.  So of course when airlines see that my itinerary does not include another part to leave Panama they always want to see my residence visa (this is why I cannot use online check-in or even automatic check-in machines, although the staff always make me try).  Having gone through that issue in Amsterdam, and checked right through to Panama, I was surprised to hear my name called in Atlanta to go and see the staff at the gate.  The steward expressed concern that my itinerary ended in Panama and I explained that I live there.  I showed her the residence visa in my passport.  But she couldn't read the expiry date on the visa (to be fair it is written in very strange hand-writing) so was not prepared to accept it.  I realised that on my laptop I had the emailed electronic ticket for my next trip a week later, so she waited while I powered up my laptop to show her.  I suppose I shouldn't complain, they are only doing their job, but it is tiring gong through this sort of thing so frequently.

As the cheapest flights to Amsterdam get in early in the morning, and my boss didn't want me going straight from the airport into our meeting, I was allowed to arrive a day early (particularly as my 6:30 am arrival at the hotel was only 00:30 - ie shortly after midnight - for my body clock).  I didn't want to sleep for too long though so I got up mid-morning and then went to the Van Gogh Museum.  It was terrific and I spent three hours in there.  I like his work so it was good to see the Sunflowers, for example, in the flesh, but I was also impressed by some of the lesser-known stuff like his Japanese-style paintings.

There was an exhibition on comparing Van Gogh and Munch (yes, they had The Scream in the exhibition), which also had works by Monet, Manet, Gauguin, Pissaro and several other well-known artists.  It was an excellent exhibition.

What particularly interested me, however, was a small participative display, where visitors were asked to write something on a card about how they were feeling - the most powerful emotion in their life.  I wrote loneliness on my card.  Not that being lonely is something I am upset about, if that makes sense, rather it is something that I am aware of but that I consciously accept as the price I pay for the wonderful opportunities I have in my job to see so much of the world.  Indeed I knowingly make decisions that make it harder to establish any social life by adding days, weekends and weeks on to trips whenever I can rather than rushing home to attend social events in Panama.  But my situation - my lifestyle - is very unusual.  I was surprised then, as I stuck my card to the board, to see those already there, saying fear, sadness, and in several cases loneliness.  Many more 'negative' emotions than positive.  I doubt that many of the people who wrote those other cards have the same degree of choice over the matter that I have.

It reminded me of a recent conversation with a colleague - a follow-up to an email from him apologising for not delivering something because he had been "in a dark place" and so unable to focus on his work.  Like me, the frequent travel made it hard for him to establish a social life. Evening classes or sports teams were out because of the inability to attend with any regularity, and he clearly doesn't have the ability I have to fill a solitary evening in sorting out a music or photo collection (or writing a blog post!).  He is drinking rather too much, in my view, and whilst he denied this he did say that if he wants company the only available option seems to be to go to a bar.  It reminded me of a friend I made in my early days in Senegal, who (whilst I was away on a business trip) had a breakdown and was shipped home by his employer, never to return as they decided he had a drink problem. In his case I hadn't noticed it, but we didn't see eachother very often as one or other of us was usually away on a trip...

I recall during my early days in Senegal, when I was still adjusting to the loneliness that comes with the job, I consciously avoided pouring myself a glass of wine when I got home, aware of the danger of it becoming a need.  As a consequence I have lost my tolerance for alcohol and now on the rare occasion I do have a glass of something, my sleep is very disturbed that night.  I'm also aware of the danger of social media - it is too easy to have a kind of social life on facebook, to sit there waiting for a virtual friend to post something you can like or comment on - and to feel unappreciated if no-one likes your own posts.  So again I consciously restrict my use of it.  For one thing I do not have data on my phone, so am not able to constantly check for messages and updates as some people do.  I prefer to live in the real world, to be aware of where I am and what is around me!  But I think you need a fair bit of inner strength to resist all the crutches.

I'm still happy with the choice I've made, the loneliness for me is not a great price to pay for the fantastic travel experiences I have, and although I work long hours I also find the work quite fulfilling.  But I know I couldn't live like this for the rest of my life, and I also know that when the time comes to settle somewhere and live a 'normal' life it will be quite a big adjustment - but as Amsterdam showed me, that I shouldn't assume that everyone living that kind of life doesn't have their own difficulties to face.

getting into hot water in Guatemala

Every year on 1 November, the Day of the Dead, the communities of Sumpango and Santiago Sacatepéquez in Guatemala hold their kite festivals.  My assignment in Guatemala finished on 30 October so clearly I had to stay on to see this - and then for a few more days as there was no point rushing back to Panama when the office would be closed for three days for public holidays.

