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This Post Has Nothing To Do With Bolivia

Everything about today is frustrating. Irritating, annoying, anxiety-producing. I think it has something to do with the fact that I started my period today. Or else it’s because it’s Wednesday and I’ve already had it up to HERE with everything. Or it’s because I haven’t exercised in an entire week (if you don’t count the 45 minutes of yoga I squeezed in yesterday.) Of course it could have something to do with the fact that I feel like all I ever do is work work work work work work work work work and yet there is always more more more more more more more more more more work to do. And by work I don’t just mean paid work, I mean laundry and dishes and bills and dog walks and vacuuming and shaving my legs and everything. Life just feels so dreadfully exhausting sometimes.

Yes, I know, these are first world problems. I’m lucky. I have a job. I chose to have four pets. Blah blah. But for once I’d just like to have one. week. of nothing. One week where I could just … rest. Without feeling guilty. Without email. Without nagging phone calls. Without knowing that at the end of the week I’ll have to pay for my rest in the pile of emails/bills/laundry/dog hair. Is that really too much to ask? Apparently it is.

No, Bolivia didn’t count as a restful vacation. There was too much hiking and not enough eating. Literally. We were hungry most of the time. At least I was.

In other news, Valentine FINALLY got her bandage off on Monday afternoon. Remember when I said her injury was minor? I’ve changed my mind about that. When an injury requires FIVE doctor visits, two rounds of anti-biotics, and two rounds of pain medication, it is not minor. But, as of Monday, she’s been declared mostly well. No more bandage, no more meds. She has to wear the lampshade hat for another five days and she can’t have a bath for another week, which is horrible because she smells so awful even I can barely stand to be around her (and I usually really like her stink-doggy smell) but other than that, she’s doing very well.

V-dawg

She’s totally over the lampshade hat.

Michael has spent all this week crashing classes at our local junior college, trying with all his might to cobble together a full load for the semester. Did I ever tell you about the time he went to sign up for classes on his assigned registration day and he discovered that every. single. class at the school was already full? And the wait lists were full too? This is due to the fact that we’ve cut our budgets for school, so the schools don’t have any classes, even though there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of students needing classes. Welcome to education budget cuts! Cheers for the legislature and government and yadda yadda! So glad we’re not raising taxes. Budget cuts makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE. I mean, what the fuck is education anyway? Like that bullshit is important.

waiting

Mike texted me this photo of HALF of the line of people waiting to get added to Anatomy yesterday. The head of the department was there and told the waiting people, “Hey! This isn’t bad! There’s not so many of you.” That isn’t bad? No, no, I guess it isn’t bad. IT IS FUCKING APPALLING. Fortunately, by some sort of miracle, Mike’s name was one of the four names the teacher pulled from her purse (she didn’t have a hat, so she put everyone’s name IN HER PURSE) and so he will most likely be able to add. He’s also managed to get into Spanish II. That’s two classes for the semester. Out of six he has crashed. Which is good, you know I don’t want to complain or anything, even though at this rate it will take him four years to get through a two year program. But whatever. It’s not like there’s a job market anyway.

Do you see? I’ve had it up to HERE with EVERYTHING.

The good news (for me) is that I’ve actually stopped feeling all self-conscious about my Bolivia posts and have begun to really enjoy writing them. When I have time to write them. They take FOREVER. I am so long-winded, I know. I go on and on. But the fact that you read my ramblings at all means a lot to me. I swear, sometimes I feel like y’all are the best thing I have going for me. And of course, my husband. And my family. And these guys:

ridiculously cute

TAKE A PICTURE OF ME! says the wiener.

Yeah, all right, so life isn’t that bad. Whatever.

5 Comments

Frost, August 31st 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Daily Life

The Village Awakens

It was day six of our travels, day four in Bolivia, day three of our first trek. We woke early and packed up our roadside camp in the light of the full moon. I was eternally grateful that we had not been bothered by anyone in the night, but I was still on edge. I do not like wandering around in populated areas at such ungodly hours. One never knows who or what one may run into.

Also? I was really freaking hungry.

We hiked down the steep slope of the hill we’d slept on and back toward the road. Something in the sky flashed.

“What was that?” I asked.

Neither Mike nor Dave had seen it. Something flashed again.

“Seriously? You didn’t see that?” They had to have seen it.

“I saw it that time.” Mike answered. “It could have been lightening.”

“It wasn’t lightening. There’s no storm anywhere. It was probably just blah blah blah…” Dave gave a very scientific-y answer to what he thought the flashing light was, but he lost me after “it was probably just…”. I decided it must either be aliens or a serial killer trying to scare us with some sort of flashy light thing as a precursor to torturing us and murdering us.

