Wrestling with nature

Shop in La Paz, Bolivia

Jupapina, near La Paz, Bolivia
[by Paula]

I’m not going to get all earth mothery on you, but our recent voluntary work in Bolivia is teaching us a hell of a lot about what it takes to manage a piece of land in a place where the weather can be brutal and the terrain unpredictable.

Every day, it seems, we are more or less engaged in a friendly tussle with nature. This is life for so many people in the world, but our post-stamp-sized garden in London wasn’t much of a training ground.

If we’re not trying to repair the ravages of the rains, we’re struggling to rehydrate the sun-parched earth, sweeping up wind-blown debris, helping to knit the slopes together with new trees or trying to keep termites at bay.

And what a place to do it. We’re perched above a dramatic, jagged-rocked, valley south of La Paz. Every day we are both living and working with the most incredible views into the Valley of Flowers, and down the Valley of the Moon towards the city, which twinkles in the distance at night.

At last! Jeremy is put in charge of a spade.

What are we doing here, and why? Let’s recap – a few months ago we decided to hold off the southward journey until 2014, and to find a place to stop and do a work-exchange project, whereby we’d get some free accommodation in return for some hard graft. We specifically wanted hard graft – after a few sedentary months, Jeremy was particularly keen that his job description included ‘digging’. Deep down, he’s a simple fellow with simple needs.

He got what he wanted. We’ve been here a month, the blisters are hardening, the biceps are starting to form nicely, and we’re loving it.

Through the Workaway website, we found this fabulous place in a semi-rural Aymara village called Jupapina, where we’re now living for a few months. It’s the base for a range of community projects, collectively called Up Close Bolivia, which was established by British-Bolivian couple Emma and Rolando Mendoza. Up Close employs locals to run and staff the projects – for example a large children’s daycare centre – and provides international volunteers to help out.

On the land is the Mendoza family home, three volunteers’ houses, and – coming soon! – Emma and Rolando’s first commercial venture, a brilliant campsite that will open next year. This is where we come in.

Hammocks with a view on the campsite

Although we live among the Up Close ‘family’, we were recruited separately by Emma and Rolando to help with loads of odd jobs around the gardens, campsite and buildings. And there’s plenty of it.

This terraced land is porous and precipitous. After rains we are filling in water-created holes, which have reached up to 10ft deep, to make sure everything stays stable. When we are not filling in holes with piles of dirt, we are digging holes to plant trees, to help everything stay stable. We have painted acres of wood with anti-termite chemicals. We have cleared, tidied and swept. Rainy season should be upon us, but so far we have had weeks of glorious weather. The lack of rain means spending hours watering hundreds of trees. When it does rain we have to re-dig channels around them, to stop the water from pouring straight down into the valley and taking the earth with it.

We’re also here to help finish and market the campsite, and have so far set up an initial blogsite to start promoting it to interested parties.

Working on such steep land, at this altitude, is doing wonders for our fitness levels, and is also utterly exhausting.

After our morning’s work, we have lunch with Rolando and their housekeeper, and then spend the afternoons on chores or attempting to organise some freelance work. Sometimes we just fall asleep though…

We’re living in a converted pigsty, along with volunteer co-ordinator Naomi, but I suspect we have a way better deal than the porky residents had.

No pigsty: Our cosy home.

It’s been lovely to have a nice home, a routine, and some semblance of a social life again. We made great friends with Alison and Doug, a Canadian couple who came to volunteer with Up Close and were here for our first month, but have sadly now left. It was lovely to share some beers and laughs, and to get some baking tips from Alison, who’s a professional chef. I am no longer afraid to bake bread or scones!

Emma and Rolando, and their kids David and Bell, have been insanely welcoming, inviting us to their BBQs and other events, introducing us to their friends and colleagues, helping us with contacts and just generally being extremely tolerant of piles of volunteers wandering about the place and traipsing into their house to use the washing machine.

It’s a way of life for them and I’m not sure they remember it being any other way.

They’re both fascinating people, with backgrounds in development and public service. We spend most of our days with Rolando – former mayor of the local town and director of social services for La Paz city – and chatting to him about all sorts of political and social issues is great practice for our Spanish!