So I organised a trip with the Quetzalroo Hostel to the Sumpango festival.  Being a hostel trip, we set off late, and we had to stop en route for people to buy beers, and then again for people to eat fried chicken ... but eventually we arrived and of course being Latin America we hadn't missed anything by arriving a little late.

The kites were mostly waiting up one end of the field, although a couple had already been gingerly lifted up above people's heads and taken to the launching site at the other end, awaiting lift-off.  Except that it is very difficult to get such large kites airborne.  During our two-three hours there we saw I think seven successful launches and a great many more failures.  Up to sixteen metres in diameter, and made entirely by hand of brightly coloured tissue paper on bamboo frames, the kites apparently take months to make and can cost thousands of dollars so it must be heart-breaking for those that see their creations come crashing down, bamboo splintering and paper tearing, after rising just a few metres. Although it is good for those that succeed in getting their kite up as there is significant prize money given out by the event sponsors.

There seems to be no consensus on the origin of the festival nor the exact meaning of the kites, although most stories suggest the kites were originally advised by a shaman as a way to scare off evil spirits on the day when they would otherwise disturb the residents of the towns.

The next day I set off on a long trek: city bus across town, long-distance bus taking me five hours north-east of the capital, a tuk-tuk taking me the next 3km along a dusty road through the banana plantations - and later, after a couple of hours looking around the Mayan ruins at Quiriguá, a long hot walk back through the plantations and three different 'colectivo' small buses until I finally arrived at the town of Rio Dulce around 7pm.

This meant I was ready the next morning to take a launch along the river to Livingston, via floating gardens of water lilies and a spectacular winding canyon dripping with greenery.  This trip is usually done by tourists for the journey itself rather than for the destination, but Livingston is a lovely little town, very different from the rest of the country as it is the home of the Garífuna (mostly descendants of escaped African slaves) and sways to a Caribbean rhythm.  Sadly I did not have time to stay overnight but caught the next launch back to Rio Dulce, with time at least to see the old Spanish fortress of San Felipe.

Could I squeeze any more sightseeing in the next morning before the long journey back to Guatemala City?  I hadn't planned to, but the hostel manager insisted I go to see (and bathe in) a waterfall an hour outside of town.  He told me it is unique in the world as a hot waterfall.  So I borrowed a bikini from a very kind woman also doing the trip there, and we made our way to the falls.  They don't even seem to have a name, but are indeed hot (presumably coming from a hot spring somewhere up the hill) and although I had only ten minutes to swim around under them they were definitely worth the trip.

the Atacama desert

I so love the Sahara - whether entering it in Mauritania, Mali, Chad, or Sudan - that I have long been quite keen to visit other deserts.  So I was pretty happy that my Bolivia holiday ended with three days in northern Chile, in the Atacama.

This was pretty different from the Sahara, however.  At much higher altitude so very cold, and mountainous too - to be honest, nothing whatsoever like the Sahara apart from the lack of rain.  But it was scenic. The white in the Moon Valley above is not snow (although it was very cold up there) but borax (a continuation from the salt flats of southern Bolivia), and I loved the rock formations and the volcanoes all around.

There was little life up there, no lizards on the rocks and no birds that I could see (sadly we had left the flamingoes behind).  It appeared that there was not even any vegetation, but these cute little vizcacha - like rabbits with squirrel tails - apparently find roots and seeds to eat, somewhere.  All they seemed to do when we found them was to sit motionless on a rock, maybe needing to warm themselves in the sun every so often.

The coldest it got was when we visited the El Tatio geysers.  It's necessary to go there early in the morning, before the wind gets up (so that the steam rises from the geysers instead of being blown horizontally!), and it was apparently minus five when we arrived.  The geysers were pretty spectacular, this being the third largest geyser field in the world, I believe, and we were actually quite lucky to see them as they had only reopened that day after a five day closure.  A Belgian tourist, trying to take a selfie, had taken a couple of steps backwards and fallen into one of the geysers; her husband pulled her out, suffering serious injury himself, but his wife died of her burns.  The authorities had closed the place while they put little yellow-painted stones around to mark out the more dangerous areas.  You can see some of the stones in this photo.

the lagoons and salt flats of southern Bolivia

Potosí (see previous post) was one of the highlights of the trip, but it was to get even better as we got into the region of lagoons and salt flats in southern Bolivia.