The light flashed again. I started praying, furiously, for safety. We hiked along the road, in the pitch black, in complete silence, for another thirty minutes or so before the sun began to rise. We never saw the flashy light again, and we never figured out what caused it, but even Mike agrees with me that it was incredibly weird. (I still think it was most likely aliens.) As soon as the sun started coming up I began to relax. The village we hiked through transformed from dark and foreboding to quaint and lovely. Lights were coming on in windows and we could smell cook fires. We hiked with rocks in our pockets because each time we passed a house a dog would charge at us, snarling. None were tied up, but none ever left the safety of their unfenced yard. They didn’t want to fight, they just wanted to make sure we didn’t get too close. We abandoned our rocks.

The village was beautiful. Nestled in a valley, hugging the lake, it was idyllic. We began to see people, a few at a time, working in their fields or tending their livestock in the pink early hours of the morning. I imagined their homes inside, warm and spare, a hot breakfast of quinoa in fresh milk with a sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon. Maybe a steaming cup of coffee. I was very hungry.

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I love this house. Do you see the way the balcony is set up? It’s hard to tell in this photo, but this house is actually two stories and you’re looking at the second floor. That is their balcony, with no sides, not even narrow side railings. It just sort of hangs off the side of the house so you better not let your kids out there unattended. And yet? It is so perfectly picturesque.

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“Welcome to Titicachi and visit the floating island cultural center of Isk’a Huata.”

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This is brilliant. This house (and we saw several others set up the same way) was built below the road, so again, you are seeing the second floor of the house from this view. Only this family included a doorway at road-level, then propped a long plank of wood to serve as a pathway to the road. This way, one does not need to push one’s cart of goods up and down a steep and rocky slope to get to the road. One can use this clever pathway. We saw one house whose plank was warped and looking very old and fragile. I imagined that whenever the family used it, the wife would say to her husband, “When are you going to put down a new plank? I’ve told you over and over, we need a new plank! One of these days it’s going to snap in half! How many times do I need to tell you?” To which he’d roll his eyes and say, “Ay, Mami! I’ll do it, I’ll do it. Cut me some slack, will you? I’ve been working all day!”

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The people we passed on this cold early morning seemed a little suspicious of us, but we smiled and said “Buenos dias!” and they smiled and greeted us back. Mostly. Though it had been, at this point, eighteen hours since our last meal (not counting the cold, nearly raw 1/2 cup of quinoa we shared at camp the night before), this hike through the villages of Lake of the Gray Puma became one of my favorite events of the entire trip. Watching the village wake up in the early hours of the morning was enchanting. It was story-book beautiful. Irrational fears of murder and mayhem aside, I would absolutely recommend the hike from Yampupata to Copacabana, as long as you do it in the very early morning on a full stomach.

L.A. to Mexico City to Tapachula…

…to Lima to Santa Cruz to La Paz

La Paz = Love

Cementario del Distrito

Copacabana

Isla del Sol en las Fotografias

Trekking Isla del Sol

Trekking Isla del Sol, One Step at a Time

Evening in Yampupata

7 Comments

Frost, August 30th 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in bolivia

Evening in Yampupata

llama

When our boat landed at Yampupata, the beach was completely abandoned. I was very grateful that we had scrapped our original plan to hike from Copacabana to Yampupata the day before because there wasn’t anywhere we would have been able to catch a ferry to Isla del Sol. The beach was abandoned. There were boats tied up, but not a single person anywhere. There was a house on the beach and in the yard a big dog barked furiously. Barked and barked and barked and then charged Michael, tearing down the beach toward him, all teeth and froth and fury. Mike swung at the dog with his trekking poles and I started throwing rocks. We managed to scare it off.

Adrenaline pumping through our bodies, we tried to read a large map posted nearby, to figure out the road we should take back to Copacabana, but it was useless. (This is where I should mention that we didn’t have any maps with us, not because we’re idiots [although one could argue that we are] but because there are no reliable maps of Bolivia. Sure, there are some maps of the cities, but not the areas where we were hiking. The best map of the country was drawn at the turn of the twentieth century and though it was updated in – the nineties, I want to say, but don’t quote me – most of it is gray, unmapped space.) We were standing at this giant map on the beach, trying to make sense of a faded squiggly line printed on a peeling blue background, when a bus pulled up and a stream of people poured out. They were loud and laughing and blowing kisses at us. They made me nervous. Everything made me nervous. The empty beach, the barking dog, the fact we had no map, the locals blowing kisses and laughing at us. They climbed onto a nearby boat and sailed off. In five minutes it was as if they had never been there.

pumping water

We sat on the shore of Lake of the Gray Puma and pumped water to fill our bottles and bladders. It was very hot in the sun. Dave took this opportunity to go for a swim and just as I had convinced myself to strip down and dive into the icy water, a family settled down next to us and began washing their laundry. They were dressed in traditional clothes and I couldn’t bear to strip down to my sports bra and hiking panties, showing that much skin to people whose women never even show their ankles. It felt wrong for a million reasons.

