Brazilian food is really good! Brazilians eat rice and beans, and lots of cold salads (beets, cabbage, carrots, okra, green beans, lettuce, etc.), manioc, and delicious cheese bread, pineapple and tropical fruits. Meals are not as heavy on meat as they are in Bolivia. Meals are huge, and there are lots of all you can eat restaurants. I prefer the pay by the kilo restaurants, buffet style, and we select whatever we want. At the end of the line they weigh our plates and we pay only for what we took.
We had a wonderful visit with UWC-friends Christian (Denmark) and Camila (Brazil) and their darling daughter Leonora. We spent several days with them at their home in Brasilia, where we ate delicious food and Christian showed us around this interesting city.
Brasilia is a carefully planned city, in the shape of an airplane, and most of its residents work for the government. Did I mention the good food? Christian and Camila were wonderful hosts, and we had lots of fun playing with little Leonora. We also took advantage of the fact that Brazilians tend to be larger than Bolivians, and we are not giants here. So we bought a few items of clothing.
Christian and Camila are celebrating their 12 1/2 year wedding anniversary, known as the copper anniversary, half of 25. The copper anniversary is an important affair in Denmark, which I think is a nice custom because 25 years is an awfully long time to wait in order to celebrate a relationship.
In honor of their copper anniversary, Christian and Camila invited their family and friends to a four-day celebration at a beautiful resort in Pirenopoulis, a beautiful colonial silver mining town near the capital. We had a room with a hammock overlooking the pool and the beautiful valley, and we enjoyed meeting Christian´s family from Denmark, Camila´s family from Rio de Janiero and their many friends.
One evening we had Lebanese food and entertainment by belly dancers with assistance from Leonora and her cousin. (There are lots of Lebanese immigrants in Brazil). We enjoyed afternoon caipirinhas, a delicious Brazilian drink made of limes, sugar and cashaça, a liquor made from sugar cane, lazing in the hammock and swimming in a large pool beneath a waterfall. We also enjoyed watching the wild guinea fowl, introduced to the Americas from Africa during the slave trade, and the coati that live at the resort. I think that the way that Christian and Camila celebrated their anniversary was beautiful, and we were very happy to be a part of it.
We took a flight back to Bolivia and spent a couple of days in Santa Cruz before heading back to Cochabamba. Santa Cruz is in Bolivia´s lowlands, more similar to Brazil in climate than to Bolivia´s altiplano. To round out our Brazilian safari experience, we visited the Santa Cruz zoo, where we learned that the two species of macaw we saw are among many other brilliantly colored species. Nearly all of these beautiful birds are threatened because of loss of habitat, and because they are captured for the trade in exotic pets.
Speaking of exotic pets, our hotel has a patio full of hammocks, plants and two toucans! They have huge orange, black and yellow beaks with a surreal fiery design that reminds me of a 1970s sports car painted with flames. The beak feels like a very light plastic and makes a plasticky sound when the toucan taps trees or the ground. And the toucans have really interesting eyes - a pupil like a green marble surrounded by a royal blue "white." The eye is surrounded by a bright orange material that looks like fun foam or something synthetic.
The toucan feathers are mostly black, with a white patch on the neck which looks soft like velvet and a red patch under the tail. These birds´ wings are clipped, sadly. The feet are blue, and the toucan has a long thin toung inside its beak, which occasionally flits out when she drinks water. (I don´t know her gender, but I´ll call her a she to make up for society´s general default of "he"). The tongue is thin and transparent, like a piece of plastic.
The inside edge of the beak is semi-serrated, not smooth as I would have expected, and the toucan loves to clean her beak in the water, scrubbing it with her feet. One of these two toucans is playful and likes to bite my fingers and toes! It doesn´t really hurt unless she gets me just right, and even then it doesn´t break the skin.
I wonder about the purpose of the toucan´s huge beak. It seems great for preening, but not so great for eating. It´s kind of clumsy. This toucan keeps dropping small pieces of melon that I feed to it. It can only manage to grab and then swallow the tiniest of pieces.
The toucan makes a clattering noise with its beak, almost like the sound of human teeth smacking together when we shiver, and sometimes it sneezes!
We took the bus home to Cochabamba, where our house mate Miranda poured us a glass of wine and made us dinner. It´s good to have friends!