First was the famous Salar de Uyuni, over 10,000 square kilometres of flat, white, salt that was once an inland sea.  Marooned within it is the Isla Incahuasi, which we clambered around to try to get that perfect "cacti and salt flat" photo, a couple of us also enjoying the birdlife.  We also visited a small village and watched the salt processing, wandered around a 'cemetery' of rusted old steam trains, enjoyed a night in a hotel made of salt, and visited a couple of caves on the edge of salt flat, one containing several mummified human corpses.


From the Salar we drove on through the high altitude altiplano, past other salt flats, extinct volcanoes, fumaroles, and a number of different coloured lagoons - green(ish), white, and my favourite, the Laguna Colorada which had red water between the expanses of salt.  All the time there was a ferocious wind blowing, good for seeing the colours of the lagoons as it stirs up the bacteria, but difficult to stand and extremely cold.



At lunchtime however we stopped next to another lagoon which thankfully was in a bit more of a bowl, the surrounding snow-capped mountains providing some shelter from the wind. Perhaps for this reason it didn't have any coloured water, but it did have two species of flamingoes that allowed me to get relatively close to take their photos.  The James's flamingo has particularly spectacular colouring:

On a good day for birds I also saw giant, Andean and horned coots, crested ducks, and a lesser rhea (like a South American version of the ostrich), amongst others.

In the afternoon we crossed the border into Chile.  It felt different straight away, the road in a much better state - but somehow felt less "authentic" to me, I preferred Bolivia.

Che Guevara and a silver mine

Following my work assignment in Bolivia earlier this year, I now had the opportunity to go there on holiday.  So a small group of us - five Brits and one American woman who doesn't like travelling with other Americans - met up with eachother and our guide in the south-eastern city of Santa Cruz to start our trip.

The first part of the trip was an experiment for the tour company, a visit to the pre-Incan hilltop site of El Fuerte followed by a couple of days following the "Ruta del Che" around the countryside.  Che Guevara went to Bolivia as a good central place from where he could catalyse revolutions in various parts of South America.  However, as with his earlier venture into Central Africa, this was not well planned.  At least some of the peasants accepted his message, but the welcome he'd anticipated from the local communist party was not forthcoming, his equipment let him down (for example he split his small group into two parties only to find after they'd gone separate ways that the radios didn't work) and his whereabouts was notified to the Bolivian army, who captured him without difficulty before he got anywhere close to overthrowing the government.


We visited the tiny former school where he was held prisoner and then shot dead.  This is now a museum, and the village around it is filled with Che murals, Che statues, and Che slogans painted onto everything possible.  Even this local lodgings has been given his name.

Though I don't think the Bolivians see him as anything other than a tourist magnet.

Behind the small hospital in Vallegrande is a double sink where the hospital laundry used to get done.  This is where Che's dead body was put on display for a couple of days before the hands were cut off to be sent to Argentina for verification of his identity against filed fingerprints, and the body was spirited away somewhere.  Finally in 1997 a retired army commander let it be known where the body had been buried; whilst the remains were removed to Cuba there is now a museum on the spot in Bolivia.  We met one of the eight Cuban doctors currently working at the hospital, and restoring the laundry building and surrounds in their spare time.  I wouldn't have made a special visit to see any of this, but it made for a pleasant couple of relaxed days.  This is the laundry building, now covered in the graffiti of visitors, where the body was displayed: I assume the Cuban doctors will eventually fix the sign and remove the ladder...

After a couple of other stops, we arrived in Potosí.  Once the richest city in the world as the Spanish directed the exploitation of the silver in the Cerro Rico ("rich mountain") that overlooks the city, apparently extracting enough to have a built a bridge of silver from Potosí to Madrid.  Unfortunately it took enough lives for them to have built a bridge back the other way with the bodies of the dead miners.  Eight million lives according to Galeano, although that seems improbable.  Nearly 500 years later it is still being mined, and is now riddled with miles and miles of unmapped tunnels and shafts  - clearly a major accident waiting to happen.  We were told that some 220 miners die each year in there now, crushed by speeding ore wagons, hit by falling rocks dislodged by the continuing little explosions as miners follow the remaining mineral veins, falling down shafts ... and this does not take account of all those who die later from the effects of inhaling silica and asbestos dust and various poisonous gases.

