"Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig" -To Market, To Market

West Virginia

Upon my return to the USA, I realized a couple of things.  The strangers around me at the airports no longer meandered along to their gates or to stand in lines, but rushed to wait longer and cut in front of the crowd.  Everyone seemed to see other patrons as an obstacle, and I noticed fewer and fewer friendly interactions.  When people did interact with another person or via technology, they seemed disappointed, angry, or complacent much more often than they were content or cheerful.  There was also, once again, a distinct contrast between my and everyone else's height.  While it was familiar to see signs and hear conversations in English again, I missed the challenge of being immersed in a new language and culture. Plus, I had some difficulty not speaking to others in Spanish first, and little things, like where to put the toilet paper at the end of the routine caused moments of slight anxiety.  My first couple of Walmart runs were overstimulating and exhausting --there's just so much packaging and so many choices!  I was certainly ready to get back to nature after those trips --especially if I could go with the people that make coming back coming home.

Of course, there were some positive aspects of returning.  For one, I could trust that toilet stalls would also contain toilet paper.  Something else I noticed was that, while everyone seemed apathetic to their surroundings, some people would light up when I started a conversation with them.  On the same note, it was a breath of fresh air to see all of the different skin tones, hair shades, eye colors, body shapes and sizes.  I apprecited our mix --what makes us the full-bred American mutts of the world.  (Truly, I mean this endearingly.)  That level of diversity was lacking in the country I had just left, and certainly missed.  (Granted, the diversity of which I speak will not likely be localized in my photos or many places in West Virginia.)

 Since returning, I've found that, at times, it's incredibly difficult to understand what people want to know when they ask questions like, "So how was Bolivia?" "Did you like it?" and "Are you glad to be home?"  I can never quite gauge what the asker would really be interested in.  Does the inquirer want stories about the stubbornness of llamas? -retellings of climbing Huyana Potosi? -biking and then river-riding from La Paz to Rurrenabaque? -seeing Lake Titicaca and walking on the Isla del Sol? -teaching in a third-world country? being a minority and how I was treated as a result? -the socio-economic standing of the country in comparison to its history as well as the USA's standing?  -Evo Morales' reign during my time there? -the transition from living in small-town West Virginia to living in two-million inhabitants La Paz? -the peaks and pitfalls of public transportation? -something else?  The possibilities are endless!

Any answer that attempts to summarize that question is inadequate because Bolivia was everything at least one point in time throughout the year.  It was great and terrible, fantastic and challenging, exciting and terrifying, inspiring and depressing.  Being there taught me a lot, but there is never one way for me to answer how Bolivia "was" for me.  I loved it, but there were times that made it challenging at best.  Even so, while I'm glad to see my family, I am not glad for this to just be a great memory of when I went off and did something "before my life started".  This is part of my life, which started a decade or so ago.  I'm glad to be and visit home, and I love my family and want to be here with them, but I never longed to be home indefinitely.  For me, there's always something else to see, always another possibility to check into.

Pennsylvania

Bolivia had a lot of things, but it didn't have my family, friends, or local pepperoni rolls.  Thankfully, I got to refill those pockets within the first few days of being back.  I also missed the green of temperate forests, the rolling of older hills, and the songs sung by the wildlife perched in the trees and pooling in the rivers and lakes.  While I may very well go back to Bolivia someday, and certainly want to see other places around the world, for now, it's good to be home.  For this chapter, this is where I need to be.

Last Bolivian Adventure for 2015: Pampas Tour (Bolivia)

Pampas River Tour

Right before leaving the country, I visited the Bolivian lowlands, near a topical city called Rurrenabaque.  Mary, Jennifer, Mike, and I took a riverboat tour around segments of the Rio Yacuma.  The Rio Yacuma is an area of the pampas, or flat, low wetlands, which is part of the amazon basin.  It's one of the most bio-diverse regions in the world, containing countless varieties of animal, plant, and insect species.  We planned to explore the river and wetlands for the next three days.

On the first day, we had to get there.  This meant a three-hour jeep ride on a dirt road that could be likened to swiss cheese.  To break up the ride some, we stopped every now and then to see a cayman in a roadside pond or a native bird perched in a tree.  My favorite spied-animal was a sloth that unfurled itself in a branch nook to peer over at us.

Once we got to our lodgings, we had time to unpack our things, change, and hang out in the hammocks until it was time for our first activity: swimming with the pink river dolphins.