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Monday, April 7, 2008
Alto Paraiso
We are staying at a beautiful pousada, or inn, in Alto Paraiso, a town near Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. Our pousada is a beautiful place with rooms around a lush yard, full of tropical flowers and tropical fruit trees, such as limes, tangerines, avocado, banana and some things similar to cherries but in a different shape, more like a tiny starfruit, and other delicious fruit which I tried but can´t name. There are limes that are green on the outside but orange on the inside, and are delicious in drinks.
In the morning, Vasu, the pousada owner, serves a delicious breakfast of several kinds of whole wheat bread (which can be hard to get while traveling!), papaya, mango, other tropical fruits, jam made from the tropical fruit on her land, a special kind of cheese, avocados which are eaten as a fruit in Brazil rather than served with salty foods, granola, yogurt, Brazilian coffee from local beans, fresh squeezed juice, and herb tea made from herbs that Vasu grows.
Vasu speaks a bit of English, but only a tiny bit, which she learned while visiting India. Mostly we communicate in Portuñol. I speak Spanish sprinkled with a few words of Portuguese that I´ve learned, and she speaks Portuguese. I ask her to repeat, and eventually I understand 50 to 70 percent of what she has to say. Portuñol works pretty well for basic transactions like renting a room, buying bus tickets or eating at a restaurant, but it is impossible to have conversations with any depth. And after several hours of straining to understand Portuguese, I have a headache and feel exhausted.
As I write this in my journal, we are in a restaurant and I just learned that our waiter speaks perfect Spanish, as well as a bit of English and Italian. It is such a relief to speak with him in Spanish, and to be able to understand 100% of what he says. He is from the coast of Brazil, but recently moved inland because he is concerned about global warming and its effect on the coast.
I´ve always thought that Portuguese is a beautiful language, and I would like to learn it. Maybe I can take a course with the goal of returning to Brazil next year.
Vasu, the owner of our pousada, has three beautifully colored macaws (arara) which visit her to be fed bananas and crackers every day. They are brilliantly colored in yellow and blue, and one ate a banana out of my hand! Vasu´s four cats intently watch the daily feeding of the macaws.
Alto Paraiso is a hippie town, reminiscent of Crestone, Colorado. You can easily find meditation (we went to it), crystals, tie dye, buildings shaped like domes, skirts from India, people in touch with their chakras, and Hare Krishnas here. The hippie movement in the 1960s was different in Brazil than in the U.S. because Brazil was under a dictatorship at that time, and many people who might have been hippies accordingly opted for a more militant or communist stance. Now there seem to be plenty of Brazilian hippies in this town, anyway.
Yesterday we hired a guide to take us into Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park. Tourists aren´t allowed to enter without a guide, and in any case there is no public transportation to the park. Isael, a serious young man, speaks only Portuguese, but we managed to negotiate an itinerary and price for our tour. However, Isael´s explanations of medicinal plants were lost on me.
We hiked five kilometers down into a canyon where we saw three waterfalls, We swam in the Rio Preto, which Isael noted was the color of Coca Cola, and I was nibbled upon by fish. (no piranhas here, luckily!) Ther climate here is drier, nothing like the Pantanal wetlands. We saw a snake on the trail, which Isael said was a poisonous cobra.
We hiked back up, and then visited some beautiful hot springs in the jungle. There were three natural pools built of stones in a clearing in the jungle. The water was tepid, not hot, and refreshing on a hot day.
On Wednesday we will return to Brasilia, the capital, where we will visit United World College friends Christian and Camila, and their daughter Leonora, with whom we´ve already spent a couple of really nice days.
In the morning, Vasu, the pousada owner, serves a delicious breakfast of several kinds of whole wheat bread (which can be hard to get while traveling!), papaya, mango, other tropical fruits, jam made from the tropical fruit on her land, a special kind of cheese, avocados which are eaten as a fruit in Brazil rather than served with salty foods, granola, yogurt, Brazilian coffee from local beans, fresh squeezed juice, and herb tea made from herbs that Vasu grows.
