Get me away from here, I'm dying

The title of the post is just a joke, or more correctly, the name of a song. Anyways, after two weeks in Milan, and unrelenting rain for almost a week now, I need to get out for a breath of fresh air. Frankly, I need a day or two to not think about my project.

Actually, I've been in cities nonstop since I arrived in Ciudad del Este more than three months ago, the only exception being two days on Ilha do Mel (Honey Island) in Brazil. The more time I spend in cities, the greater the urge to get as far away from cities as possible when I take a breather from my project. In fact, while in Brazil, I was planning on having my two day vacation in Florianopolis, a beautiful beach town in southern Brazil. I eventually decided against it, because it seemed too popular and too big. I was happy to hear that Ilha do Mel was "màs salvaje" -- more savage, or rustic -- than most other islands along the southern Brazilian coast.

Now, my project revolves exclusively around cities, and though I've come to appreciate urban living, I do need an escape. I didn't grow up in a city. In fact, Beijing was the first city I felt like I knew intimately after spending about six months there. Since then, I can claim knowing, at least somewhat intimately, New York, Lima, Ciudad del Este, Sao Paulo, and to a lesser degree, Cape Town. Note that I'd probably leave Boston out of that list, despite growing up only thirty five minutes away.

All of which is to say, I decided late today that I'm gonna hop on a train tomorrow and get to the Italian Dolomites mountain range. I've always wanted to see it, and now is a great time -- during the week just before all the Italians go on Christmas vacation and flood the region with tourists, raising price levels. I just need a breather, something refreshing before I jump back into my project, head first.


A few sublime images from my time in South America:

Geysers at sunrise near the Bolivia-Chile border.
Ilha do Mel coast, Brazil


View from the train to Morretes, Brazil, where you then transfer to Ilha do Mel.

Cycling along an incredible lunar landscape in Chile, near Bolivia. The landscapes changed at every corner. Wouter, the Dutchman in front, and I seemed to be the only cyclists braving the winds that day.


My precious time out of cities I want to spend in the most remote, most naturally beautiful places. Perhaps one unexpected side effect of this project is that I'm becoming a naturalist.

Some Bolivia photos

Because the landscapes were incredible.




ok, the bike photo is actually outside of San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, which is only about an hour's drive from the Bolivian border. The lunar landscape is fittingly called "Valle de la luna (Moon valley)."

Disaster

"Your number will come up at some point," my thesis advisor told me last May. At some point, disaster strikes: Jim (my advisor) had just recounted how during a year of travelling Eurasia, a motorcyclist had ridden off with all of his stuff near the Taj Mahal in India. I think both of us considered ourselves smart travellers, but at some point, something disastrous happens, even if it is completely preventable.

Yesterday was my number came up. I lost my camera, three lenses, four memory cards, all worth about $1600 USD. I think my travel insurance can pick up $500 of it, and I will of course have to buy a new camera soon (likely in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, known for its cheap duty-free electronics).

Here's what happened. I was scheduled to take a 6 pm bus from La Paz to Uyuni, a town in the south of Bolivia on the way to Paraguay. The bus was late, and the office workers said it would leave at 645 (no bus leaves on time in Bolivia), so I sat down in the terminal to wait. In general, bus terminals are pretty dodgy areas, and I didn't discount the La Paz bus terminal. At any rate, an English girl asked me to watch her bags while she went to the bathroom, and I did so. When she came back, I did the same, she watched my bags while I went to the rest room. When I came back the first thing I said was "where's my camera bag?" It's pointless to blame anyone, and I'm not even sure that the camera bag was there when I left for the bathroom -- it could have easily been snatched while I was guarding everything. I looked all around, asked everyone in the area, and went to the police office, knowing that it was gone. Nobody who steals a camera is going to hang around the same area.

Mostly, I just felt pathetic and stupid for letting this happen. I wasn't held up at gunpoint, I managed to make it through Lima without any such incidences (where foreigners constantly hear horror stories), and this really shouldn't have happened.

To make matters worse, I got sick for the first time since touching down in Lima on the 12 hour bus ride to Uyuni. The bus driver refused to stop for seven hours, and then at about hour 10, the bus broke down on the dirt road to Uyuni. To make matters worse, it was literally freezing -- windows icing up -- and the windows wouldn't stay shut. Eventually we got to Uyuni after about 14 hours on the bus.

