Goals

Before I left the country people kept asking me why I was traveling to Bolivia and what I was going to do there. Honestly, I didn’t have a very good answer for either question when I decided to take this trip so each time someone would ask “What are you going to do?” I would make up a different answer. “Shear an alpaca.” “Taste as many potatoes as possible.” “Learn Spanish.” “Learn 100 different ways to cook quinoa.” etc. These answers became goals of sorts and hopefully I’ll achieve them and tell you all about it here.

Number 1: “Shear an alpaca.”

I figured that the Halloween party that Matt took me to in Chicago would be my last chance to celebrate an ‘American’ holiday in an American way. So I drank way too much and boarded my Miami flight still drunk. Luckily I felt A-ok by the time we landed and had an amazing day with Julia, who I’m pretty sure is the most hospitable and most fun person in Miami. We snacked on aloe and swam in the ocean (yes, on October 29th) and ate dinner at a tent city.

The next morning Julia dropped me off at the airport for my flights to Caracas and then Lima. I met a fellow while waiting in line, Eleazar, and we spent our layover in Caracas (which was extended from 5 hours to 9 due to engine troubles) chatting. Eleazar worked in an alpaca yarn factory in Arequipa (the second biggest city in Peru) and was studying industrial engineering. Then he designed and built a series of machines for small scale alpaca fleece processing. Seriously, he’s an alpaca shearer!

I asked Eleazar if I could visit his home in Florida and shear an alpaca and he said of course. Maybe I’ll find another willing alpaca keeper but if not I just have to wait until June.


Barranco

I arrived at the hostel in Barranco, a chill neighborhood in Lima, at 3 am and rapidly had to switch to speaking Spanish. A drunk girl from the UK was distraught about losing her ‘mobile’ and I was the only one around that could translate for the hostel worker. I felt pretty good about my ability to translate. I went to sleep exhausted but pretty anxious about the start of my travels.

In the morning I headed straight for the ocean and tried to walk enough to make up for the excessive hours spent in airports and on planes. Then I walked some more around town.

Usually when men try to talk to me on the street I just ignore them. I don’t want to be rude but I hate getting called at. It happens constantly in Olympia, where I usually yell back and try to throw things. While traveling I’m not quite so confident. During my wanderings around Barranco a guy approached me and I, por supuesto, totally ignored him. But he kept walking with me and, maybe because I hadn’t had a conversation all day, we started talking. Samuel told me about Barranco and was generally really nice and not creepy. We went to get lunch and I had the best ceviche ever and then he showed me the eeriest place in town (it was Halloween) – the church of the headless priest. Awhile ago - maybe 1900ish - a priest went to ring the bell but instead of calling folks to mass, the bell fell and decapitated him. The church is closed now and the vulture covered roof is caving in.

Eleazar had told me that on October 31st people celebrate Halloween a little, but that its also a festival of Criolla music as well. Kids get dressed up the same as in the states but instead of knocking on doors and shouting “trick or treat” they just stand on the plaza and corners yelling “Halloween” over and over. I tried to explain to people the difference and that in the US there is an overarching threat of trees being toilet papered and cars egged if no candies are passed out. I don’t think anyone believed me when I described the TP-ing process.

On Halloween the discotecs were full, there were long lines at every pena and most bars had a Criolla band playing. I don’t understand much about Criolla but I went out to a bar and listened to a band and this is what I gathered. There is at least one guitar player, one singer and one drummer. The drum is sort of a rectangular box that the drummer sits on top of and hits the front. The musicians play a wide variety of traditional songs and you feel like a really big gringo when the whole bar is singing along but you can only make out a few words ‘amor’ ‘alma’ ‘morir.’

Beyond ceviche and criolla, Barranco has some great graffiti. I asked Samuel if the cops care about graffiti and he said they do but that artists only paint at night. I didn’t try to point out that some of the paintings were huge and would take multiple nights and that cops are out at night too – my Spanish isn’t good enough to argue with yet.
















November 1st is the day of the dead, but I didn’t make it to any cemeteries. Instead I took a 15 hour bus trip to Arequipa on which I met a very friendly man from Colca (a little outside Arequipa). He works at a hotel there and insisted on getting me a cab and reserving me a room in a hostel he knows here in town. People keep being really nice to me and I find it a bit startling.

Tomorrow, after mass at a really old convent, I’m going to attempt to get to Copacabana on Lake Titicaca.