It was exciting, but intimidating as well.  When we arrived to our swimming spot, our guide pointed out a cayman who had seen us and slid into a spot of water not too far away.  The guide reassured us that the pink river dolphins would keep them away, but also warned us about shuffling our feet on the muddy bottom, as sting rays liked to hang out down there.  The murky water seemed full of reasons to be cautious, but when the river dolphins started to play in the pond, we only hesitated a little to jump in.  The dolphins would come up to your legs and nudge you or play with the basketball our guide brought.  I jumped every time something touched me, but Mike, Jennifer, and Mary were one with the dolphins!  After dinner we went out into another part of the pampas to chase the sunset and explore more of our surroundings.  

                                

The second day we left breakfast to go piraña fishing.  I was especially excited because getting bitten by a piraña was something my father had cautioned me against before I left for Bolivia; hence, I was thrilled to show him that I could also defeat this threat.  (And no, this is the first time that the guide mentioned pirañas were also in the river with us... apparently the dolphins eat the pirañas, though, so we were safe...)

By the end of the drizzly morning, everyone caught at least two pirañas, although those fish are smart!  Most of the time the pirañas nibbled off the beef from around our hooks-- they were quite skilled.  Nevertheless, with our wooden sticks, fishing line, hooks, and raw beef, we caught quite a few pirañas (some were too small to keep) to add to our lunch menu. 

That night's activity was beading.  Our guide had some seeds he'd taken from the jungle, so we sanded them and wove necklaces and keychains from thread.

On our last day, we started the morning by waking up before sunset, loading into the boats, and floated downstream, listening to the noises of the different animals in the jungle.  Mowgli (from The Jungle Book) had nothing on this experience.

After breakfast, we donned our ponchos and rain boots and went upriver in search of monkeys and any other wildlife we could spot along the way.  Many of the animals were trying to stay dry, so our venture was relatively unsuccessful.  However, our second attempt bore more fruit --and slightly drier weather.

Capybaras, the world's largest rodent.
They can run as fast as a horse and swim to escape predators.

When we returned, we finished our organic jewelry, packed up our items, and motor-boated our way back inland.

The jeep-jostle was a bit more bitter-sweet this time.  What I've found is that it's easy to make fun of something meaningful, but jokes tend to be the bandaids that hold something together until it's removed.  Even in the rain in a boat, rocking to and fro just to give the mosquitos more of a challenge, I found a part of me that will always stay in Bolivia, even if I never physically return.

Despedidas & Gustu: Goodbyes in Bolivia

Despedidas and Gustu (Bolivia)

A "despedida" is a goodbye party.  I was lucky enough to have a couple of send-offs: one at work, one with friends, and one on my last night in La Paz with family.

Instituto Exclusivo

   

This despedida was supposed to be me thanking the school for helping me adjust to the culture, teaching me the language, and for giving me great memories and lasting friendships for the road.  They surprised me by making a couple of speeches and presenting a couple of gifts as well.  A couple of students even took the time to come by!

 

Amigos

Saying goodbye to your friends in one go is always tough.  To make it a little easier, the theme of my despedida was creative clothing, which is what you see below.  (Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures with each person!)  I also tried to meet with people throughout the last month to spend some one-on-one time as a goodbye with each person, but it doesn't make saying goodbye any easier!  How does that quote go? Ah yes, "How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard." --Winnie the Pooh

 After these despedidas, I packed my bags and went on a final trip around the Bolivian amazon forest. When I returned, the Niemanns and I went to a 5-star restaurant called Gustu.

Gustu

This restaurant, while decently priced in Bolivia, would be way out of my normal realm of dining considerations, but since Mike and I spent the time here, we decided to go.  The restaurant is modern, but with traditional accents.  It was my first (and perhaps only) five-course meal, complete with drink parings.  It was a classy, yet unique send-off.  Plus, the company made for great conversation during and between courses.

*For a description of their philosophy and what they're all about, check out their website: <http://restaurantgustu.com/eng/about-us/filosofia/>.

Defying The Death Road

El Camino del Muerte/ The Death Road (Bolivia)

When your boyfriend works for a year as a tour guide on the Death Road, people tend to assume you have experienced the Death Road yourself, and not only once --a few times.  Over the year I lived in Bolivia, I got to know the other guides, drivers, mechanics, secretaries, managers, head boss, and their families and assortment of friends.  I even got to know their speech, as I was a practice audience before a couple of the guides were about to take their test.  I even lived with the lead guide and a few other Gravity guys for a while... and I never once considered going down The Death Road until I was about to leave the country.