I'm trying to get to Ciudad del Este, next to the Brazilian and Argentinean border (and the splendid Iguazu Falls) by next week, which will involve a series of buses through Chile and Argentina. I've taken buses in Chile and have been quite impressed, and have heard similar good things about Argentinean buses as well. Wish me luck!

"Avoiding the touch"

In contrast to the dramatic incidences on Nevado Pisco in Peru, I had a rather uneventful climb up Huayna Potosi, a 6088m (19,974 feet... just 26 feet under 20,000! grrrr) peak in Bolivia's Cordillera Real. Huayna Potosi is a popular climb, dubbed the easiest 6,000m climb in the world. The base camp is at about 4,700m and a refuge at about 5,300m. You could probably camp on the snow, but it is really, really cold.

I honestly thought I would suffer a lot more up Huayna Potosi, as I was having difficulty getting enough oxygen into my lungs at 5,300m on Nevado Pisco. The conditions on Huayna Potosi were great, however, and I didn't suffer (perhaps to my disappointment...), feeling great during the entire climb. I think I've gotten in much better shape since Pisco, too, and gotten more adjusted to the +3,700m altitutde. On the way down, I offered to carry some of my fellow climber's gear, almost feeling sad that the mountain hadn't pushed me to my limits -- and that I hadn't "touched the void."

It's a relaxing 3 hour hike up to the refuge from the base camp, which includes a lovely refuge complete with hot showers and a fireplace. I think it can easily be done in 2 hours, but our guides seemed to insist that we were all whimps and needed frequent breaks. We didn't have any donkeys, which I suppose made it a much more "pure" climb, and I carried all my equipment -- plastic boots, two ice axes (only one was necessary, however), crampons, harness, three liters of water -- up to the refuge at 5,300m.

At the refuge at 5,300m, the night before the ascent. The view was incredible.


At the refuge on the glacier, we melt some snow for a warm tea before setting off at 3 am for the summit. Two guides accompanied two Israelis, an Englishwoman, and myself. We heard it was a four to five hour climb, and we managed it in almost exactly four hours, summiting at 7:08. The climb wasn't technical at all: the only two parts that necessitated ice axe usage were a 50 degree ice wall at about 5,700m, and then a narrow ridge about 30m before the summit. Unfortunately for me, a lefty, this required using the ice axe in my right hand. Although my right arm is more or less as strong as my left, it was a bit like trying to play tennis with my right arm -- each ice axe strike was a pathetic mis-hit on the ice.

Ok, so the two Israelis were smart enough to make summit posters before the climb, and I had to take a picture with one of them. This one apparently says "I love you mom" (I love you mom! And happy birthday tomorrow!) in Hebrew. Tal, the one who made this poster, is to my left. Tal didn't seem to be in great shape, but was definitely determined: he had been sick for the past day and vomited five times on the climb.

Don't worry, this won't become a mountain climbing blog, as I'm about to head out of the Andes and into the eastern part of South America -- Paraguay.

Bolivian update

I'm on my way to my next destination on the Watson Fellowship -- Ciudad del Este, Paraguay -- and am transiting through Bolivia. Most travellers I met in Peru raved about Bolivia: the landscapes, the people, and of course, the prices. Nevertheless, there are far fewer U.S. Americans in Bolivia than in Peru, perhaps because of the recent $135 USD visa fee slapped on all (and only) US residents.

At any rate, because I am spending so little time here, I will offer only the most superficial observations.

1. The Bolivian navy on Lake Titicaca. Bolivia has a navy, which is slightly ironic considering Bolivia is a landlocked country (one of only two in South America, the other being Paraguay). I noticed this on Lake Titicaca, which is shared by Peru and Bolivia, and at 3900m, is supposed to be the highest navigable lake in the world.

2. The one chifa I went to in La Paz was an artist's residence rented out to be a Chinese restaurant, which apparently in two years time, will become an art museum. For now, however, it's just a chifa.

3. Evo Morales. Bolivia's first indigenous president seems to have a lot of support in the La Paz region -- everywhere there are political slogans painted on buildings supporting "Evo" and his political party, the "Movement toward socialism."

4. Llama fetuses. On the street where I am staying in La Paz there seems to be a proliferation of herbal medicinal remedies, which include different kinds of alcohol as well as llama fetuses hanging from the ceiling. Apparently people sacrifice them here in homage to Pachamama, a goddess in Aymara and Quechuan cultures here in the Andes.