We pumped fifteen liters of water, five for each of us, sorted out our gear, reapplied sunscreen, and began trekking up the road that led away from the beach. As empty as the beach had been, we were surprised when the road wound into a bustling farming village. It was late in the day, maybe four-thirty or so, and everyone was working hard. Men were building houses out of hollow ceramic brick, women were carrying bundles of harvested crops toward home, children were playing in the street.

“Copacabana?” the people asked us.
“¡Sí!”
“¿Necesita un paseo?”
“No gracias. A pie.”
Then they would grin at us and wave good-bye.

One little boy on a bicycle rode in circles around us. “Copacabana?”
“Si. A pie.”
“¡La bicicleta es mejor, señor!”
You’re right, kid. A bicycle is WAY better than hiking on foot.

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We hiked for about two hours along a winding road. We knew there were campsites somewhere between us and Copacabana, but we didn’t know where or how far away they were. It was getting late, we were exhausted, and we were – wait for it – getting hungry. (Again with the hungry!) It was decided that we would camp on a hill above the road. I was not happy with this plan. We could be seen by any car driving past in three directions. It was, in my opinion, the Bolivian countryside equivalent of sleeping under a freeway overpass. But I was out-voted. It could be hours of walking until we found a respectable campsite, so we would make due with this.

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We set up camp, dropping to the ground whenever we heard a car pass. We weren’t camping on anyone’s land, as far as we knew, but we didn’t want to advertise our presence. I changed my underpants, which, having not had the opportunity to do so since we’d left La Paz, felt like an unbelievable luxury. Mike fired up the camp stove to cook the quinoa we’d purchased earlier, but soon realized that quinoa makes for poor camp food. We burned through almost half of our fuel canister and yet we ate a cold dinner that night. Cold, unseasoned, and practically raw. It was freezing out. I was shivering in my woolen underlayers and fleece outer layers, so we crawled into our sleeping bags long before the sun set. At twilight, that moment when the sky is still light but your field of vision is dark, a group of children herding llamas crossed a hundred feet from our heads. Twenty minutes later a man walked by, saw us and stared. I worried all night that someone would come tell us we couldn’t camp there and make us move, or rob us, or kill us. Because that’s where my head goes, of course.

Hours later when the moon was very high in the sky, I woke up to the sound of drums beating in the distance. First drums, then faint strains of music threaded through the valley, up the road, into my ears. Half the sky was cloaked in gray clouds and half was clear as it could be. The moon shone so bright it all but drowned out the stars. Dogs howled in the distance and the music grew louder. Anyone else would have found it beautiful and serene, but I was sure we were done for. The music? That was the townspeople gearing up to hunt down the stupid white tourists sleeping on the land by the road. Oh Trish, I reasoned, of course they aren’t coming to hunt us down. They’re just enjoying some sort of celebration, playing music, dancing, getting drunk. Getting drunk. What if a bunch of local men got drunk and decided they didn’t want the stupid white tourists sleeping on their land they decided to come kill us? What if there was a serial killer in the town, a serial killer who’d never killed before because he knew he’d get caught if he killed in his own little town, but now he’d heard about the stupid white tourists and this was the perfect opportunity to satiate his desire? Or what if he killed someone in town and then blamed the stupid white tourists? We would end up in a Bolivian prison FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES.

It’s a wonder I ever fell back asleep, what with the absurd dramas I played out in my head on that dark, quiet night.

L.A. to Mexico City to Tapachula…

…to Lima to Santa Cruz to La Paz

La Paz = Love

Cementario del Distrito

Copacabana

Isla del Sol en las Fotografias

Trekking Isla del Sol

Trekking Isla del Sol, One Step at a Time

3 Comments

Frost, August 29th 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in bolivia

Trekking Isla del Sol, One Step at a Time

This post is a continuation of this post.

On the hike back we began to pass other trekkers, as well as women and children herding sheep. When we came upon the house where the man had told us we were early for tourists, we realized it was not just a house, but also a shop selling soda and water. The man was nowhere to be found but there was a little boy behind the counter who sold us four liters of water and let us feed crackers to the round little puppy who scrambled after us.

rolly polly puppy

We were warned not to touch the animals because they could be rabid. This one definitely looked dangerous.