For those of you who've never gone bike riding with me, I'm a nervous biker.  I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was around 10 or 12 years old, when my brother (two years my junior) taught me to ride.  Everything about riding was/is unstable to me, so mountain biking down a road nicknamed "The most dangerous road in the world" wasn't on my South American to-do list.  Nonetheless, I did go down the road without problems, although, I can't speak for our entire group.

     

First, let me give you some information on this gravel-to-dirt, "two-lane" pathway.  When I talked about doing it, to spare my family some grief (granted, they caught on quickly), I referred to the Death  Road by it's original name: the North Yungas Road.  I'll do the same in this assessment.  All-in-all, the North Yungas Road is roughly 40 miles long and drops over 11,000 feet in altitude from start (about 16,000 feet/ 4,700 meters above sea level) to finish.  This road claimed a total of three deaths last year, and there were several years after 2007 with zero deaths-- this road is not a major highway anymore, although there are some (we saw maybe nine or ten at most) cars and trucks that pass through.  This little-known fact is often overshadowed by the time before 2007, when the North Yungas road was a major highway and got it's reputation for accumulating about 300 deaths a year.  The road is three meters (fewer than 10 feet) wide in the narrowest section --not too far off from some "two-lane" West Virginian backroads.  The kicker with the North Yungas road, however, is that the most significant drops are over 3,000 feet into the valley below.  Take-away point: Don't go over the cliff.

When you're a nervous beginner-biker, coding the best-known name for this road, so your family won't worry too much, it would likely be in your best interest to go with confident bikers down this road, as to increase your confidence and safety, right?  I did the exact opposite, but we were fine... for the most part.

Our group was of four beginner-bikers who were all pretty nervous about this feat, BUT we all also had another thing in common: trust in our guides and the company.  Gravity is known to be the safest company, which is part of why Mike worked for them when he came down to Bolivia.  Our private tour with Mike as our lead guide was perfect.  In the photo above, you can see our group: from left to right, there is me, my good friend Ashley, Mike, Mary (Mike's mom), and Jennifer (Mike's sister).

As we glided around bends, braked steadily on the steeper sections, and became more comfortable with our bikes, guides, and gear, our group steadily gained confidence as we covered more of the road.  At least, most of our group gained confidence.  You may or may not have noticed Ashley's nose in a couple of the previous photos.  Well, in one photo, Ash feigns her fear to fall over the edge for comedic effect, but as it happened...

...mayhaps she did.  I went ahead and got her permission to tell this story; however, it's still important to stress how wonderfully she handled everything, because I have been reproached for telling the story and focusing on the outcome as opposed to the could-have-beens.  Here's what happened. 

Skittish, Ash kept telling herself she couldn't do the road, but kept making efforts to complete it.  This continued to happen until she clutched her front brake, flipped over her handlebars around a sharp turn, legs glued around the frame of the bike (the bike followed her over), and disappeared over the edge of the road.  Needless to say, the guide who was beside of her during this, Andres, leapt from his bike to grab her, and landed on a poof of dust and the camera strapped around his neck.  PRAISE GOD there was a lower-ledge RIGHT where Ash landed because she fell about a foot or so onto this landing and grabbed a resilient sapling.  Our expert driver helped her back on the road.  (There's always a back-up vehicle behind the group with gear, backup supplies, snacks, first aid, etc. so the driver was immediately available.)  They, thanks to Ash's quick-thinking, managed to save the bike, too.  I mention the bike because she kept apologizing for potentially breaking it!

Andres, Left; Mike, Right

She rode the next two sections of the road in the back-up vehicle before getting BACK ON HER BIKE (the awesome woman) to finish the ride.  In fact, her confidence significantly improved after she fell.

That night, once we returned to La Paz, she found that her nose had two fractures, but she was otherwise completely unscathed.  Truth be told, she pointedly spent the entire rest of the day reassuring us that she was fine and was convinced over the period of the day and the ride back to check into the hospital, just to be sure everything was okay.

As for the rest of us, once we were all convinced she was well and with us, we kept our own pace and wove our way to the end of the road together.  We have some great stories and shared some laughs, especially after we knew, without a doubt, that Ashley was alright.  We ended the road with a zip line tour and a walk around the animal refuge (basically, we got to see a lot of monkeys).

*Please feel free to find more information yourself or check out Gravity's webpage on the road at <http://www.gravitybolivia.com/index.php?mod=tempview1&id=1251406369>.

*Photo credit to Andres with Gravity Downhill Mountain Biking.