Vasu speaks a bit of English, but only a tiny bit, which she learned while visiting India. Mostly we communicate in Portuñol. I speak Spanish sprinkled with a few words of Portuguese that I´ve learned, and she speaks Portuguese. I ask her to repeat, and eventually I understand 50 to 70 percent of what she has to say. Portuñol works pretty well for basic transactions like renting a room, buying bus tickets or eating at a restaurant, but it is impossible to have conversations with any depth. And after several hours of straining to understand Portuguese, I have a headache and feel exhausted.
As I write this in my journal, we are in a restaurant and I just learned that our waiter speaks perfect Spanish, as well as a bit of English and Italian. It is such a relief to speak with him in Spanish, and to be able to understand 100% of what he says. He is from the coast of Brazil, but recently moved inland because he is concerned about global warming and its effect on the coast.
I´ve always thought that Portuguese is a beautiful language, and I would like to learn it. Maybe I can take a course with the goal of returning to Brazil next year.
Vasu, the owner of our pousada, has three beautifully colored macaws (arara) which visit her to be fed bananas and crackers every day. They are brilliantly colored in yellow and blue, and one ate a banana out of my hand! Vasu´s four cats intently watch the daily feeding of the macaws.
Alto Paraiso is a hippie town, reminiscent of Crestone, Colorado. You can easily find meditation (we went to it), crystals, tie dye, buildings shaped like domes, skirts from India, people in touch with their chakras, and Hare Krishnas here. The hippie movement in the 1960s was different in Brazil than in the U.S. because Brazil was under a dictatorship at that time, and many people who might have been hippies accordingly opted for a more militant or communist stance. Now there seem to be plenty of Brazilian hippies in this town, anyway.
Yesterday we hired a guide to take us into Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park. Tourists aren´t allowed to enter without a guide, and in any case there is no public transportation to the park. Isael, a serious young man, speaks only Portuguese, but we managed to negotiate an itinerary and price for our tour. However, Isael´s explanations of medicinal plants were lost on me.
We hiked five kilometers down into a canyon where we saw three waterfalls, We swam in the Rio Preto, which Isael noted was the color of Coca Cola, and I was nibbled upon by fish. (no piranhas here, luckily!) Ther climate here is drier, nothing like the Pantanal wetlands. We saw a snake on the trail, which Isael said was a poisonous cobra.
We hiked back up, and then visited some beautiful hot springs in the jungle. There were three natural pools built of stones in a clearing in the jungle. The water was tepid, not hot, and refreshing on a hot day.
On Wednesday we will return to Brasilia, the capital, where we will visit United World College friends Christian and Camila, and their daughter Leonora, with whom we´ve already spent a couple of really nice days.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Safari in the Brazilian Pantanal
We took a Brazilian bus into the Pantanal. After living in Bolivia for three months, where we became accustomed to holding it or pissing on the roadside, it´s hard for me to believe that this bus bathroom has toilet paper, towels, soap and warm water! (Granted, the water is war only because it´s over 100 degrees outside!)
The Pantanal is a vast wetland, the size of Belgium, Portugal, Switzerland and Holland combined, and one of the world´s greatest wildlife preserves. It´s mainly in Brazil but spills into Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. Our visit was during the last few weeks of the wet season, and much of the Pantanal was still flooded.
Our Footprint guide to South America says:
"The Pantanal plain slopes some 1 cm in every kilometre north to south and west to east to the basin of the Rio Paraguai and is rimmed by low mountains. One hundred and seventy five rivers flow from ehese into the Pantanal and after the heavy summer rains they burst their banks, as does the Paraguai itself; to create vast shallow lakes broken by patches of high ground and stands of cerrado forest. Plankton then swarm to form a biological soup that contains as many as 500 million microalgae per litre. Millions of amphibians and fish spawn or migrate to consume them. And these in turn are preyed upon by waterbirds and reptiles. Herbivorous mammals graze on the stands of water hyacinth, sedge and savanna grass and at the top of the food chain lie South America´s great predators - the jaguar, ocelot, maned wolf and yellow anaonda. In June at the end of the wet when the sheets of water have reduced to small lakes or canals wildlife concentrates and then there is nowhere on earth where you will see such vast quantities of birds or such enormous numbers of crocodilians."