Further up the trail we stopped to eat the raw peanuts, mandarinas, and the rest of the crackers we had scavenged from the bottoms of our packs. We spread our gear out to dry in the sun because when the morning frost melted, it left our sleeping bags and bivy sacks soaking wet. We took off our shoes and let our feet breathe. We shared news and recommendations with the morning’s ferry-load of trekkers who began to stream past, mostly students and grad school graduates, young people from all over the world.

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I took this picture to remind myself of this moment: I was exhausted, hot, sweaty, and hungry. Mike and Dave were flying up that hill and it made me mad. My muscles burned. I felt like I couldn’t possibly go on, I would never make it up that hill, not with this heavy pack on my back and the sun in my eyes. And then I remembered something Marie told me about her three-week backpacking trip. She said that when it got hard and she thought she couldn’t go on, she would tell herself, “I can take one more step.” And then she’d take another step. So that’s what I did. I can take one more step. I can take one more step. It became a rhythm I could move to. One more step. One more step. One more step. My mind would drift with the rhythm, one more step, and I wasn’t thinking about the sun (one more step) or the pack (one more step) or how steep the hill was. One more step. One more step. One more step.

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Look at the hillside to the right of the photo. See how it’s cut into so many lines? Those are terraces for farming. The Incas did that – terraced all the mountainsides – and the people who live there now keep working the terraces, farming the land, pulling the rocks out, leveling, fertilizing, growing, feeding their babies generation after generation.

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These women hike these hills day in and day out, babes on their backs, full skirts, patent-leather flats.

One more step. One more step. One more step.

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If you look at the left side of the house, you can see where they did not stucco over the mud brick. Nearly all of the houses we saw while we hiked around Lake of the Gray Puma were made of mud brick. When your house begins to wear down from years of rain? You build a new one, right next door.

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I said “nearly all” the houses were made of mud brick.

By the time we arrived in Yumani we were ravenous. Our last real meal had been almost twenty-four hours earlier. You burn about 5,000 calories in a day of hiking and we’d probably only eaten about 500 calories. Even our hair was hungry. (At least mine was.)

Yumani was a ghost town, not a soul anywhere. The restaurants and hostels were abandoned, except for one pizza place with a television blaring in the corner. Dave and Mike were not interested in pizza and I was too hungry to argue. (Interestingly, pizza is HUGELY popular in Yumani. Almost every restaurant boasts pizza and Italian food.) We found a tienda and bought a bag of quinoa we thought we could fix for dinner that night. A little closer to shore there was an open place with four tables that offered sopa, sandwiches, trucha, pollo y papas, and coca mate. They even had a clean bathroom, though we had to use our own toilet paper and hand soap.  It felt like an oasis. I ordered a cheese sandwich, expecting something wonderful and melty. What I got was dry bread with wet farmer’s cheese and sliced tomatoes. My mouth watered at the sight of those perfect, red fruits, but they were off limits. Raw vegetables and fruits = diarrhea that sprays out your bum and won’t stop. So I picked the tomatoes off and prayed I wouldn’t get sick from the little bit of juice that soaked into the bread. (I didn’t.)

It never ceased to amaze me, not nine days on the trail, how happy and refreshed I would feel after a short rest and a simple meal. I could be absolutely falling-over exhausted, but thirty minutes off my feet, some bread and some cheese, and I’d be ready to go again. After lunch we hiked for another thirty minutes or so, all down hill, through the town, toward the shore. It was only two-thirty, so I stretched out on the grass by the dock and napped in the sun while Michael and Dave chatted with other travelers. We caught our boat at three sharp and I slept all the way to Yampupata.

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*photo courtesy of Dave

L.A. to Mexico City to Tapachula…

…to Lima to Santa Cruz to La Paz

La Paz = Love

Cementario del Distrito

Copacabana

Isla del Sol en las Fotografias

Trekking Isla del Sol

12 Comments

Frost, August 26th 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in bolivia

Under the Surface

under the surface

I don’t know what it is about this photo, but it soothes me. I snapped it walking on the – I don’t know what you call it. A ramp thingy? A walkway? It was a bunch of boards nailed together, hovering inches above the surface of Lake of the Gray Puma, that we had to walk across to get to the ferry that would take us from Copacabana to Isla del Sol. I was in awe of how clear and lovely the water was, so I took this silly little picture. I just made it the wallpaper on my desktop because when I look at it, all the anxiety and stress I feel at work all day long softens at the edges, just enough that I feel I can take a deep breath and keep going.