Despite the dangers, it is possible for tourists to go inside the mine.  Our guide organised a tour and we got kitted up with all the gear:

First we went shopping for gifts - gifts for El Tío, the guardian of the mountain, and gifts for the miners we would encounter.  Between us we bought dynamite, small bottles of alcohol (for El Tío), and coca leaves - the miners chew these to give them to stamina to keep working at this 4,000m altitude and to stave off hunger as eating in the mine risks greater ingestion of dust.  On entering the mine we went straight to an effigy of El Tío to deposit our gifts, anything that might help the mountain stay in one piece while we were in there!  Then we continued along the narrow, low, dark, tunnels, stepping gingerly along the slats over one very deep hole, trying to avoid knocking our heads as we scrambled under the lower parts where the ceiling supports were collapsing, and avoiding the asbestos deposits on the walls, until we reached the end of the tunnel, where two miners, a father and son, were collecting the rock released by the last explosion.

I suppose it isn't a very safe trip to make ... although one person told me that the tours are not allowed during the hours when they do the dynamiting, and it's true that we didn't hear or feel any explosions while we were in there even though the miners described the sound of them as the "daily music of the mine".

For the miners it is still very dangerous and also pretty unpleasant work.  & I was surprised to hear that the younger of the father and son we met, still only 20, had started in the mine at the age of 13.  But he was taking English classes in the evenings in the hope of giving up mining and becoming a guide.  I hope he succeeds.

birds and other wildlife in Uganda

Back from a three week holiday in Uganda, with so much work to do and so little time that I thought the easiest way to describe this trip was through a little photo essay.

Firstly, a few birds, starting with the shoebill stork.  We took a boat trip in the Mubama Swamp looking for this amazing creature - 1.2 metres tall and looking like something out of the era of the dinosaurs.















& then (left) the beautiful and delicate red-throated bee-eater.




& another bee-eater:










& to finish the birding section, a great blue turaco.  I've seen this bird before in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but there they are shy birds up in the canopy.  In Uganda they were flying around the hotel gardens:

Now on to the mammals.  I opted out of the expensive gorilla trek, having seen these amazing creatures a few years back in Rwanda and not wanting to pay a further $600.  However I did get to join a chimpanzee trek.  We were walking through the forest early in the morning in a good mood having just seen the beautiful and rare green-breasted pitta, when a male chimpanzee came down out of a tree.  We followed, stumbling into roots and branches in our efforts to keep up.

He moved fast, with breaks to sit and look up and the trees, and then when he saw what he wanted (just fresh leaves on a particular type of tree) he climbed up and ate.  He was difficult to photograph as he was moving so fast and the forest was dark, but here is one of him staring up at the trees.







There were plenty of other mammals. Unfortunately I could not get a photo of the serval cat, but here are a few of the more common larger mammals:

The wildlife was in many cases not hard to find.  At one hotel the warthogs and mongooses were literally right outside the hotel room doors:











& to finish, this is not a good photo at all, but the baby warthog cannot be more than a day old, so very cute:

wildlife and nature in northern Peru

Not at all in the order of the trip, but I've wanted to see a sword-billed hummingbird for many years, so this has to be the first photo for this post!  My top target for the trip was actually a different hummingbird, the marvellous spatuletail, but as expected I did not get to see it - after all, this was not a birding trip, but primarily one focused on archaeological sites.  But I was very happy to see the sword-billed, and that it sat still for long enough to enable me to get a focused photo!

I did see a number of good new bird species, including the endemic Tumbes Tyrant, White-winged Guan, and Koepcke's Screech-Owl - the first two, with a number of other species, at the Chaparrí reserve.  This was a wonderfully remote place with rustic yet comfortable cabins in the middle of a low scrub forest (I slept so well!), great food and very comfortable hammocks hanging in the porches.  I would have liked to spend another day there, in a reserve which had more than just birds. We didn't see any of the wild spectacled bears, only those in the rescue and rehabilitation centre, but a fox was cheekily walking around near the kitchen.

We drove through the arid coastal desert and up into (and over) the Andes, much of which was also very arid with little vegetation except for cacti.  There was the odd hummingbird - and some tarantulas in their web-nests beside the road - and one just sitting on the side of the road.  Like many people I find these spiders both fascinating and repellent at the same time.  We briefly passed through cloud forest, and also just into the Amazonian region where the Gocta Falls were located. 'Discovered' less than a decade ago, these are amongst the highest falls in the world, and the walk towards them, up and down hills between coffee and sugar cane crops and finally through a small area of virgin rainforest, was hard but very enjoyable.  This picture to the left is a distant view from early on in the walk, but I was one of those who succeeded in reaching the base of the falls.