We stayed in a lodge in the southern Pantanal between Corumbá and Campo Grande, Brazil. Stayiing at the lodge reminded me of summer camp! We had a rustic cabaña with mosquito screens, a bathroom and a fan. We could hear small animals scurrying on the roof. Our cabaña was on stilts, literally above the river. And on the wooden walkway to our cabaña, a semi-domesticated capybara lounged! One of the guides found him as a baby. His mother had died, and so the guide brought him to the lodge to live. Now he is two, but not yet full grown.
The capybara is the world~s largest rodent, and can grow to weigh as much as Gary. This one, whose Portuguese name means cutie, is the size of a large dog. As far as I could see, Cutie spends his days lazing on the porch and being petted by tourists. He especiallylikes petting between his ears, and he sometimes makes a purring type sound. His fur is coarse like a pig´s. You wouldn´t know he´s a rodent at all unless you see him yawn, exposing his rat-like teeth. Sometimes the lodge staff have to crack down on him, because he goes into the cabañas and sleeps on the beds, scaring the tourists. When Cutie is not lazing on the porch, he lazes in the river water, eating a diet of plants.
Immediately upon arriving at the lodge we went on a boat ride on the river. Our guide, Marcello, spoke excellent English which I must admit was a relief after two days of struggling to understand Portuguese. We motored down the Miranda River, which is a tributary not of the Amazon but of the Paraguai. We saw tropical birds, including tucans with their bright beaks, and tiger herons. We saw howler monkeys high up in the trees, and we heard them howling! The males howl over some sort of territory issue. We saw lots of caiman. After boating for awhile, we went swimming in the river, in the same water with the caiman and piranha! The caiman are not aggressive like crocodiles and alligators, and the piranhas only go after you if you have a bleeding would or are menstruating. Swimming in a river is wonderful on a hot day. And it was hot! Over 100 degrees, with humidity around 70 percent! My hair was almost curly!
We had an hour to nap, read etc., and then we had dinner in the dining hall, just like at summer camp.
The next morning we went on our safari! We saw tons of animals: great horned owl, blue macaw, stork, parakeets, a type of ibis, hawk, kingfisher, tucan, caiman, capybara, 9-ring coati (related to the racoon, and different from the coatis we saw in Bolivia), fox (gray and more dog-like than foxes I´ve seen in the U.S.), deer (much smaller than U.S. deer), howler monkeys, wild pigs, armadillo, blue morphos butterfly, and aguchi (a small mammal). We did not see anaconda or jaguar.
The blue macaw were beautiful bright blue jungle birds, and Gary collected a handful of their feathers on the ground below the tree where they perched. The stork was tall, standing in the water almost as tall as a fence post! The parakeets were flying free, not in cages the way I´ve seen them before. They are a beautiful green.
Caiman were everywhere, lying on the banks of the water. At night, they spend 5 or 6 hours under water, and in the morning they need to lie in the sun to warm up. The capybara were wet and on the side of the road, probably having just eaten plants in the water. In several areas, 9-ring coati were everywhere, sleeping or playing in trees, running on the ground. They cuddled together and watched us.
The howler monkeys made their strange howling noise that reminds me of Jurassic Park, and our guide, Marcello, called to them with his monkey call. They had a dialog for awhile.
The wild pigs that we saw were actually on a farm, mixed with domestic pigs and some that were crosses between the two. The domestic pigs are fatter and have wider faces. I was surprised that there are wild pigs here, since pigs came from Europe and are not native to the Americas. I know people have brought many domestic pigs to the Americas, but why would people import wild pigs? Marcello told us that during the Chaco war between Paraguay and Bolivia, Paraguayans imported wild pigs from Europe and let them loose in the Chaco so that soldiers could hunt them for a food source. Now there are lots of them, and they have spread into several countries.
I was bitten by fire ants! But it only hurt for a couple of seconds.
I know that in southeast Colorado we have wild pigs which are escaped domestic pigs that have become completely wild after several generations. But I wonder if we also have wild pigs that were imported from Europe. Where did Arizona´s wild javelina population come from?
Now, at the end of the wet season, the Pantanal is mostly flooded with a few islands that are above water. On our safari, we hiked on those islands and drove on the road that is between them. During the dry season, much of the flooded area will be come savannah.
Much of the Pantanal is ot accessible by road this season, and people can only enter on horseback or by airplane. On the river, we saw a house that is only accessible by boat during the wet season. The Pantanal is a mixture of wilderness and cattle farms, or fazendas. Some of the cattle look like Texas longhorns. Some have huge humps on their backs, and all are skin and bones because their grazing area is under water.