2 Comments

Frost, August 25th 2011 | Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in bolivia, Daily Life

A Tiny Mummy Finds A Home

Remember when I asked Hawk to mail me the tiny mummy he found? Well, he sent it all right. And then I kept it for six months while I searched for an appropriate display for it. But see, nothing was good enough. And then, this weekend, I suddenly remembered this little – I don’t even know what you’d call it – thing that I have had sitting in my craft closet with all my craft stuff for literally over five years. It’s a little thing that I bought with Michael either right before we were married or right after, and I dragged it to New York and back because I knew one day I’d figure out a project for it. Turns out it was totally meant for the tiny lizard mummy. Like, the universe sent it to me because it knew that one day I’d have a tiny mummy that would need a home. Here’s what the little – we’ll call it a display case – looked like before I started messing with it.

pre-priming

That shiz needs to be painted, yo. It’s awfully boring looking.

primed

But first, we must prime.

painted

Much better, yes? Once I painted it and gave it a coat of urethane, I used a small wad of museum wax to affix a silica packet inside the display area, to help keep the little lizard nice and dry. (Thanks to my brother Ty for that trick.) But what will I use as a backing for the lizard? I know! How bout a wrinkly old piece of paper?

coffee soak

I wadded up a scrap of paper and let it soak in coffee for about thirty minutes.

drying

Then I set it out to dry. When it was completely dry, I cut it to fit the inside of my tiny display case. I didn’t need to glue it down – it was a perfect fit. Next, I decorated the corners with some little dried flowers, including a few from my wedding bouquet. Those were glued down so they wouldn’t shift over time. Last, I placed my mummy inside.

finding a forever home

I used a drop of Elmer’s Glue-All under his chin to fix him securely to his forever home.

voila!

Voila! The smallest lizard mummy in the world (really – I think he’s broken a record) lives in a place of honor in our family room, amongst our collection of family photos.

place of honor

close up

Sorry for the low quality photo. It’s hard to take a picture like this without a flash, but the flash bounces off the glass and ruins things, so… you know. Anyway, now I just need to find a home for my mouse skeleton and my baby bird skeleton. Oh! And I still have to make natron so I can mummify the dead snake in my freezer. That one will make a lovely centerpiece for the coffee table, yes?

*This post is brought to you by Hawk, who provided the tiny mummy. And Ty, who’s gifted me with my love of all things dead, including the mouse skeleton, the dead snake, and my wonderful family of mummified mice – who have not been featured here because the pictures do not do them justice. If you ever come over, I’ll be sure to show them to you. I love to point them out when giving guests the tour of our apartment. “Here’s the office, here’s the bedroom, and here’s my mummified mouse family!”

16 Comments

Frost, August 24th 2011 | Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Daily Life, nesting, Why not?

Trekking Isla del Sol

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We woke up on Isla del Sol around 5 a.m. covered in frost, as you can see by the picture above. We had no idea at the time, but this would easily be our most comfortable night and warmest morning. We broke down camp under the light of a full moon and were hiking by six a.m. along the ridgeline of the island, surrounded on both sides by Lago Titicaca.

(Side note: When we were first planning this trip I couldn’t say “Titicaca” without snickering. I’ve said it so many times by now that I’m used to it, but it helps to have found out that the literal translation of Titicaca in the Aymara language is “gray puma”. As in, Lake of the Grey Puma. Isn’t that lovely?)

It was our first morning on the trail together, Dave, Michael, and me. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to start hiking so early – we couldn’t see a thing. At first I was frightened of the shadows, worried some horrible thing would jump out at us. The moon was so bright and the morning so quiet. We came upon a house and two dogs barked furiously. A man appeared, a silhouette against the darkness. He’s going to ask us for money to keep going, I thought. But instead he called out, “Buenos dias, amigos! Es temprano para los turistas. Eso es bueno!” And we laughed and said, “Sí, al principio es bueno!” and kept going. I felt bad for thinking the worst.

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Around seven the sun began to crawl into the sky over Bolivia to our right, while the moon hung stubborn over Peru on our left. For the next thirty minutes, the sun turned the clouds pinker and pinker as it rose and the moon slid slowly into the horizon. There was a brief moment when both sun and moon faced each other, and we knew why the Incas called this island sacred. (And I knew why someone would want to hike so early in the day.)

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Moonset

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Sunrise

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Breakfast that morning was a box of crackers, split three ways, but we didn’t care. We were giddy from the beauty that surrounded us. The road we hiked was an ancient Incan road, though for a long time we couldn’t tell. And then it changed from dirt to huge, flat stones, interlocking to create a smooth path, thousands of years old. After a few more minutes we passed a large, square-shaped stone table, surrounded by smaller, nearly perfectly cube-shaped stone seats – a ceremonial sacrifice table.

