Well it’s hard to believe, but the first half of our course is over. It doesn’t feel in any way like I have been here for four and a half months already. And the next four and a half will surely fly by even faster. I am excited for the second half the course, during which my growing cultural literacy, language skills, engagement in the community, and comfort at work will hopefully gel into the best part of the program for me.
For the past two weeks, as a sort of mid-year retreat we took a vacation around some of the most beautiful and/or historically important sites in the country. This post will be dedicated entirely to our travels.
On January 3rd at 7:00 PM, we left from the Cochabamba bus terminal destined for the capital city of Sucre ten hours away. The bus was very comfortable with reclining seats that allowed us to sleep during the ride.
We arrived in Sucre just before 5:00 AM and checked into Mama Vicky’s, a homey hostel right by the terminal with no signage and just a large, black, metal door that backed up to the road. After relaxing a little bit, we split into groups and went to buy food for our upcoming trek, which would be for four days in the nearby mountain valleys. We were pretty successful in the market, except Peter and I accidentally bought five cans of tomato sauce with some cheap, small fish like anchovies in them. Gina and Pedro knew the reputation of this brand so well that they went out themselves to buy new sauce. That’s a classic Jacob thing to do, not sure if it’s classic Peter as well. The central market in Sucre is beautiful and abundant; not only could we buy everything we needed, but we were able to find lunch and delicious tojorí (a sweet, hot corn drink) upstairs.
Old-fashioned Sucre, sitting at around 8,000-9,000 feet with it’s narrow, hilly roads and classy, white buildings, feels sort of like Europe or San Francisco. Sucre is the constitutional capital of Bolivia, but the entire national government except the Supreme Court is situated in La Paz. In fact, in tenth grade when I had to learn all the Latin American capitals, I remember having to memorize both Sucre and La Paz. Sucre has the history, but time, change of leadership, and results of wars have gradually moved power over to La Paz. I think by now they may as well call it the capital. The international airport is there, all the embassies are there, and President Evo Morales is there.
Anyway, capital controversy aside (honestly I basically just made up that “controversy”), in Sucre I really enjoyed walking around, exploring the central market, visiting an indigenous fabric museum with intricate, red and black weavings that took years to finish (sorry, no pictures allowed), and hanging out cooking our own dinners at Mama Vicky’s.
The trek, guided by the fantastic Johnny and Edwar of Condor Trekkers, started about two hours outside of Sucre at 11,000 feet and was a mix of descents and ascents through mountain valleys that brought us down to 8,500 feet after about 35 miles of walking over three and a half days. We had the support of a pickup truck to carry food and cooking supplies and meet us at our campsites each night. We camped out in three small, rural communities, but since it was peak agricultural season we had less interaction with the communities than I would have liked. Nevertheless, on the last night, a little girl named Yolanda brought us potatoes and sat with us while we cooked dinner. We shared the food with her and her grandparents. I’m almost positive we also left the anchovy sauce with them.
Apart from that, I think pictures (especially selfies) will tell a better story of the trek than words.
After the trek, we spent a day relaxing back in Sucre and then took a bus to Potosí. Potosí is up near 14,000 feet and is known as the highest city in the world. (I guess it depends on your standards.) Potosí is where the Spanish first found silver in Bolivia, and the city once funded the entire Spanish empire. It was richer than Paris and London. But at what cost? An estimated 8 million miners (many of them slaves) have died in the cerro rico (rich hill) since the 1500s, and parts of the mine are still active. We learned about the history and had the option to go into one of the mines, which I didn’t do because there were people working inside. Making eye contact with a worker and tacitly acknowledging that their suffering was my object of study would have given me the shivers. That said, those in our group who went in did so quietly, quickly, and humbly. We didn’t go with a large tourist agency, but rather a single former miner. It was just about the best possible way to go about what was guaranteed to be an imperfect experience. Here is a picture of the ugly, fleshless cerro rico that overlooks the city. 
In Potosí we all got to work alongside child laborers for a morning through a child union called CONNETSOP. Child labor (selling newspapers, shining shoes, etc.) is a controversial topic in Bolivia and especially Potosí, and while few people will defend child labor as “good” or “just,” they also realize that raising the legal working age is not nearly as productive as fighting the causes of family poverty that force kids to work to chip in. Children as young as ten years old can go work on the streets. Those who work with CONNETSOP attend school half-days.
We also visited the “house of coins,” a museum about the history of Spanish and then Bolivian mints. All I’ll remember from that tour is the poor guide’s incomprehensible English (we should have taken the Spanish tour) and that the $ sign is the S and the I from Potosí (modified from a more complicated symbol that had superimposed the P T S and I). Maybe one of you will get that question on Jeopardy one day.
From Potosí, we went to the Salar de Uyuni, an enormous salt flat that probably takes the first ten pictures if you Google Image “Bolivia.” It is an expanse of pure whiteness and blue sky that you wouldn’t believe was real if you didn’t know it existed. Again, I’ll let the pictures do the work.
The salar is arguably the largest lithium deposit in the world, and the policies surrounding its extraction will be telling of Bolivia’s progress on the idea of “good change.” (Silver = horrible, oil = pretty ugly but improving, lithium = ?)
After three days in the salar, we took a train and then a bus home for about 13 total hours of transportation. I’m almost back to life as usual. My pre-schoolyear meetings started yesterday, and the new baseball season starts in a couple of weeks.
Abrazos,
Jacob
Jacob in Bolivia 