The next morning we went piranha fishing. I was secretly glad that nobody caught any fish. Then we went tubing on the Miranda river! Tubing was a much different experience from tubing on the Poudre in Colorado. The Miranda river is wide and deep and slow, and there are no rapids or rocks to dodge. But the Poudre has no caiman or piranhas! I love tubing, on either river.
In the afternoon, we went on another boat ride, and saw a caiman basking on the bank. Our boat pulled up, and it dove into the water and we went swimming right next to where the caiman had been!
Every day, more and more land was visible in the Pantanal, as we approached the dry season. We watched a beautiful sunset over the savannah.
Two of our safari companions are a couple from New Zealand. They spent six months last year in a Colorado mountain town, and they plan to do the same this year. They enter on tourist visas, and are actually working illegally. They said it´s quite easy for them, but they have noticed that it is much harder for their Mexican counterparts who are not usually able to get tourist visas because they are from a poorer country.
Because the New Zealand couple is white and speaks English as a first language, noone suspects them of being undocumented workers. They have seen many cases of a group of construction workers getting stopped and the Mexican workers getting detained by immigration while nobody questions the undocumented workers from New Zealand.
The Pantanal is a vast wetland, the size of Belgium, Portugal, Switzerland and Holland combined, and one of the world´s greatest wildlife preserves. It´s mainly in Brazil but spills into Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. Our visit was during the last few weeks of the wet season, and much of the Pantanal was still flooded.
Our Footprint guide to South America says:
"The Pantanal plain slopes some 1 cm in every kilometre north to south and west to east to the basin of the Rio Paraguai and is rimmed by low mountains. One hundred and seventy five rivers flow from ehese into the Pantanal and after the heavy summer rains they burst their banks, as does the Paraguai itself; to create vast shallow lakes broken by patches of high ground and stands of cerrado forest. Plankton then swarm to form a biological soup that contains as many as 500 million microalgae per litre. Millions of amphibians and fish spawn or migrate to consume them. And these in turn are preyed upon by waterbirds and reptiles. Herbivorous mammals graze on the stands of water hyacinth, sedge and savanna grass and at the top of the food chain lie South America´s great predators - the jaguar, ocelot, maned wolf and yellow anaonda. In June at the end of the wet when the sheets of water have reduced to small lakes or canals wildlife concentrates and then there is nowhere on earth where you will see such vast quantities of birds or such enormous numbers of crocodilians."
We stayed in a lodge in the southern Pantanal between Corumbá and Campo Grande, Brazil. Stayiing at the lodge reminded me of summer camp! We had a rustic cabaña with mosquito screens, a bathroom and a fan. We could hear small animals scurrying on the roof. Our cabaña was on stilts, literally above the river. And on the wooden walkway to our cabaña, a semi-domesticated capybara lounged! One of the guides found him as a baby. His mother had died, and so the guide brought him to the lodge to live. Now he is two, but not yet full grown.
The capybara is the world~s largest rodent, and can grow to weigh as much as Gary. This one, whose Portuguese name means cutie, is the size of a large dog. As far as I could see, Cutie spends his days lazing on the porch and being petted by tourists. He especiallylikes petting between his ears, and he sometimes makes a purring type sound. His fur is coarse like a pig´s. You wouldn´t know he´s a rodent at all unless you see him yawn, exposing his rat-like teeth. Sometimes the lodge staff have to crack down on him, because he goes into the cabañas and sleeps on the beds, scaring the tourists. When Cutie is not lazing on the porch, he lazes in the river water, eating a diet of plants.
Immediately upon arriving at the lodge we went on a boat ride on the river. Our guide, Marcello, spoke excellent English which I must admit was a relief after two days of struggling to understand Portuguese. We motored down the Miranda River, which is a tributary not of the Amazon but of the Paraguai. We saw tropical birds, including tucans with their bright beaks, and tiger herons. We saw howler monkeys high up in the trees, and we heard them howling! The males howl over some sort of territory issue. We saw lots of caiman. After boating for awhile, we went swimming in the river, in the same water with the caiman and piranha! The caiman are not aggressive like crocodiles and alligators, and the piranhas only go after you if you have a bleeding would or are menstruating. Swimming in a river is wonderful on a hot day. And it was hot! Over 100 degrees, with humidity around 70 percent! My hair was almost curly!