Then we came to the Incan ruins, a maze of stone walls, still and quiet as the night. We dropped our packs and stooped under the entrance. I closed by eyes to see if I could feel the history, hear the whispers of ancient voices, but there was only a soft breeze.

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The Incas were much smaller than Mike.

It was a wonderful morning. We spent a long time wandering in this ancient, revered place. We hiked to the top of a nearby hill to get a better view, forgetting our cameras in our packs down below. It was early still, not yet eight-thirty, and we were the only people for miles. I started getting hungry but there was no food. We had a full day of hiking ahead of us if we wanted to hike the rest of the island (per our plan), and no guarantee of food anywhere along the trail. The day before we’d pre-paid for a private boat to take us from Yumani to Yampupata and it would leave with or without us at 3 p.m. With these things in mind we decided instead to hike the four hours back to Yumani where we knew there were plenty of restaurants allowing plenty of time for a leisurely meal before we needed to catch our boat. We dug through our packs and discovered we weren’t completely out of food; we found peanuts, a few more crackers, and a couple of mandarines. Dave gave me two Cliff bars he had saved from the day before, so we knew we would be fine for four more hours.

…to be continued…

L.A. to Mexico City to Tapachula…

…to Lima to Santa Cruz to La Paz

La Paz = Love

Cementario del Distrito

Copacabana

Isla del Sol en las Fotografias

9 Comments

Frost, August 23rd 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in bolivia

Isla del Sol en las fotografías

What I can’t believe is that a) we’ve already been home from The Big Bolivian Adventure for over three weeks and 2) I’ve written five posts about the trip and I’m still only telling you about the second day. Alright, the fourth day if you count our first two travel days, BUT STILL. At this rate, I’ll be writing about Bolivia for the next year. If I can even remember everything for that long.

Hold on. Bolivia. Is that near Mexico? I can’t remember anymore.

If you’re counting from the day we left Los Angeles, day one was all air travel, day two was air travel, day three we puttered in La Paz, and day four we traveled from La Paz to Copacabana to Isla del Sol, where we commenced our first afternoon of trekking. It was a wonderful day and I wrote about it here. Now how about some pictures?

Wait, one more thing. I hate to say it but I have to: I’m incredibly disappointed by my photos of Isla del Sol. It was, without a doubt, one of the loveliest places I’ve ever visited. However, my photos portray a rather bleak and dusty little town. None of the charm exists in my digital renderings. There’s none of the bustle and beauty, the breeze and the sun and the sound of bleating sheep are glaringly absent. They’re just photos of stuff that barely hint at what was real. Like in ‘Beauty and the Beast’, when the enchanted rose wilts and begins to die, all the magic wearing out. My photos are a wilted version of what I saw in real life.

For example, I took the photo below of a family washing their laundry because, in person, it was exquisitely picturesque. Mama washing the family’s clothes on the shore of Lago Titicaca, Papa laying out the clean clothes to dry in the sun, the little children clambering up and down the rocky slopes, their shrieks and squeals of glee echoing off the island’s surface. It was lovely. And it does not translate. (Also, can we ignore the fact that I’m totally romanticizing a very mundane chore, made arduous by the fact that these people don’t have a laundry facility? What is wrong with me?)

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In the next photo, you’ll see Mike sharing the road with a pack of mules. Or, mulas, as they are called en español. This was exciting because, mulas! On the trail! Right next to us! I like totally grew up in suburbia and like have totally like never seen like a mule up close before! Like omigawd!

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***

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Here we are, Mike and I, grinning and happy, Lago Titicaca behind us, two boxes of crackers in front of us. Dear readers, should you ever choose to spend extended periods of time hiking in the Andes, or even hiking on an island in the middle of a lake near the Andes, do not assume that you will be able to eat locally just because your copy of ‘Lonely Planet’ says you can. When the guidebook says there are stores that sell basic provisions, what they mean is there are stores that sell toilet paper, eggs, liters of soda, and llama wool sweaters. Please do not mistake “basic provisions” for “food you can safely carry in your backpack and eat on the trail.” If you do, you will go hungry.

Those crackers? That was all Mike, Dave, and I had to eat for dinner that night and breakfast and lunch the next day. Two boxes of crackers do not three meals for three people make. Why didn’t we buy more than two boxes of crackers? Because we’re americanos tontos. That’s why.

