28/10/2008
Happy moments in Salta, Argentina
This is how happy the children look when we happen to meet another travelling family and they can play a few days with French children( Who can explain why there only seem to be French families on the road ? We met 4 French ones and know a lot more from word of mouth, but only one German one otherwise). The "14 pattes", a family with 3 children as well joined us in Salta, North of Argentina, in a beautiful and green camping.
Then started the enjoyment of the Argentinian barbecue with the amazing meat and quite a few other tavellers...
To wake up at the singing od birds is a wonderful thing....
The salta camping, with the table where the children study... they can't wait for the holidays, next week... hurray !
.... thankfully among them, there was Franck, from Lausanne, who, together with Stephane spent 3 days fixing the electrical problems of the Tremelody, which is now as good as new and ready for new adventures! Thank you Franck ! (this name is an amazing one, as it consistently produces amazing people )
Chuquicamata, the biggest open air mine
We didn't get to Chile witout pain ! We got lost in the dusty roads without a sign or a man to ask " where is the next village?". You should have heard Stephane mumbling in the middle of a deserting land " where are the Bolivians ??????".
We got stuck in the sand with no one in sight, and one hour later had to maddly run to a 4x4 riding in a nearby road for help. With 10 children on board of its pick up, a bolivian family was kind enough to hoist us ( only the 2nd time in 3 months, not bad !) and it was with immens pleasure that we got to the next village! By the end of that whole day of driving, we had covered only 100 km reached the border and slept there, quite happy to have gone through minutes before the customs closed.
This is the huge mine of copper of Chuquicamata, north Chile. 5km wide and 1 km deep.
Disguised as Bob the Builder, we observe.....
....the biggest trucks in the world ! They use in one day 2 years worth of diesel for a normal car ! These enormous tyres wear out after only a year and are recycled. The trucks are 8 metres wide and carry 400 tons of minerals!
Once again, as in Potosi, the mines are in the middle of an enormous desert : the Atacama desert, the driest in the world. Here, it has not rained for 2 years.
Last filling from a jerry can. Thankfully, people on the way helped us to this, which requires a bit of a "savoir faire" to start the filling process, that is if you don't want to find yourself with the mouth full of diesel ( a pretty bad taste, I can insure you !).
Geysers of Tatio in the Atacama desert
San Pedro de Atacama is an amazing oasis in the middle of the desert.
After the remoteness of south west Bolivia and the poverty there, it is a weird feeling to get to this very touristic destination, which looks more like a holiday club than a Chilean town, so filled with people from al over the world who com to see natural wonders of this area.
It is worth the trips. Our first amazing discovery was the observation of stars thanks to a French astronomer settled in San Pedro. Why there ? the dryness ( no clouds !) of the climate and the lack of surrounding lights : we could observe stars down to the horizon. Alain is a passionate astronomer and the girls were very enthusiastic about this visit. Thomas was...
sleeping in our arms.
sleeping in our arms.
If you wake up at 4, drive up 2 hours on a bad road north from San Pedro de Atacama, and get out of the car by -12 C, you will find yourself surrounded by steaming water rising from the earth
By 8 o clock, it's only 0 C and then you can have a bath in the steaming warm water, not too near from the burning ones though, which are at 85 C ! ( Caroline did not go in... we still wonder how Thomas did it, undressing and dressing in this cold weather! Who said this child doesn' like water ?)
The, you can see the flamingos...
and a beautiful sunset in another " Valle de la Luna" (above) where the ground, all hard and salty with round shapes really seems to be " lunatic " ! A very long day for us ( only 4 hours sleep with the observation of the stars the day before !)
Encounter with Quinoa producers
As we have done in other countries, we are keen to meet some fair trade producers. So we approach ANAPQUI in La Paz, representing 8 regional cooperatives, who then direct us to SOPROQUI, one of their main cooperative.
SOPROQUI is located in Uyuni, one of the poorrest area in Bolivia. We are warmly welcomed there on the 13th of October. Reinaldo, in charge of sales offers to contact one of their 120 groups of producers in Villa Candelaria, a tiny village by the Salar of Uyuni . As they cannot be reached by telephone or e mail, one of the producers who happens to be here working at SOPROQUI will bring them the message when he returns.