We had an hour to nap, read etc., and then we had dinner in the dining hall, just like at summer camp.
The next morning we went on our safari! We saw tons of animals: great horned owl, blue macaw, stork, parakeets, a type of ibis, hawk, kingfisher, tucan, caiman, capybara, 9-ring coati (related to the racoon, and different from the coatis we saw in Bolivia), fox (gray and more dog-like than foxes I´ve seen in the U.S.), deer (much smaller than U.S. deer), howler monkeys, wild pigs, armadillo, blue morphos butterfly, and aguchi (a small mammal). We did not see anaconda or jaguar.
The blue macaw were beautiful bright blue jungle birds, and Gary collected a handful of their feathers on the ground below the tree where they perched. The stork was tall, standing in the water almost as tall as a fence post! The parakeets were flying free, not in cages the way I´ve seen them before. They are a beautiful green.
Caiman were everywhere, lying on the banks of the water. At night, they spend 5 or 6 hours under water, and in the morning they need to lie in the sun to warm up. The capybara were wet and on the side of the road, probably having just eaten plants in the water. In several areas, 9-ring coati were everywhere, sleeping or playing in trees, running on the ground. They cuddled together and watched us.
The howler monkeys made their strange howling noise that reminds me of Jurassic Park, and our guide, Marcello, called to them with his monkey call. They had a dialog for awhile.
The wild pigs that we saw were actually on a farm, mixed with domestic pigs and some that were crosses between the two. The domestic pigs are fatter and have wider faces. I was surprised that there are wild pigs here, since pigs came from Europe and are not native to the Americas. I know people have brought many domestic pigs to the Americas, but why would people import wild pigs? Marcello told us that during the Chaco war between Paraguay and Bolivia, Paraguayans imported wild pigs from Europe and let them loose in the Chaco so that soldiers could hunt them for a food source. Now there are lots of them, and they have spread into several countries.
I was bitten by fire ants! But it only hurt for a couple of seconds.
I know that in southeast Colorado we have wild pigs which are escaped domestic pigs that have become completely wild after several generations. But I wonder if we also have wild pigs that were imported from Europe. Where did Arizona´s wild javelina population come from?
Now, at the end of the wet season, the Pantanal is mostly flooded with a few islands that are above water. On our safari, we hiked on those islands and drove on the road that is between them. During the dry season, much of the flooded area will be come savannah.
Much of the Pantanal is ot accessible by road this season, and people can only enter on horseback or by airplane. On the river, we saw a house that is only accessible by boat during the wet season. The Pantanal is a mixture of wilderness and cattle farms, or fazendas. Some of the cattle look like Texas longhorns. Some have huge humps on their backs, and all are skin and bones because their grazing area is under water.
The next morning we went piranha fishing. I was secretly glad that nobody caught any fish. Then we went tubing on the Miranda river! Tubing was a much different experience from tubing on the Poudre in Colorado. The Miranda river is wide and deep and slow, and there are no rapids or rocks to dodge. But the Poudre has no caiman or piranhas! I love tubing, on either river.
In the afternoon, we went on another boat ride, and saw a caiman basking on the bank. Our boat pulled up, and it dove into the water and we went swimming right next to where the caiman had been!
Every day, more and more land was visible in the Pantanal, as we approached the dry season. We watched a beautiful sunset over the savannah.
Two of our safari companions are a couple from New Zealand. They spent six months last year in a Colorado mountain town, and they plan to do the same this year. They enter on tourist visas, and are actually working illegally. They said it´s quite easy for them, but they have noticed that it is much harder for their Mexican counterparts who are not usually able to get tourist visas because they are from a poorer country.
Because the New Zealand couple is white and speaks English as a first language, noone suspects them of being undocumented workers. They have seen many cases of a group of construction workers getting stopped and the Mexican workers getting detained by immigration while nobody questions the undocumented workers from New Zealand.
An anteater and a tiny kitten
We arrived by train at Quejillar, on the Bolivian/Brazilian border. Before we even got off the train we were approached by agents trying to sell us tours to the Pantanal. They helped us with transportation to the border and then to Brazilian immigration in Corumbá, where we had our passports stamped.
