Market Madness

Since the close of our time in Uyuni we've been spending the majority of our time city hopping: from Potosí to Sucré to Cochabamba to La Paz, passing our days in the vibrant and over-flowing streets and our nights on bumpy, packed, and non-airconditioned buses. While the pollution, traffic, packs of dogs, and sheer number of bowling-hat-clad people bustling about their business and filling the city with life have all been a far cry from the pristine silence of the empty plains of Patagonia, by far the most mind boggling part of our urban adventures has been the market scene. Let me explain.

(Journal excerpt, 4.10.13)

Bolivian markets = da BOMB. They are UNREAL. They are OUTRAGEOUS. Literally, just overflowing mounds of bananas, glowing mangoes, kiwis, papayas, coconuts, SUCCULENT (as in... not rotten... and also very large!) grapes, shiny, shiny apples (like, maybe a little worrisomely shiny..), apricots, plums, MARACUYAS, the list goes on... fresh rounds of goat cheese, crispy bread loaves of every shape, size, and level of seeded-ness imaginable, racks of meat (seriously - there were cow noses. Splotches, fur, nostrils and ALL!) hanging raw and bloody, suspended overhead and all around... not to mention the cake ladies! Just giant, elaborately frosted wedding cakes. Rows and rows of them. And the little juice señoras, standing behind raised counters stacked 5 feet high with every fruit imaginable, blender cords in hand - ready to do battle and emerge victorious, master of the freshest juice you'll ever find... from the freshest fruit in the land of the grand. The potatoes. The avocados. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Stacked, piled, jumbled, rolling, escaping from the giant rice bags in which they await their fate as our (second!) lunch. Endless heaps of dried pasta. And rice and quinoa and beans. Stacks of flats of eggs.

And everywhere, the piercing shout of the vendors, selling their goods. And everywhere, the wails of the stocky mamitas upstairs, stirring pots big enough to shield a standing child completely from view, full to the brim with bubbling caldos, sopas de maní, de pollo, picantes, chorizos, sizzling pans of fried chicken and llama and casaucho. Pyramids of boiled poatoes, yellow pastas, and arroz. And more arroz. And more. Salsas of every hue of green. And red and brown.. hungry customers queuing up to receive their comida of choice with not a moment of wait. Never a moment of rest. The market is a welter of writhing bodies, energies, voices. Cacauphony. The plenitude of food, of action, is ineffable. It might just be that a day at the mercado central is the sine qua non of a true Bolivian experience.

Piggy backing!

In a rare moment that we opted to spend outside of the market in Sucré, we decided to attempt the much-acclaimed hike to Las Siete Cascadas (Seven Waterfalls). After more than an hour of climbing down a steep slope of scree with not a single waterfall in sight (we did see a barely existent trickle of a stream, though!), we somehow found ourselves in the back of a flatbed truck packed (literally there were 50 Bolivians all traveling with huge rice sacks of potatoes and corn. Also, there were 10 goats.) with people heading back to town.. All in all, a short hike, but a grand success, as far as riding smushed together with an entire villages worth of people on a long, BUMPY, and dusty road goes. Diggin' the public transportation!

I know you can't see the goats from this angle.. but they were down there. All ten of them.

El Salar de Uyuni: A continuación

Desert tour photo series ROUND 2! (Our internet connection was too slow to load them all at once...)

Sunrise on the salt flats

As the sky brightened, we began seeing the reflections of the mountains in the water

 

Pretty pristine. 

JUMPING FOR JOY! As always!

Salt flakes. In drier parts of the flats they would form ~2ft long hexagons

Cactus Island

Barely visible, but there's a canary yellow bird on top of the right cactus. (I'm the level under 'amateur ornithologist')

Had to. 

Birthday cake, me, and Cecilia at the base of the cactus island and the edge of the dried salt lake

Our Group: Megan, Me, Laura, Marion, and Adelaide

Just being awesome!