Talking of Spanish, within a few days of our arrival Rolando suggested we’d make good interviewees on one of the big La Paz radio stations, Radio Compañera. We laughed it off, saying our Spanish would not hold up to a live radio interview. A week later Emma came to us one evening saying: ‘You’ve been invited onto Gringo González’s show tomorrow morning.’ As is quite common, he’s nicknamed ‘gringo’ because his hair is slightly lighter than black. It was be a half hour interview about us, media issues in the UK and Latin America and whatever else cropped up. We gulped, hyper-ventilated, tried to avoid saying yes… then said yes. Shit!

View of La Paz from Pedregal, on our hike to the Devil’s Molar.

Next morning, we couldn’t believe we were sitting there. The clock counted down til 11am and we were on air. Unbelievably, we survived it without any hideous dead air, hilarious misunderstandings or (we think) major bloopers. Our mistakes were diplomatically ignored! We lost several pounds in sweat. The subject matter bounced all over the place from threats to journalists in Colombia, to our own travels, to BBC funding, to what we thought of Margaret Thatcher. Luckily we knew the word for “witch” in Spanish. Phew.

Our weekends are our own and we’ve been getting out and about – with some city jaunts, to Bolivia’s main archaeological site of Tiwanaku, hiking to the ‘Devil’s Molar’ (a craggy rock formation that we can see, across the valley, from our window), to a big La Paz football derby – el clásico between Bolívar (yay!) and The Strongest (boo!) – and a weekend in a lush valley at Coroico.

Some 2,000m lower than La Paz, it was like another world, with its tropical flowers, dense forests, amazing birdlife and clouds of mosquitoes. Ah, mosquitoes, how we haven’t missed you.

We are preparing for a trip to Lake Titicaca this weekend, which will – not entirely accidentally – coincide with Jeremy’s birthday.

I’ve promised he can have a whole weekend of decadence – hotel room, lovely food, a few cold beers, and not a spade in sight.

Days: 792
Van miles: 17,551 (to Ecuador – where the van remains for now)
Non-van miles!: 7,449
Things we now know to be true: Slagging off Margaret Thatcher in Spanish feels just as good.

PICS PICS PICS! Photo gallery below from the last few weeks.
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View from the bus at Sajama National Park, Chile-Bolivian border.

Indigenous groups parade the streets of central La Paz, Bolivia.

View of the Valley of the Flowers from the campsite, Jupapina.

View from the back door of our house, the ‘pigsty’.

Emma and Rolando mix dough for bread, a traditional part of the Day of the Dead celebrations.

Bread figures shaped to represent lost loved ones, Day of the Dead 2013.

Ice cream sales at a football match, Estadio Hernando Siles (world’s highest national football stadium), La Paz, Bolivia.

The valley below our house turns pinky-orange at sunset.

Appearing on Radio Companera was a surreal, adrenaline-fuelled, morning.

Dried llama foetuses for sale at the witch’s market, La Paz, Bolivia. Many people bury them under the foundations of their homes as an offering to Pachamama (mother earth).

Tent area of of the soon-to-be-opened campsite. Check out that view!

The ‘glamping’ area of the campsite (with cabin and teepees) with outdoor kitchen. Our house is the pink one above, on the left.

Buzzy wasp, Coroico, Bolivia.

Waiting, with glee, for a home-made ice-cream – Coroico, Bolivia.

Gorgeous campsite at Sol y Luna, Coroico, Bolivia.

Lush Coroico

Our Coroico campsite even had a pool.

View from the footpath at our campsite in Coroico, Bolivia.

Beautiful flowers abound in Coroico, Bolivia.

Jeremy is accosted by two of Emma and Rolando’s dogs – Tilly Bud and Sir Alex Ferguson

Hiking to the Devil’s Molar (La Muela del Diablo), La Paz

The Devil’s Molar (La Muela del Diablo), La Paz, Bolivia

Lizzie the cat pops into the campsite kitchen for a drink.

Me and J, with Bell, David , Emma, and Alison and Doug.

View of Volcan Illimani from the bus.

Just never get bored on llamas, pre-Incan site of Tiwanaku, Bolivia.

Bolivia: Farewell meal for Doug and Alison.

La Paz locals have a precipitous picnic, overlooking their city.