When we got there our guide took a look in the rubbish bin, and didn't seem very surprised to find an oppossum in there...

The other part of the trip was the chance to see the Raymillacta festival in Chachapoyas.  This has been going for some twenty years, with groups coming from quite some distance to take part.  Rather like a harvest festival really, many of the villages or associations showed off the produce from their area, either through their costumes or through samples of food and drink being carried through the streets.  Many were throwing or giving samples to the crowd and I brought home a little bag of organic coffee as well as having drunk various local corn and spirit drinks.  There was a great deal of music too, from brass bands to traditional pipes and drums, The only part I didn't like were the headdresses of two groups which included real toucan bills.

death in northern Peru part II

The Chachapoyas empire came later, dating from around 800 AD up to the time of the Incas, and was further inland so involved a long and scenic drive to get there from the coast.  At their funerary site of Karajía a number of sarcophagi sit on a high mountain ledge, their anthropomorphic mud and cane structures containing the bodies of the dead, some also with skulls atop their mud heads.  Believed to date from around 1200 AD, there are clear signs that there were originally more of these or similar structures on the cliff ledges, including a number of human bones on the path at the base of the cliff.  For me this was the best archaeological site of the trip.

At Revash we were able to get close-up views of other mountain-ledge tombs, constructed like large dolls houses but with human bones visible inside.


In the same area as Karajía we visited the large hilltop ruins of Kuélap.  Surrounded by a high (up to 20m high) and thick wall it is often referred to as a fortress but it was more likely just a fortified town, as it contains the ruins of over 400 buildings, mostly circular, that appear to have been living quarters or perhaps storerooms.  This was also a Chachapoyas site although a few later additions show that it was fnally taken over tby the Incas.  Perhaps they were responsible for the skeletons unearthed there recently, more than 120 having been thrown into a pit at the site.


A little further on, just outside of the town of Leymebamba, was another great museum.  It covers the history of the area but the clear highlight is a collection of some 200 mummies, found on rock ledges above the Lake of the Condors.  It seems that nothing much is known about them except that they date from the late Inca period.

Amongst all these reminders of death, the twelve of us on the tour were dropping (ill, not dead!) like flies.  Thankfully I only went down with a cold, although the mild temperature that signalled its arrival made a 2km uphill walk, at 2600m, one of the most difficult I have ever done.  Others also got coughs and colds, fevers, dizzy spells, headaches from the altitude and the twisting mountain roads, and a vomiting and diarrhoea bug laid some low.  Worst of all though came from a vicious dog that bit two of the group on the walk up to Revash.  In one case the bite went through skin and flesh and into the muscle, and the poor guy needed anti-rabies injections once we got back to Lima.

death in northern Peru part I

The Incas are so well known that little attention is paid outside of Peru to the various other civilisations that came before them, such as the Moche, the Chimu and the Chachapoya.  But it was the remnants of these earlier civilisations that drew me this time, so I signed up to a two-week Wild Frontiers tour of northern Peru.

We met up in Lima and started with a visit to the Larco Museum with its truly amazing collection of pre-Columbian pottery, jewellery and other relics.  A place that will be well worth a second visit when I next have a work assignment in Peru.

Then we flew north to Trujillo.  The better-known site here is the UNESCO World Heritage listed Chan Chan, with the remains of this great Chimu city covering nearly 30 square kilometres, but I much preferred the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon from the earlier Moche period.  The excavations under way here have recently revealed more than 6,000 square metres of murals and reliefs on the mud walls being uncovered within the Pyramid of the Moon. many in very good condition.  The lower wall here, showing the 'decapitator' god, dates from around 300 AD.

After some time out to enjoy the natural environment (separate post to follow!), we headed further north to the site of Huaca Rajada, or Sipán, where the burial sites of a number of Moche warrior-priests were recently uncovered.  A visit to the archaeological site put eveything into context but another amazing museum showed the remains and the incredible collection of jewellery and other accoutrements with which these important people were buried, including the skeletons of the guards who were buried alongside them, with their feet chopped off to ensure that they never run away from the job.  Like most pre-Columbian sites in the region, the Huaca (pyramid) had been looted, but in this instance the looters had not found two very important tombs so the archaeologists were able to recover the contents in their entirety and display them in this fabulous museum.