4

And what is that? In the photo above? IT IS A RESTAURANT. In fact, it was one of a string of wonderful little mama-and-papa* restaurants that we stumbled upon as we climbed up the steep and curving road out of Yumani, towards our campsite (three-plus hours away) for the night. And did we stop for lunch? HELLS YEAH WE DID. We’re not that tantos. Not only did we eat lunch, we ate a two-course lunch of incredible, rich sopa and fried trucha and it was heaven. It was also the reason why we got away with eating only three crackers each for dinner that night.

*Mama took our orders, cooked our meals, and breastfed her baby while she waited for us to finish. Papa was in the garden, tending the animals. While we ate, donkeys wandered past the window. One even stared at us. I think it wanted my sopa.

8

The people are not at all interested in having their picture taken, so I snuck this one of a family out for a late afternoon stroll with their pig. It’s a little bit hazy because I was zooming in from a bajillion feet away. (I am sneaky. Or disrespectful. You choose.)

5

Un gatito! *photo courtesy of Dave

6

Una niña! *photo courtesy of Dave

7

Don’t you just want to fall over dead when you see those mountains? I later climbed them, yes I did. You may bow to me. I won’t mind.

9

Tricia found a dead thing! *photo courtesy of Dave

10

The dead thing that Tricia found. Hint: It’s a guinea pig. No, I do not know what happened to its other half.

11

These sheep made me cry. Alright, it wasn’t entirely the sheep’s fault.

You see, we had been hiking along for several hours and we had eaten a very large lunch because we didn’t know when we would eat our next meal, when suddenly, I needed to go to the bathroom. (If you know what I mean.) Only we were hours away from the nearest bathroom, which meant that now, for the first time ever in my life, I was going to have to poop somewhere that wasn’t a bathroom. Which would have been fine had we been hiking in the wilderness in the middle of nowhere, but we were hiking on a road, passing trekkers, tourists, townspeople, and sheep herders every minute or two. This was a very populated road. There were no trees, no big rocks, no privacy anywhere. The longer I hiked the more uncomfortable I got and before I knew it I was hiking with tears streaming down my face. Not tears of discomfort, but tears of “oh my goodness I think I’m going to have to poop in front of a sheepherder.” Mike and Dave both tried to convince me to climb off the path, they swore if walked far enough away from the path I’d have enough privacy to do what I needed to do, but when I tried, THE SHEEP. THEY FOLLOWED ME. And I just couldn’t do it. After an hour or so we finally came upon a small patch of trees and Mike walked me off the road into a secluded cluster and once the deed was done I decided that in fact? Pooping in the woods is kind of awesome. Carrying poopy toilet paper in a ziplock in my backpack? Not awesome. But doing your business outdoors in the breeze is sort of fantastic. Not that I’m going to start doing it on a regular basis or anything, but really? It wasn’t worth the tears.

PS. On our last day of hiking in the Andes I got really sick and actually dropped trou behind a rock next to a farmhouse. Because it was that or shit my pants. And then guess what? I only had gas! The worst gas in the history of the universe, but it was only gas. I dropped my pants next to someone’s house for a fart. So. freaking. embarrassing.

12

We made camp that night about ten minutes away from where I had my first outdoor pooping experience. You can’t tell at all, but this was a beautiful campsite. We were high up on the ridge of the island, surrounded on both sides by the lake. We made camp, gawked at the scenery, ate three crackers each, and were in our sleeping bags and asleep before dark. Warm, cozy, and only a little bit hungry.

L.A. to Mexico City to Tapachula…

…to Lima to Santa Cruz to La Paz

La Paz = Love

Cementario del Distrito

Copacabana

11 Comments

Frost, August 22nd 2011 | Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in bolivia

You’re Welcome

Chase Thompson

Do you remember when I was shot that zombie movie in 2009? Turns out it won all kinds of awards on the festival circuit, and you guys, I watched it right before we left for Bolivia and it is fantastic. It was my last acting gig and I’m glad it was because it was a wonderful experience. To finally see it, see the gem that came out of everyone’s hard work and talent, it turns me all gushy inside. It’s more than just a zombie movie. It’s a movie about hope, artistry, faith, perseverance, and hard work. And zombies.

So click HERE and watch it! It’s 12 1/2 minutes and you’ll get to see me fight zombies. You will be knocked over by the awesomeness. Zombies!

Chase Thompson, a film by Chase Thompson (2010) from Valiant Pictures on Vimeo.

21 Comments

Frost, August 19th 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Why not?

Sweet Sweet Valentine

V-dawg

Poor little thing.

Last weekend Dopey, Kim, and I all got together for a lady blogger dinner. We met at my place and that is when it got complicated.