The three tour companies were all competing for our attention and criticizing each other, but in the end we learned that they are all working together. Two of them are brothers, and the other owners were socializing, hanging out together in the evening.
We chose Indi, who paid for our hotel room in Corumbá where we were hosted by Cristina and her lovable pet anteater Filipe! Filipe is one year old and not yet full grown. He is really cuddly and playful! When we first met him, he was drinking milk out of a bowl with his long toungue. He used his tongue to lap up milk, kind of like a cat except that his foot-long tongue curled around the perimiter of the bowl!
Later, Filipe sat on my lap and cuddled with me. Mostly, he likes to suck on fingers, which apparently helps his digestion, and he plays by grabbing with his front paws. When I tried to put him down on the ground, he tried to grab my legs and wrestle with me! He is soft, and has a mohawk or ridge on his back.
In the evening, while walking we found a tiny animal on the side of the street. I came closer and heard it mewing, and saw that it was a tiny kitten, just a couple of weeks old, barely big enough to open its eyes. I lifted it out of the street and onto the curb, but it fell back into the street. I asked around, but it didn~t belong to anyone and nobody would take it. Finally, we took it to Cristina at our hotel who said, "I~m a mom to Filipe; I can be a mom to this kitten too." She gave us milk, which we fed to the kitten, and sent us to the farmacia to buy a tiny bottle.
I´m amazed that people here seem to understand my Spanish with no problem. They seem to understand everything I say. I understand about 40% of what they say to me.
The three tour companies were all competing for our attention and criticizing each other, but in the end we learned that they are all working together. Two of them are brothers, and the other owners were socializing, hanging out together in the evening.
We chose Indi, who paid for our hotel room in Corumbá where we were hosted by Cristina and her lovable pet anteater Filipe! Filipe is one year old and not yet full grown. He is really cuddly and playful! When we first met him, he was drinking milk out of a bowl with his long toungue. He used his tongue to lap up milk, kind of like a cat except that his foot-long tongue curled around the perimiter of the bowl!
Later, Filipe sat on my lap and cuddled with me. Mostly, he likes to suck on fingers, which apparently helps his digestion, and he plays by grabbing with his front paws. When I tried to put him down on the ground, he tried to grab my legs and wrestle with me! He is soft, and has a mohawk or ridge on his back.
In the evening, while walking we found a tiny animal on the side of the street. I came closer and heard it mewing, and saw that it was a tiny kitten, just a couple of weeks old, barely big enough to open its eyes. I lifted it out of the street and onto the curb, but it fell back into the street. I asked around, but it didn~t belong to anyone and nobody would take it. Finally, we took it to Cristina at our hotel who said, "I~m a mom to Filipe; I can be a mom to this kitten too." She gave us milk, which we fed to the kitten, and sent us to the farmacia to buy a tiny bottle.
I´m amazed that people here seem to understand my Spanish with no problem. They seem to understand everything I say. I understand about 40% of what they say to me.
Water
For a long time, I´ve been meaning to write an entry about water, one of Bolivia´s biggest problems. All of the water in Bolivia is contaminated. You can´t drink tap water anywhere in the country. Not only must you avoid drinking the water, you must avoid eating anything that has been contaminated by water. Vegetables must either be decontaminated by cooking or peeling, or soaked in water treated with iodine.
During my first week in Cochabamba, I had a severe case of turista which caused me to vomit for 12 hours straight, and was probably caused by drinking tap water in the form of a fruit drink at a restaurant.
I have a bank account, and therefore access to medical care if I need it, but hundreds of Bolivians die every year from diarrhea caused by contaminated food or water.
Also thanks to my bank account, I have a huge bottle of purified water delivered to my door several times a week, while many Bolivians must gather rain water and decontaminate it by boiling.
We are lucky to have contaminated tap water piped to our sinks, toilets and shower and ready for our use. Thanks to the World Bank and a U.S. corporation, the people of Cochabamba almost lost this basic right a few years ago, but fought back during the famous Cochabamba water war. Quoting from Lonely Planet´s Bolivia guide:
"With the rapid growth of Cochabamba in the late 20th century, water shortages became acute, and the city sought financing for a tunnel that would bring water through the mountains from another zone. But the World Bank, then more or less controlling Bolivia~s economy, refused to countenance the government spending money on the project and forced them to sell the province´s water utility to the US giant Bechtel, who rapidly put the rates up.