Nearly as impressive were the burrowing owls that stood around the site.  The Moche venerated them (there are examples of these owls in pottery form).  I was told that this came from the fact that they move in all three worlds - burrowing into the underworld where the dead go, walking around on the earth with the living, and flying up (at least part way!) to the heavens where the gods live - but as they stood around staring at us with their unblinking yellow eyes it felt to me as though they were guarding the tombs, or even that they were the reincarnated spirits of the Moche rulers, and I wondered if their status came simply from this unnerving presence.

eighth wonder of the world?

I'm sure you all know that work is in progress to expand the Panama Canal so that bigger ships can pass through.  The project is already forecast to end 18 months late, and the cost has gone way over budget, but nevertheless the project is generally seen within Panama as a wonderful thing to be very proud of.

Last weekend the Panama Canal Expansion Company held an open day at the nearly completed Cocolí lock so that people could go and see the expansion project for themselves - to actually walk about inside one of the new lock chambers and look at the new lock gates - before they start to let the water in.  To get a view that will never again be possible.

Some 45,000 of us queued for hours in the pouring rain to get in, and amazingly the atmosphere remained upbeat despite the rain, even amongst the many Panamanians who came totally unprepared for rain (it rains every day guys, from May to December, haven't you learnt that yet?).  Not only did they allow us in, but they did not even charge any money for the privilege, despite having provided buses to drive us down into the lock, guides to explain what was what, display boards explaining the engineering, portaloos galore, and even free bottles of drinking water and little Panamanian flags to wave around.  & there was a lot of flag-waving as the people posed for photos in this engineering marvel.

I didn't take in that much of the engineering, except to note that the concrete for the first set of lock gates alone would be enough to pave a two-lane highway from one end of the country to the other.  Mostly it was just about looking up and being awed by the sheer scale of the thing.  This is how big those lock walls are:

crossing cultures

In my travels I like to visit places where the culture is not too corrupted by foreign influences.  But on the other hand I do enjoy that strange mixing of cultures that I sometimes find myself in.

I Bolivia, I sat one afternoon in Café London on the shore of Lake Titicaca, drinking a cappuccino, trying to read the next chapter of the Koran (prompted by the growth of IS and its affiliates I thought it important to know something of what drives them), Bolivian radio playing James Brown's "Get On Up (Like a Sex Machine)"... I looked up when I heard a ringing sound only to see an Aymara woman, in her traditional dress, walk past pushing a mobile ice cream trolley.  An equally strange combination to me was this seemingly middle class house and car, with four llamas in the garden:

At the same time I very much enjoyed my experience in a cool underground bar in La Paz, when an Aymara woman joined us.  She accepted a glass of whatever strange brew we were drinking, but poured a small drop onto the floor - for Pachamama (mother earth) - before drinking herself, then proceeded to ask me about typical society in the UK, seemingly with genuine interest.  A magical evening

in the Bolivian altiplano

I had a few opportunities to visit the Bolivian altiplano ('high plains').  Firstly as part of work when I went to review a youth livelihood project down in the south of the country.  This was way up at some 4,300m and took me past lagoons with Andean geese, Giant Coots and both Chilean and Andean Flamingos, as well as a hilly region full of cacti.  I usually avoid writing about work here, but will just mention that part of the livelihood project involved llama rearing; the llamas had just been delivered to the village, and at the time of my visit the vet was there giving a practical demonstration of how to castrate the males not needed for breeding (castrated males produce more meat) - very interesting to see but I did have to sit down with my head low ("to write some notes") once the blood started flowing.

Back in the northern part of the country, a colleague kindly took me out to the Tiwanaku ruins. These pre-date the various ruins from the Inca culture, and not that much is left of them, but there is an impressive sunken courtyard, probably used for ceremonial purposes, with carved stone head all around the walls. The museum is interesting too, particularly for the skulls, made narrow and pointy by the practice of binding the heads of babies to planks of wood. Apparently a long pointy shaped head was a symbol of great intellect.

After the work was finished I took a bus out to Lake Titicaca, for a couple of nights in the lakeside town of Copacabana and a couple of nights in the village of Yumani on an island (Isla del Sol) in the lake.  Isla del Sol is considered by the Aymara and Quechua peoples of Bolivia and Peru to be the birthplace of the sun and of the first Inca people, so has a number of sacred rocks, and interesting ruins such as these:

The island is also a great place for hiking although with a range from 3,800 to 4,100m above sea level it is hard going.  I puffed and panted a lot, and burnt my face in the strong sun as well as as needing six layers of clothing to stay warm when the sun went in.  It was certainly the right decision to pack my thermals!

