Andes to the Amazon

The last few weeks have been busy ones! Bryan and I have had a successful field season and completed most of his research, including collecting over 70 rock samples, hundreds of paleocurrent measurements, and about 2 1/2 kilometres of stratographic column sketches... all so he can figure out the timing of the uplift of the Cordillera Real in the Andes for his thesis. Whew! After all that work in the bone-chilling climate of the Altiplano, suffering through "el gripe" (flu/cold), and climbing mountains everyday we were ready for some fun (and a slightly warmer climate)! This last Tuesday we went to the ancient ruins of Tiwanaku near Lago Titicaca, one of the most monumental and intriguing archaeological sites in S. America. Tiwanaku is believed to be the cradle of Andean civilization, built around 1000 B.C. It usually only takes 1 hour to get to the ruins from La Paz in a public minibus; however, we were in for slightly more than we bargained for ...

As some of you may know, Bolivia has quite a bit of social unrest. Most days there are protests/strikes going on all around the country on issues as diverse as nationalizing natural gas to raising bus driver wages. Tuesday was no exception to the usual road blocks, but instead of a road block in the city where there are several other routes to take, this road block was on the only road that goes to Tiwanaku. The minibus driver was not to be discouraged! He simply went off-roading for a little while on the altiplano (with a full load of passengers) until we came to a river. Apparently other minibus drivers had the same brilliant idea, and all were faced with the daunting task of fording the river, as there were close to 15 buses unloading their passengers at the river in order to lighten the load so the buses wouldn't get stuck. This left all us passengers (hundreds of Bolivians and us 2 gringos) to figure out a way to cross the river on our own. Luckily the river wasn't too deep, so we just gathered some boulders and made a stepping stone bridge across the polluted river water. Everyone proceeded to form a kind-of human chain across the boulders, but this wasn't even the hard part! The minibuses weren't making it up the muddy slopes on the opposite side of the river, so the men were helping to push the buses up the slopes; meanwhile the tires were spinning mud everywhere! After some real effort and more than a few broken tail-lights from minibuses sliding into each other, our bus made it to the other side where we were able to load it up again and continue on our way through the dusty land of the altiplano. Overall, we ended up driving in the middle of the altiplano for about 2 hours to avoid the roadblock until we made it back to the main road. We finally made it to Tiwanaku and were able examine the ancient stone monoliths and talk to archaeologists who were actively excavating a sacrificial tomb filled with both human and llama remains- it looked like tedious but very interesting work. Afterward we made our way back out to the road where a group of Bolivians had been waiting for hours for a minibus to take them back to La Paz-- no more cars were able to bypass the roadblock soon after we had because more blocks had been set up at the spots near the river crossings! We were essentially stranded. I started talking with a Cholita woman (traditional Aymara) with her baby on her back about the situation and we decided to just start walking on the main road. I actually really enjoyed this time and made friends with Lucy and her little baby, and she invited us to her family's home to stay in the future. After a few kilometres, a truck stopped to give us a lift (as well as a few other stranded people roaming the road), and loaded us up in the back like livestock-- but believe me, it was a welcome ride!! They were able to take us to the traffic jam on our side of the road block, where we continued walking and Bryan and I tried to help Lucy with her baby and bags. We had to cross the road block, and found out the whole protest was about the contaminated river and lack of fresh water for the local people. There was military and protesters all around, but Lucy was able to help talk our way through the problem, and we just continued walking for another hour on the other side until we finally saw a minibus right before it got dark!!! We didn't get back to La Paz until quite late that night.

The rest of this week was spent in one of my most favorite places in the world-- the Amazon basin! Wednesday we flew in a very small military bush plane (seats 4) over the glacial-topped peaks of the Andes, down into the Amazonian cloudforests, landing in the Amazon Basin in a town called Rurrenabaque. The radio stopped working in the plane partially into the flight, so before we landed the pilots made the plane tilt from side to side to indicate to the airstrip that we were going to land-- that was pretty thrilling! We spent 3 days in the Pampas (wetlands and rivers of the basin) in a motorized canoe spotting caiman, capybara, pink river dolphins, and squirrel monkeys all over the place. We also tried looking for anacondas (for 4 long, hot hours in a marshy area) but were unsuccessful. We went fishing for piranhas one evening and caught enough for dinner! (I didn't really like eating them though...) The pampas are a bird-watcher's paradise with numerous neotropical hawks, hoatzin birds, rufescent tiger-herons, caracaras, neotropical cormorants, roseate spoonbills, tanagers, hyacinth macaws, cuckoos, amazon kingfishers, and the gigantic Jabiru (just to name a few). Although the mosquitoes were voracious, we had a great time-- I loved seeing all the animals and birds I'd read about!! I couldn't believe how easy it was to spot them.

After spending a night in the tropical "tranquilo" puebla of Rurrenabaque and buying a hammock I can't wait to use, we awoke early to watch the sun rise over the Rio Beni and made our way to a canoe that was going to take us to the Amazonian rainforest. Once we arrived in the Parque Nacional Madidi, a preserve home to more plants and animals than any other reserve in South America, we hiked for about 3 hours with a local guide who taught us about extremely fascinating plants like the "walking tree" and plants which are used by local indigenous people for medicinal purposes, as well as natural history about many of the unique insects we encountered. Our guide was wonderfully knowledgeable and grew up in a small village a day's walk from the nearest road up in the Amazon. We capped the day off with an adrenaline-filled canopy zip line over 45 meters up in the trees. Although we had done a zip line before in Jamaica, this one was much higher. This was my most favorite day yet in Bolivia! I love being in rainforests! Although it was easier to spot animals and birds in the pampas, I felt at peace in the forest-- I can't wait to return again someday.

On our last day in the Amazon, our flight was delayed due to AM rain (the runway is dirt/grass) until 4:30, so we passed our time by taking a water taxi over to the small puebla, San Buenaventura, across the Rio Beni. Of all the days of the year, we were there on their village holiday- live traditional Bolivian music, a bustling carnival and market, food and cerveza everywhere! I made friends with a local who invited us to a "running of the bulls" which is the most popular event in the puebla all year. They had built a stadium out of wood for the event, and hundreds of Bolivians were there for the show. They don't kill the toro, which I was glad to find out, but the bull-teasing really wasn't my thing so I just took it all in as an authentic cultural experience that (to my knowledge) no other foreigners besides us were able to experience there! It was getting late, so we took moto-taxis, where you sit on the back of a motorcycle bumping over dirt roads going very fast (I know my parents would be horrified, but we had no options!), back the couple kilometres to the small port in order to catch a water-taxi back across the river.

We're once again in cold La Paz, although I really do like the city-- it feels so much safer than other developing country cities I've been in and has quite an interesting history! After working so hard for the past few weeks, it was nice to have some fun in the Amazon. Bryan and I've been talking about how in the future we should do fieldwork in the tropics instead of in the cold, cold mountains... both are beautiful, but we both feel so tranquilo in the tropics surrounded by verdant vegetation, water, and birds calling out to each other. Health-wise we're doing well since we got over "el gripe", although Bryan keeps losing weight (he's had to make two new holes in his belt), we think the combination of activity and cold weather is pushing his metabolism to the max. We have 2 more weeks down here... it seems like it's gone by so fast and there's so much more I want to see and do and experience.