Cactus island panorama over the salt flats

Beginning Bolivia

       Crossing the border into Bolivia, we felt the country greet us with a riotus, “WELCOME BACK TO THE DEVELOPING WORLD!” The streets were inundated with ice cream, peanut, and jugo de naranja carts pushed by colorfully dressed Quechua women in brown bowler hats and the competing shouts of minivan owners soliciting passengers to our night’s destination, Tupiza. Over the next 4 hours we took the ‘2 hour drive’ to Tupiza, bumping along on back roads next to a local doctor who shared his take on local customs, politics, and recent national change. Upon arrival, he escorted us to a seguro y económico hostel, positively cementing our nascent impressions of Bolivia.

       After a sound night’s sleep at 10,500 feet, we began our first full in-country day by putting down our camera lenses in order to defog our cultural ones. The morning involved a marginally successful attempt at jogging at altitude, which ended at the local school where we watched uniform-donned kids hop out of the back of truck beds to join the ranks of their friends crowding around the building gates. For lunch, we followed our noses to the community’s market, where our eyes widened at stalls filled with flowers, papayas, bananas, tubers, bags of popped corn/rice/wheat, goat cheese rounds, 50 lb bags of pasta, spices, llama meat, and the chatting—4 and a 1/2 foot tall—female proprietors. Upstairs we found women stirring bathtubs of simmering soups, sautéing pans of veggies, chopping chicken, serving tripe (recommended by our doctor friend), and piling plates with rice and quinoa. We eagerly joined the milling masses pointing to their chow of choice and happily settled at the group table next to indigenously dressed women and men in taking their hour (or 3 hour, as seems to be the custom) lunch break. Our evening bookended the day with a short walk up Jesus’ Heart—a nearby hill named for the promontory cross marking the summit—where we overlooked the adobe brick city as the sun set across the valley. It was a laidback city day, beginning our acclimatization to the unseemly elevation as well as the cultural norms of this new foreign territory. Other successes of the day included: getting our laundry done, calling home, and securing seats on a Land Cruiser for the 4-day tour of El Salar de Uyuni.

       By 7 the following morning, our backpacks were bungeed to the top of the vehicle and we were buckling our seatbelts (not literally) for the whirlwind excursion of a lifetime. With Ushin behind the wheel, our cocinera (cook) Cecilia beside him and 3 French students sitting next to us, we embarked upwards into the Bolivian alitplanos. The next 4 days were filled with daily 4-6 hour drives over winding, steep roads with dozens of stops in one outlandish environment after the next. In an effort to avoid thesaurus.com-ing the words ‘incredible,’ ‘awesome,’ and ‘unbelievable’ 2,000 times, I’m going to upload many of our INCREDIBLE, AWESOME, and UNBELIEVABLE pictures and include as explanatory and succinct captions as possible.

Las Sillares: the name comes from silla, or chair, because the 200 ft rock formations resemble seats. 

Llama action. We learned there are 4 llama-esque animals in South America: llamas, guanacos, vicuñas, and alpacas (of which we've seen all but alpacas). Llamas are the largest, they're domesticated and their coats range from dark brown to pure white. 

These guys are vicuñas. They're all wild, more slender than the llamas and guanacos, and are all this golden color.

Our cocinera, Cecilia, with her butt-length braids coming out of her bowler hat. Also, compare her height in the doorway compared to Megan.

This dead baby llama was found at our lunch stop along the road. Our guide, Ushin, strapped it to the top of our Land Cruiser and brought it here to our hostel. About a minute after I took this picture, Cecilia hoisted the llama over her shoulders and brought it to the hostel owner's dog. 

Night 1: Sunset view. Those mountains look hill-like, but they're about 15,000 ft tall.

These beautiful mossy grasslands follow the glacial creeks off the mountains.

Flamingos! 3 species live in these lakes: James, Chilean, and Andean. They get their pink color from microorganisms and minerals in the lakes. 

Looks like the side of a building, but this is actually natural layers of rock. 

Geysers! I wish pictures could capture the accompanying sulfuric smells, the blasting wind, and the warm steam the covered your body when you walked through the cloud. 

Bubbling geyser mud.

Arból de piedra. Created by volcanic rock and then eroded over millennia in the desert.

More flamingoes... they wade around in the lakes all day dragging their beaks through the mud.

Check out the mountain's reflection!

5 am sunrise on the salt flats. The flats used to be a saline lake that dried out. Now, the salt flats extend 100 meters into the earth alternating 10-30cm layers of salt bricks with layers of water. Here, a puddle of water covers the flats (left over from the rainy season) creating a perfect reflection of the horizon.