Apart from the cold, the other shock was the prices.  $5 a night for a single en-suite room with sporadic hot water and wifi!!  Plus the four-hour bus trip there cost only $3, as did the four-hour boat trip from Copacabana to the south of Isla del Sol.  I changed $300 to be sure I had enough for five days and spent only $125!  & some things don't really have a price anyway - this is the view of the sun setting on Mount Illampu, taken from my $7 a night accommodation on Isla del Sol:

4km above sea level

La Paz airport is so high that there are oxygen tanks available for visitors who cannot cope with the altitude, and my office here told us not to attempt the 10 minute walk there until we'd spent two days in the hotel acclimatising.  Thankfully I did not suffer at all, but was not too unhappy to be confined to the hotel, looking out of the windows at the ever-changing play of light, shade and wispy clouds on the mountains surrounding the city.

The city is totally unlike any I have seen before - above is a view from one of the cable cars through the city.  La Paz itself has a population of 1.8 million, but above it, high along the steep sides of the mountains and on the high, flat altiplano, is another city, El Alto, of around another million people.  Parts of La Paz are really quite developed, with middle class citizens sipping cappuccinos in trendy cafes, but El Alto is where the poor people live, where apparently 90% of the factories are illegal - not registered with the authorities, not paying any taxes, making counterfeit products, etc.  It is dangerous to visit although has beautiful views of the surrounding snow-capped mountains, and is now (since late last year) connected to the rest of the city by a cheap and efficient cable car system.

I'd arranged a tour there with a group (the only way of going there in reasonable safety but it is still recommended not to carry anything with you and not to wear any jewellery), but it didn't materialise, so I set off instead into the centre of La Paz by myself.  I took one of the other cable car lines, then walked, then finally jumped on a 'trufi' (a cleaner, more modern equivalent to Kenyan matatus) into the centre.  At least missing the tour gave me a chance to visit the Ethnographic Museum before its midday closure, a really good museum with an amazing display of masks from different parts of the country.  Maybe one day I can get here at the right time to see one of the festivals, or even the Oruro carnival.

Then I wandered around the most touristy area, a few streets selling artisanal products, mostly clothes made from alpaca wool, as well as 'Street of Witches', where some of the little shops have a dried llama foetus or two hanging outside, to ward off evil.

Also in this area is the Coca Museum.  The coca plant plays a huge role in the history and culture of the country, used in sacred rituals for thousands of years, banned by the Catholic Church in colonial times as 'diabolical', re-legalised when the Spanish authorities realised that the miners needed it to enable them to put in long hours in the mines, banned again under pressure from the UN and US, and now legal again, as part of the moves by current president Evo Morales to recognise and celebrate indigenous culture.

Cocaine is illegal (and there are strict controls over the various chemicals needed to manufacture it), but the coca leaf, and all kinds of coca products, are everywhere.  We are encouraged to drink coca tea to help alleviate altitude problems, and I've also had coca sweets, coca beer and coca liqueur during my one week in the country.

The process for turning a harmless leaf into a potentially deadly drug, cocaine, was discovered in the West after the Bolivians had been happily using the leaf for thousands of years, and currently the 5% of the world's population who live in the US consume 50% of the world's cocaine (according to displays in the coca museum).  Perhaps, instead of trying to get Andean countries to wipe out a plant that holds such an important place in their cultures, the US could look at the conditions within their own country that lead people to make, sell and consume the illegal drug.  It seems that the only downside of coca within Bolivia is the deforestation to provide more land for its cultivation.  Whilst I'm sure it exists, I have so far seen no evidence of cocaine, nor of drug addicts, during my time in La Paz.

After a lunch of fairly tasty llama steak (with coca tea, of course!), I joined up with a tour group for a very strange experience - cholitas wrestling.  High up in El Alto is a small sports arena, where every Sunday evening there is wrestling.  Not like Senegalese wrestling where people fight to win, but rather the American version where everything is choreographed.  Still, it was a spectacle.  It started with men in typical wrestling attire, but then moved onto Aymara women in thier traditional outfits (although they removed their hats once in the ring).  It was crazy stuff, with the 'cholitas' throwing eachother around the ring, and out of the ring, and hitting eachother over the head with trays and wooden crates, one of the referees occasionally joining in the 'fight', the crowd cheering, booing, throwing popcorn and coca cola at the contestants... and yes, if you wondered, coca cola does still contain coca leaf extract, being one of a number of multi-national organisations that are exempt from the international ban on the leaf.

secret tours in Colombia

My Colombia guidebook doesn't mention the 'secret tours' of San Agustin, but I found out on my first day that it was possible to visit a real-life cocaine factory as a tourist.  I'm sure the official tourist office wouldn't advertise them, but there were some local tour guides who had an arrangement with the grandmother who ran a family cocaine-processing plant to take tourists along and watch the proceedings.