But the company hadn´t reckoned with the citizens, who rapidly established an organizatin to oppose the sale. With the pe9ople furious at the rate hike, strikes were called in February 2000. The citizenry took to the streets and, after violent clashes with police, forced the government to negotiate. Arrogantly, the government refused to deal with the people´s organization, and suggested a gradual price rise. This was angrily rejected, and a general strike called for early April. Nearly a hundred thousand people from all walks of life occupied the streets; when the police foolishly arrested the movement´s leader, the situation rapidly deteriorated, and one man was shot by an army sniper. Things then quieted, but a massive march two days later finally forced Bechtel out, submitting a huge compensation claim in the process. Anti-globalization campaigners around the world saw it as a highly symbolic popular victory over a multinational that had bullied the Bolivian government with World Bank complicity.
These days, the water rates are back at pre-privatization levels, but, although the community water company is gradually increasing service, the money for the much-needed pipeline is as far away as ever. Still, cochabambinos remain justly proud of their victory."
The water war is one of the first things I learned about Cochabamba, as it was featured in one of Michael Moore´s movies several years ago. I can´t remember which one.
Beyond water itself, hot water is another problem in Bolivia. Our accommodations are luxurious in that we have running water, and an electric water heater in our shower. But like even rich Bolivians, we have no hot water in the kitchen or bathrom sinks. Sometimes we heat dishwashing water on the stove, but other times we observe the Bolivian custom of washing the dishes in cold water, using lots of detergent.
During my first week in Cochabamba, I had a severe case of turista which caused me to vomit for 12 hours straight, and was probably caused by drinking tap water in the form of a fruit drink at a restaurant.
I have a bank account, and therefore access to medical care if I need it, but hundreds of Bolivians die every year from diarrhea caused by contaminated food or water.
Also thanks to my bank account, I have a huge bottle of purified water delivered to my door several times a week, while many Bolivians must gather rain water and decontaminate it by boiling.
We are lucky to have contaminated tap water piped to our sinks, toilets and shower and ready for our use. Thanks to the World Bank and a U.S. corporation, the people of Cochabamba almost lost this basic right a few years ago, but fought back during the famous Cochabamba water war. Quoting from Lonely Planet´s Bolivia guide:
"With the rapid growth of Cochabamba in the late 20th century, water shortages became acute, and the city sought financing for a tunnel that would bring water through the mountains from another zone. But the World Bank, then more or less controlling Bolivia~s economy, refused to countenance the government spending money on the project and forced them to sell the province´s water utility to the US giant Bechtel, who rapidly put the rates up.
But the company hadn´t reckoned with the citizens, who rapidly established an organizatin to oppose the sale. With the pe9ople furious at the rate hike, strikes were called in February 2000. The citizenry took to the streets and, after violent clashes with police, forced the government to negotiate. Arrogantly, the government refused to deal with the people´s organization, and suggested a gradual price rise. This was angrily rejected, and a general strike called for early April. Nearly a hundred thousand people from all walks of life occupied the streets; when the police foolishly arrested the movement´s leader, the situation rapidly deteriorated, and one man was shot by an army sniper. Things then quieted, but a massive march two days later finally forced Bechtel out, submitting a huge compensation claim in the process. Anti-globalization campaigners around the world saw it as a highly symbolic popular victory over a multinational that had bullied the Bolivian government with World Bank complicity.
These days, the water rates are back at pre-privatization levels, but, although the community water company is gradually increasing service, the money for the much-needed pipeline is as far away as ever. Still, cochabambinos remain justly proud of their victory."
The water war is one of the first things I learned about Cochabamba, as it was featured in one of Michael Moore´s movies several years ago. I can´t remember which one.
Beyond water itself, hot water is another problem in Bolivia. Our accommodations are luxurious in that we have running water, and an electric water heater in our shower. But like even rich Bolivians, we have no hot water in the kitchen or bathrom sinks. Sometimes we heat dishwashing water on the stove, but other times we observe the Bolivian custom of washing the dishes in cold water, using lots of detergent.
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