Overdosing on superlatives

Er, bit dry here in the desert isn’t it? Pan de Azucar National park, Chile.

La Paz, Bolivia
by Paula

We’ve been over-doing things recently, in the best possible way. What with our marathon journey south to meet my family – the Jollys – in Chile, and the ensuing five weeks of astounding sightseeing, travelling and general Jollity, we’re all out of superlatives.

As well as that, there’s been a large overdose of sun, booze, food and spending. It’s been a blast, but the waistlines and wallets have taken a hit.

We’re about to get our wellies on and dig in for a cold, rainy winter in the Bolivian highlands – it’s the least we deserve; the austerity programme starts here.

So busy have we been that the blog has been badly neglected, so we’ll deal with all the amazing stuff we’ve been doing in a couple of posts. If you get bored at any point, you might want to play ‘superlative bingo’ – see how many times you can count us saying ‘fabulous’ ‘stunning’ ‘the best ever xx we’ve ever seen’, ‘unbelievable’, ‘breathtaking’ etc. You get the idea. The north of Chile and south of Bolivia have some of the most breathtaking (got it?) landscapes imaginable – no words (or even photos – see gallery below) truly come close to doing it justice.

The long, straight, drive south through the Atacama Desert.

After racing through Peru last month, we picked up a rental car in northern Chile and started the two-day drive south to meet my parents in La Serena. Some people may find deserts boring, but we never tired of the seemingly endless straight roads cutting through the Atacama desert. For the first time on our trip we really had to think hard about refuelling the car and ourselves, as we could go for hours without seeing a sign of civilisation.

We’d booked a cabaña for the first week of my parents’ trip and would be mostly catering for ourselves. It was a major national holiday – celebrating independence from Spain – and we found out that every supermarket in the country would shut for 48 hours, just before my parents arrived. Panic stations! The idea of telling them, after their 30-hour journey from Scotland – ‘er, we haven’t got any food, or (even worse) wine‘ was unthinkable. We screeched into Copiapó a couple of hours before the final closing, to stock up. It was the equivalent of starting all your festive shopping at 4pm on Christmas Eve – ill-advised and ugly. Shelves were emptying, people were scrapping over the last mouldy onions and children howled as if Armageddon was coming. We threw together some meals we hoped wouldn’t go off in the hot car, and pushed on south.

The moment had arrived! We collected my parents at tiny La Serena airport and crushed their stuff into our far-too-small car, along with all the panic-bought wine, and drove to Vicuña, in the Elqui Valley. We spent a week in this stunning, rainless valley where pisco and wine grapes abound, as well as fruits and olives. It was all so lush compared with our drive south.

Happy birthday to me. Elqui Valley, Chile.

I enjoyed a birthday of post-breakfast champagne, followed by a scrumptious lunch of roasted goat at one of Elqui’s solar kitchens – where everything, from the bread to the meat and the mashed potatoes, is cooked in simple metal ovens that are fuelled purely by the heat of the sun.

It was shockingly cold in the mornings, until the sun warmed the valley, and in the evenings too, when we huddled into fleeces and went out to gaze at the most amazing stars we’d seen in years.

We were starting to form some first impressions of Chile – unbelieveable skies, fabulous empanadas and sandwiches, lovely straight un-potholed roads. And, most importantly, gallons of very quaffable wine plus a very healthy respect for a Proper Cup of Tea.

On the downside… terrible accents! We started to doubt that we could actually speak any Spanish at all, until one Chilean reassured us, ‘don’t worry, our Spanish is awful, no one can understand us.’ And prices that make you want to weep with despair (how much?!) – with one exception; wine at prices that bring tears of joy.

After a lovely week of mooching around Elqui, we pushed on north, stopping for a night of pisco sours and fish at Bahía Inglesa, and then on to the magical Pan de Azúcar National Park.

Now, in our experience so far, much of the north Chilean coast is not much to write home about – a lot of creepy half-abandoned coastal slum towns, heavy smoky industry and mining, and all often blanketed in a coastal fog.