Above is a picture of pink quinoa at the SOPROQUI, Uyuni. There, crops are gathered, cheked for quality and dispatched. There are 3 varieties of Quinoa: pink, dark red and white, the one that we mostly consume. It is a fast growing market in the west.
After visiting the Salar, we reach Villa Candelaria where the message of our arrival has just been dispatched.
Very quindly, the agronomist in charge of advising and controling the organic standards for SOPROQUI ( on the right with the plaited hair; she visits the communities in the area every month) offers to organize a meeting with the group of producers, 14 of them. The meeting takes place in a little hotel recently built by one of the families in the village. It is entirely made of salt bricks cut directly from the salar, each of them weighing 15 kg, 20 000 bricks in total!
It is very moving to see the diverse people around the table. Some very old ( or prematurely aged ?) women, some good natured middle aged men, a few younger men and women as well. From this 2 hours discussion, we uderstood that :
- Since working under the fairtrade standards, 5 years ago, they are paid better.
- Growing Quinoa is very hard work because everything here, from ploughing, sowing, harvesting, winnowing ( vanner) is done by hand and because the grain is so fine
- weather does not always allow Quinoa growing: last year, for example was to dry to sow Quinoa
- Quinoa is too expensive to find a local market. The only locals who consume it are the farmers. Although they had abandonned Quinoa, since working with SOPROQUI on Quinoa, 15 years ago, they have once again started to eat it.
- when not able to earn from Quinoa, farmers have to seek work in mining.
and is very tiny ( here only a month). AN amazing fact is that during the first 3 months of its life, the Quinoa plant will not recieve a drop of water. Then, during the 3 months of the raining season, il will grow at a very fast pace. Its predators are the Vicunas ( sort of wild graceful lama) and the rabbits. This plant is the only cereal that can survive at this altitude ( 3600M here, up to 4000m9 .
Salar of Uyuni... a white desert
The immense dried lake of salt in Uyuni is a one of the mythic places in South America and we are very exited to reach it at last.
We reach it much later than we had thought(4:30 PM) . Indeed, as is not unusual in Bolivia, the petrol stations were all out of diesel. We can't afford to go without because we are then driving straight to the Chilian border and we have 300 km of dust road to cover without a petrol station. So, we even fill up two 20 litres containers to make sure we'll get there!
Thankfully Stephane, our very organized driver has bought a compas so we won't get lost, alas ! Compasses don't work here because of the " lithum" deposits underneath the Salar (The world's biggest lithium deposit, that is also threatening the Salar of Uyuni's futur because the governement wants to exploit it). Not only that, but we take the first obvious route marked by black tyre marks..... and, after a couple of hours, it appears to be the wrong choice. We don't seem to be reaching the island we wanted to sleep on. Finally, just before sunset, we get to a shore which is far from what we expected, but we're glad we didn't get lost on the Salar!
From the Island Incahuasi, we have a better idea about the size of the Salar : 10 000 Km2. It's an easy ride : we drive at 80km/hour here ! In this picture, you can see Tremelody at the bottom. Hundreds of Cactuses inhabit the island, some hundreds of years old and 10 metres high. We look tiny compared to them. In the morning, we see hardly anybody and think how desertic this place has remained.
When we come back in the afternoon, and see 40 4x4 cars we are a bit shocked ! We spend a long time playing on the Salar : ball, making bubles, reading... and thinking about our friends and family with whom we would so much like to share this amazing landscape.
Would life have any meaning witout playing football ?
Potosi, a mining town
Around Sucre, nature is less dry, we see a few trees again and not the least beautiful! There cover entire hills.
Potosi is a beautiful town with a sad story that still goes on today.
The Spanish conquistadores quickly found out that the Cerro Ricco ( see the last picture below) was simply a mountain of silver. As one can imagine, thousands of Indian and later ( "thanks" to the triangular trade) African were exploited in these mine which made the Spanish kings immensely richs. Thousands of tons of silver were exported to Europe during these years. The typical Frech expression " C'est le Perou " comes from the fabulous richness the Cerro Rico has poured out onto the western world .