I learnt this from another tourist - in fact he first told me about his tour a few hours before it started, and I suggested that he take care, not take any valuables with him, etc.  It sounded very dodgy to me. But he emailed later that evening to tell me he was safe and well and that the tour had been fascinating. We found ourselves on the same archaeological jeep tour the next day so he told me all about it, from the leaves being brought in, through the stage where the brown residue (the crack cocaine) is thrown away - apparently this family don't want to sell crack as it takes too many young lives - to the pure white powder at the end.  Amazingly, he was even allowed to take photos.

At first my reaction was that I wanted to do the tour, it sounded fascinating but more than that I suppose was a kind of glamour at seeing first-hand something that is highly illegal.  But then I thought more about it, about the fact that you have to pay to do the tour, that the payment helps to support the industry, and perhaps more than anything for me the fact that tourists going along and taking photos somehow adds legitimacy to the whole industry.  I have nothing at all against Andean peasants chewing coca leaves to stay awake longer, seems no different to me from London businessmen drinking wine to relax.  It has been a part of the local culture in the Andes for centuries and seems to do no harm.  Indeed I have no problem with anyone taking any drug as long as it doesn't make them a danger, or a nuisance, to others.  But cocaine makes people aggressive, is highly addictive, and the whole industry to produce it has led to low-level guerilla warfare for decades in Colombia with many associated deaths and millions having been forced from their homes.  So, reluctantly I admit, I decided not to seek out one of the guides offering secret tours
.

the historical sites of southern Colombia

Following work in Ecuador last month over two public holidays, I had accumulated enough compensatory leave to fly to Colombia a week before my assignment here so as to visit a couple of archaeological sites in the south.

Tierradentro is known for its underground tombs, carved out of the rock and painted in mostly geometric designs in white, red and black.  Some also have carvings on the pillars, such as in the photo above.  There are 162 such tombs, dated to between 600 and 900AD, built by an unknown people who have since disappeared.  Many have been looted, but the small local museum displays some of the pots found in them, pots which mostly contained bone fragments of the deceased.  Apparently the dead were buried twice, firstly as a complete corpse, and then when decomposed they were removed from the tomb and cremated, and the remains re-buried in these pots.

Visiting the tombs was quite hard work, as you enter via a stone spiral staircase, the steps some two feet deep and the walls in many cases curving inwards - my thigh muscles felt like jelly after hauling myself up and down many of these steps.  There is a lot of walking, too, with groups of tombs in various locations in the mountains around the little village. The scenery is beautiful though, with lush greenery, fruit trees everywhere (orange, guava and passion fruit especially), and orchids dripping from the trees. I would very happily have spent a second day there just to walk the trails a second time.

Unbelievably my private two-bedded room with modern ensuite bathroom (with hot water), next to the museum, cost me only $7 a night, and large glasses of freshly squeezed fruit juices were $1.

But I couldn't delay as I also wanted to get to San Agustin, where the tombs were not in themselves impressive but were guarded by great carved stone statues, some 300 of them over a large area.  Large enough for me to take a jeep tour one day (for the sites over 20km away from the town) and a horse-riding tour another day (for a round trip of some 12km or so to four other sites).  I also spent an entire day wandering around the main archaeological park.

The statues are generally of human-like figures but with jaguar teeth and various other fantastical features.  They were mostly carved between 300 and 800AD.  No-one is sure exactly what they represented; maybe demons or some other kind of supernatural figures.  Originally they were coloured - in red, black and yellow - but only a handful now retain their colour.  Some have also been eroded by the elements.  The majority, however, look as though they were made in the last few days with their clear, sharp lines.

Besides the human(ish) figures were carvings of frogs and alligators, and one of an eagle holding a snake in its beak and talons.

Again, the landscapes around the place were beautiful.  I enjoyed walking out in the fresh air, along country lanes and forest trails, up hills and down into river valleys, and past fields of coffee plants.  And of course, in the country that contains nearly 20% of the world's bird species, I was surrounded by birds: parakeets, tanagers, woodpeckers, swallow-tailed kites, and the surprising sight of several groups of Colombian chachalacas lumbering through the tree tops.