You see, my beloved, loyal, sweet, smart little Valentine does not take too kindly to household guests, especially if she’s never met them before. She doesn’t bite or anything (she doesn’t have any teeth to bite with), she just goes absolutely berserk when she hears someone coming up to the door. Absolutely berserk as in, uncontrollable, out of her mind, unconscious crazy. This is something we’ve been trying to train her out of for all the six years we’ve lived with her, with no success. Now we just try to ignore it, hoping that if it doesn’t garner a reaction she’ll give it up. We tell guests walking in that, “the little dog will act psycho for about five minutes. Ignore her. She’ll be asking for a belly rub before you know it.” Because that’s usually how it works.

On this night, Dopey and I were sitting out on the balcony when Kim pulled up in front of my building. Valentine was in Dopey’s lap and when I called hello to Kim, I saw the dog’s nostrils flare and her ears stand to attention. The dog heard Kim’s footsteps on the stairs and went balls-out ape shit, literally throwing herself off of Dopey’s lap, landing on the floor of the balcony with such a loud thud that even Kim heard it. V-dawg looked a little stunned, but stood up and went right on back to barking like a frothy-mouthed maniac. I ran downstairs to let Kim in and warn her to ignore the hysterical barking. When we came back inside the apartment, Valentine was doing what she normally does, charging Kim’s legs and barking like she meant it. That was when I noticed the blood spatter all over the carpeting. Of course, I didn’t realize what it was at first. Why is the carpet covered in red polka dots? I wondered out loud. Ohhhhhhhhh shiiiiiiiiiiit. Ladies, looks like we won’t be getting dinner for a while. Anyone want to drive us to the emergency vet?

kimskitchensink

on the dopey ambulance

This is where I’d like to say that I have two of the best blogger girlfriends ever. Were they starving? Yes. Was our evening being taken over by a broken toenail? Yes. Did they care? Not at all. They just wanted to make sure Valentine was okay. Dopey grabbed my purse and the leash, Kim cleaned up the blood, and off we went.

The minute Valentine was in my arms she was completely subdued. She was perfectly still and quiet the whole way to the vet’s office. When we arrived, Dopey filled out paperwork so I could hold her. She was starting to shake, but she always gets the shakes at the vet. A vet tach came in and weighed her, took her temperature, listened to her heart and her lungs, told us her vitals were all good. This wound was not serious, she explained. Very painful, but not serious. They’d just need to clip the nail off and we’d be on our way home.

broken toenail

Toenails should not stick out at that angle. Ouch.

After the tech took Valentine into the back so the doctor could work on her, Dopey and Kim helped keep me calm by telling jokes, live tweeting the event, and taking photos like this:

is there something on my shirt

Do I have anything on my shirt?

The light-hearted banter worked, too. I was a little on edge, worried, but I was okay. Until suddenly I wasn’t. Kim was telling us a story about something, I can’t remember what now, because somewhere in the periphery of my hearing there was an animal screaming. One minute I was listening to Kim and the next minute my arms and legs were tingling and my vision was all swimmy and gray at the edges. A thought floated into my head: What’s happening to her?

“Is that Valentine screaming?” asked Dopey, horrified.

I leapt up and ran into the nurse’s station. “Is that Valentine screaming?” I asked, adrenaline soaring through me.

“No, ma’am. That is not your pet. That is a dog who ate snail bait. He’s in a lot of pain and we’re doing everything we can for him. But it’s not your pet. Your pet is with the doctor and she’s going to be just fine.”

After that, we three girls were pretty sober, saying little prayers for the dog who ate snail bait. We were lucky. Our little dog was going to be just fine. And she was. Is.

The broken toenail left a nerve exposed in her foot, so she’s in a lot of pain, even now, five days later. We’ve got her on anti-biotics and two kinds of pain medication, so she’s a little loopy. When we tried to take her for her first walk post-injury, we couldn’t help but laugh at the stoned little dog who couldn’t seem to remember why we were outside. She sat in the grass leaning so far to one side I thought she’d  tip over, staring sleepy-eyed over the edge of the e-collar, until her feet finally slid out from under her. Then she just lay there, staring up at us, looking very pathetic and miserable.

awfully pathetic

We think that when Valentine fell out of the chair, she caught her toenail on the edge and ripped it out. This maniacal barking at guests is clearly more than just an irritating behavioral issue – it’s dangerous to the little dog. If anyone can recommend a dog trainer in the West Valley who can help us train her to stay calm when guests come over, we’d really like the help.

21 Comments

Frost, August 18th 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Daily Life
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