       Also, on the BIG NEWS front, I’m 20! Don’t worry, the decade change was celebrated in style with lasagna, chocolate, and a candled heart-shaped cake. Maybe more notable than the unexpected culinary delights were the Megan-inspired reflections of the significance of this new age-era. After contemplating the end of my teenage shenanigans, I came to the conclusion that being The Big 2-0 doesn’t delineate the beginning of life-altering influences and decisions, but instead inches forward over the line of me (and my fellow bi-genarians) taking the initiative to choose which influences we decide to embody. It comes back to the words that have been intimated to me since I was a 5-year old stepping on my mom’s toes, “Be conscientious.” So, keeping that in mind, we’ll continue onward into a new country with a revitalized mindset of awareness, conscious actions, and self-fulfilling our desired futures.

Chocolate on Chocolate on Bikes: A day in Bariloche!

The beginning of our (incredibly successful, but very short-lived!) hitchhiking adventures brought us first through El Bolsón – land of baggy-pants-wearing, artisanal jam-loving-hippies! – and then to Bariloche, the wildly beautiful (but also very touristy..) capital of Argentina's Lakes District. Three days of outrageous awesomeness (interspersed with some lake-gazing, bike riding, and waaaay too much chocolate eating.. if that's even possible..) ensued!

The most notable of these three days of EXTREME EXCELLENCE included ALL of the aforementioned activities. We began with a wildly early morning wake-up, followed by an English lesson with our hostel’s owner over a classic South American breakfast of... bread! Then, we hitchhiked out of town to a bike rental shop, where we geared up with ancient mountain bikes, helmets, and bucket-loads of sunscreen before embarking on el Ciruito Chico, the much famed loop through tall evergreen forests shading dozens on dozens of pristine mountain lakes in el Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi.

What followed involved a lot of heavy breathing (as we navigated the very windy and HILL FILLED back roads of the Parque), many, many stops to gaze in wonder at the gorgeous, lake-y panoramas, an incredibly tasty lunch of the Lake District's local specialty of trucha (trout) (there was a brief and necessary digestive nap after this particular stop.. Argentine portions are what some would refer to as ENORMOUS!), and just general enjoyment.

Six hours later we found ourselves slightly dehydrated, very exhausted, and outrageously pleased with both our aerobic and scenic accomplishments. We arrived back in Bariloche (courtesy of Carlos and his large and empty jeep!) just in time to stumble upon the opening celebrations of the 2^nd Annual Bariloche Chocolate Festival! Woohoo! (Easter week is definitely not something you want to miss in Argentina.. So much chocolate... So much time to do nothing but eat chocolate!) Our unintentional first stop was the largest chocolate Easter egg in existence, which we followed promptly (and also accidentally... being lost and confused in foreign cities is one of our specialties. Evidently happening upon chocolate festivals is another. It's only happened once so far... but our fingers are crossed!) with limited views (due to the absurd numbers of spectators thronging the sidewalks) of the largest chocolate bar in the universe. We literally stood by as no less than 50 PROFESSIONAL CHOCOLATEERS poured molten chocolate into a multi-block long mold of what would soon become the MOST GINORMOUS CHOCOLATE BAR IN THE GALAXY. 120 meters long. 700 kilograms in weight. TRULY AWESOME. At least it was until we somehow went home too early and missed the free samples.. WHAAT??

The next day found us cooking up tupperwares full of lentils and rice in preparation for our marathon of bus riding (we got bored of hitchhiking. Though we definitely  standing on the side of hot, dusty, POLLUTED roads, waiting fruitlessly for a kind soul to stop and pick us up, we decided that a 38 hour bus ride might be slightly more practical..) to... BOLIVIA!

Bike break #1, next to a 5 star hotel and manicured golf course

Happy faces after lunch and before the long (and treacherous) uphill to the viewpoint

Worthwhile viewpoint. You can see Lago Perito Moreno, Lago Nahuel Huapi, and some other impressively azul Lago whose name we cannot currently recall...

At the scene of the longest/heaviest/largest chocolate bar in history's birth!
TOO MUCH CHOCOLATE EXCITEMENT

Happy Easter! Biggest Choco Egg on Earth