“The idea of my dad bottling some Chilean partygoer, whilst still in his underwear, gave me cause to ponder…”

But there are exceptions, and one of those is Pan de Azúcar – a sparklingly pristine piece of coastal desert, with a little island that’s home to a few thousand Humboldt penguins. We pitched up at a cabaña and camping place, with a smack-bang view of the island, and slept like babies to the sound of the waves. On our first morning we could see the penguins pottering about on the beach through the binoculars. Beyond excited! For a closer look we took a boat out to the island and got to watch them from close to shore, also seeing sea otters, sea lions and spectacularly colourful pelicans. Fabulous.

One of the many reasons we’d chosen this spot was for the peace and quiet. With it also being a national park, there were rules about not making noise, playing music, partying and so on. Safe bet, we thought.

On the afternoon of our second night, the Chilean Hillbillies arrived – a massive family in the cabaña next to mum and dad’s. We eyed them a little suspiciously. It was Saturday night, what did they have planned? That might sound a bit paranoid, but anyone who’s read our blog before – or any account of travelling in Latin America – will know that our fears were justified. How can I put this? – very generally speaking, there is a widespread lack of consideration for other people’s tranquility here. So much so that people planning a beach party will often park right next to where you’re camped, despite there being 10 miles of empty beach for them to choose from.

And so it was this time – music blaring from their open car, shouting at the tops of voices for hours on end, despite polite pleas to turn the music down. About 10 of them were outside their cabaña and about 3ft from our tent, all night.

Sunset view from our cabana at Pan de Azucar national park – looks peaceful, eh?

I’m pretty resigned to putting up with this sort of thing when it’s just Jeremy and I, but when the family are having their night ruined, I see red.

At 4am I cracked. I went over to ask them to go inside their cabaña, so we couldn’t hear their noise so much. They refused. They said: ‘We have babies inside the cabin, if we go inside our noise will wake them.’ I was incredulous. I said that they were doing just the same to my parents instead.

‘Do you think your parents are more important than our children?‘ they asked? I said they were equal. They laughed as if this was the most preposterous idea they’d ever heard. By this time there was a lot of shouting. They told Jeremy: ‘Chileans party til 5am, get over it!‘

Unbeknown to me, by this point my dad was poised at their cabaña door with a blunt weapon, ready to smack someone if it got out of hand. (note: he has no actual history of violence).
The idea of my dad bottling some Chilean partygoer, whilst still in his underwear, gave me cause to ponder: ‘Hhmmm, must do better next time on planning relaxing holiday for the parents…’

But it was a mere blip. We blew away the sleepy cobwebs the next day with a spectacular walk up on the plains, with giant cacti and dramatic cloud formations punctuating the bright yellow landscape and azure skies, then came home to snuggle in with a chicken soup.

It was a pretty wild place. In the evenings we retreated into the cabaña at sunset and, even when inside, piled coats and blankets on, playing cards and keeping warm with wine and pisco. Mum and dad took the ‘roughing it’ pretty well!

All wrapped up for a chilly Chilean evening, Pan de Azucar national park.

After navigating the busy one-way streets of Antofagasta, with only a little shouting involved, we spent the night there before moving on to our final destination for mum and dad – a week in the heart of the desert, in San Pedro de Atacama.

Only a little more shouting was involved in our trying to find our cabaña, in a dusty little plot on the edge of town. It was a sweet adobe place with a magnificent view of the mountains, the most awesome of which was the almost 6,000-ft Volcano Licancabur. Its snow-capped peak shone by day and turned luminous pink by sunset. It’s hard to describe what it’s like being in one of the driest places on earth. We’ve never felt so desiccated, and no amount of water or moisturiser seemed to hit the spot.

We spent a fabulous day driving round some of the nearby sights, including a walk and picnic at the breathtaking oasis of Quebrada de Jerez – one of those lovely desert surprises that you wish you’d been the first to stumble upon.

At Laguna Chaxa – in the middle of the Atacama salt flats – we got our first sight of flamingos amid a spectacular mountain and lake setting, and watched them for hours.

Derek arrives! San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.

Next day, it was back to Calama to collect my brother Derek from the airport! We celebrated with a barbeque and – you’ve probably guessed it – a vat of Chilean wine. Coincidentally it was our second anniversary of being on the road in Latin America.