Today mining it is still the main economic activity in this region, although, by now, there is hardly anything left in the 100th of metres of mining galleries. As it is no longer profitable, the state and big companies have withdrawn from it, leaving exhausted self employed miners to exploit themselves in these mines: most of the time, there is no alternative for them.
From its former grandeur, Potosi has kept some lovely building, but is nowhere as wealthy and light hearted as its neighbour town Sucre.
As in most colonial town, convents are jewels of this archtecture.
The Cerro Rico, which looms over the town of Potosi, is now full of undreds of metres of mining galleries.
Sucre, a charming town, with a French library, Hurray, says Manon !
The Constitutional Capital, they call it, because it here the Bolivar, out of the blue, proclaimed Bolivia independent, then there was war and he won.
A town with a lovely architecture, peaceful, and full of the amazing textiles that Bolivia produces. Of all the countries with an Inca heritage, it is the one that best kept the skills and originality of the textile designs. The surrounding areas each have a strong esthetic idendity that you can see here : some only weave red and black, others have the most coloured and naive kind of designs.
For all these reasons, it is very touristic, neat and wealthy.
We found a shop selling fairly traded textiles, from a few communities in the surroundings. Nice to see ! We had already seen one in Ollantaytambo, near the Machu Picchu, run by a lovely american woman volunteering there for a year.
We loved this old Cedar ( lovely memories from Lebanon aroused !), planted some 1400 years ago, at the time of the first Spanish conquistadors !
To sourround 8 people are needed.
10 mn walk from here is the Alliance Francaise where we spend 2 afternoons out of the 3 days in Sucre, so eager we are to read those French books and magazine, especially Manon who has been reading the same books sometimes 10 times in a row. She would not leave the library before closing time !
What would Bolivia be without its markets ? A place where we feel at ease, find everything on the cramped stalls cramming there stuffs up to the ceiling, and have a chat with people who are so easily approachable. Like many, this potatoe seller wants to keep one of the girls, Romane this time. They love the fair skin and hair ! Romane is not so keen and I have to explain this to the lady. All ends up in a good laugh !
On potatoes: a very ancient dish here, it was already cultivated by the Incas, who had a technique to dry them so that they could last a few years ( the Chunos). This technique is still widely used by poor farmers who rely on it to survive. Around 30 different species of potatoes exist here : the numerous blue bags on the picture above each contain a different sort !
Around La Paz
The "Valle de la Luna" is a lovely little valley, with amazing shapes created by water erosion . The colors at sunset are beautiful on these reliefs. In fact the whole area is on the same style, some places beige like here, other ocres and red. No wonder it was chosen by the richest people in La Paz to become the posh area.
This place is 5 minutes away from the hotel where we stay.
Political instability is one of the reason why we won´t stay long in Bolivia. Just before we entered the country, the roads were blocked; this is what people do here when they protest. Other travellers we met were exiting the country because of that, and there was some threat of more "bloqueos". The northern and western regions, the wealthiest ones ( Santa Cruz has by now become the economic capital) are claiming more autonomy and this has led to a few violent demonstrations where around 10 people have died in September ( you might have read in the press.) At the time, there was a threat of more demonstrations and bloqueos., so, we decied to spend only 3 weeks in Bolivia, during which we did not experience any problem of bloqueos ( but some others !).
We become accustomed to the mini buses, an effective and cheap way to get around in this huge city, but you´d better know exactly where you are stopping, and shout it to the driver not like Caroline going around town because she missed her stop ! Here, Romane and Thomas are looking happy because our minibus was blessed in Copacabana ( as written in golden letters above the windscreen) so nothing wrong can happen !
"Las Cholas", this is how the Bolivian women in their typical costumes are called. The most striking featuring is perhaps this bowler hats (chapeaux melon) made out of rabbit´s hair ( angora) that seem to me better suited to the London City than here! Why these hats have to be a few sizes too small and unpractically stand at the top of your head, preferably sideways, remains a mystery to us!
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