Next day we became the only people on the planet to fail to find one of the most famous sights around San Pedro – the Valley of the Moon. ‘It must be here somewhere‘, I kept confidently declaring, as we drove further and further across the salar, before realising we’d missed the turning and also missed sunset. Oh well!

A star tour with an astrologist in San Pedro was one of the highlights of the few weeks. We gathered in the dark and looked up at the biggest sky imaginable. Venus shone under a sliver of a moon. We tried our best to absorb a dizzying and humbling barrage of space facts, before gazing through mega-telescopes at the most incredible sights we’ve ever witnessed, including a supernova, distant galaxies and disco-lights stars. (not the technical term, I don’t think).

One constellation was so impressively sparkly that everyone gasped when they saw it. ‘Yeah, we call that one the eyegasm‘ said the astrologer.

After a hot hike to the indigenous Atacameño ruins at Pukará de Quitor the following day, we set off for a second attempt to enjoy sunset at the Valley of the Moon. You won’t be surprised to hear it’s a bit like a moonscape. Sitting on a vast sand dune and watching the colours change over the jagged rocks and distant mountains at sunset was pretty other-worldly.

It was tears and gloom as my parents set off for home the next day. One of the absolute worst things about being away from home are those awful airport goodbyes.

Derek, Jeremy and I bedded down in Calama for a few hours, before starting the next phase of the Jolly holiday early the next morning.

We thought we were all out of superlatives to describe everything we’d been seeing…. and then we got to Bolivia…

Days: 754
Van miles: 17,551 (to Ecuador – where the van remains for now)
Non-van miles!: 7,239
Things we now know to be true: Outer space is really, really big.

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PICS PICS PICS!
Below is a pic gallery of some of the recent highlights – just a handful of the 2,000+ images taken over this period….

Train passing through the Atacama Desert, Chile.

Celebrations for Fiestas Patrias – independence from Spain, La Serena, Chile.

The stunning Elqui Valley, Chile.

Solar ovens, near Vicuna, Elqui Valley, Chile

Pisco sour, Bahia Inglesa, Chile.

Pan amasado – a typical Chilean bread – for sale, Atacama Desert.

Breakfast stop-off at brightly-painted Taltal, Chile.

Abandoned nitrate town, Atacama Desert, Chile

All ready for a trip to see the penguins! Pan de Azucar national park, Chile.

Penguin! Isla Pan de Azucar, Chile.

Sea lion stretches, Pan de Azucar, Chile.

BBQ time, Pan de Azucar, Chile.

Me and mum, desert walk, Pan de Azucar, Chile.

Amazing skies, Pan de Azucar, Chile

Our cabana at Pan de Azucar national park, Chile.

Chatting at Pan de Azucar national park, Chile.

Desert fox, Pan de Azucar National Park, Chile.

What a catch! Fisherman shows off his haul, Pan de Azucar national park, Chile.

Pan de Azucar sunset, Chile.

The impossibly yellow trees outside our San Pedro cabana, Atacama, Chile.

Desert oasis at Quebrada de Jerez, Atacama, Chile.

Salar de Atacama, Chile.

Oasis at Quebrada de Jerez, Atacama, Chile.

Flamingo, Laguna Chaxa, Salar de Atacama, Chile.

Laguna Chaxa, Salar de Atacama, Chile

Flamingo takes flight, Laguna Chaxa, Salar de Atacama, Chile.

Walking on salt, Laguna Chaxa, Salar de Atacama, Chile.

Laguna Chaxa, Salar de Atacama, Chile

The Dears, Atacama, Chile.

Valley of Death, Atacama, Chile.

Jeremy ponders the Valley of Death, Atacama, Chile.

Three Jollys, a Dear and a Jolly Dear – Pukará de Quitor, Atacama, Chile

The view of Volcan Licancabur from our cabana in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.

Stop-off on the drive through the Valley of the Moon, Atacama, Chile.

Sand dune, Valley of the Moon, Atacama, Chile

Three amigos – Derek, Paula and Jeremy – Atacama, Chile.

Natural amphitheatre, Valley of the Moon, Atacama, Chile.

Sand dune, Valley of the Moon, Atacama, Chile

Sunset, Valley of the Moon, Atacama, Chile.

Sunset, Valley of the Moon, Atacama, Chile.