Planting Time

We are back! Well, most of the way anyway. We have been spending time in the midwest with friends and family. Our first stop after leaving Lima was the home of Larry and Gundula, dear friends from Holden Village. They were our gracious hosts for four days after our return in their home on Lake Erie. We shared so much laughter (right Gundula) during those evenings, and went on walks on the shore and through local parks during the day. You learn new things about people all the time ... this time we learned how interested those two are in wildflowers.

Now we are back outside of Berne, Indiana at Matt's folks farm. It is planting season, and Gregg is out in the fields all day from early in the morning until after dark. I'm feeling planted too.

Photo: Matt and Betty (his Mom) down the road from their farm. Amish buggy in background.

Vamos a Lima

Well the last few days of our time in South America are here. Today we fly from the altiplano down to Lima, on the coast. We did some thinking the other day and figured out that we´ve been at over 8,000 feet in elevation for 2/3 of this trip, and at over 12,000 ft for almost half of it. We are sort of wondering how we will react when we land this evening down at sea level Lima. Maybe we will be able to run for long distances without rest or something. However, given our general lack of exercise during this trip, that is unlikely.

Please keep reading this blog. We intend to update it even after we get back.

The beach in Lima:

Uyuni

We are back in La Paz now, after an amazing, if somewhat tiring trip through the Salar de Uyuni, and the national volcanic reserve. Our adventures were numerous ... we left from the cold, desolate town of Uyuni on Saturday morning in a 4WD vehicle containing us, a nice British guy named David and a delightful Norwegian family. We headed out into the salt flats ... an amazing expanse (over 100km wide in some places) of salt desert. At its edge the salar is only about 30 cm thick, but in the middle there can be over 100 meters of salt underfoot. There are islands of cactus and rock in this salt sea. We visited one on our way.

That night we stayed in a hostel composed completely of salt blocks, with a salt floor! Early the next morning we watched the sun rise over the desert and headed up into the very high mountains to see volcanos, rare endangered animals like the vacuña and the andean fox, and stranger things still. Such as a flocks of wild flamingos feeding in mineral lakes that slowly trun bright red or green during the course of the day due to the presence of micro-organisms in their water. Also ... Borax mines, bubbling hot springs and mud gysers, desolate volcanos, and the desert and rock formations that inpsired many of Salvador Dali´s paintings. At the extreme, we went all the way down into the desolate corner of the world where Argentina, Chile and Bolivia all meet (we even walked over the Chilean border a few yards!) ....

I´ll put some pictures of this part of our journey up, as words simply do not do the place justice. By the way, we almost didn´t make it out of Uyuni due to a confluence of events, including a power outage through the whole town, a mysteriously cancelled train, and a broken tourist bus. Thanks to strings pulled by the friendly Norwegians, we eventually got one of the few remaining bus tickets out of town that night, leaving behind an army of angry Israeli backpackers. Frozen Uyuni is not the place you really want to get stranded. Thankfully we were not, although the overnight bus trip was far from comfortable.

Tomorrow we go back to Peru and within a week we will be in Miami! We´ll see many of you soon.

MP

Potosi Underworld

I wish I could post photos right now, but like I posted last time, our beautiful card reader is MIA. In any case, we spent a couple of days in the historic city of Potosì, the source of most of the Spanish empire´s wealth in the new world. From the mountain named Cerro Rico which towers over the chilly city (it´s located at 4100 meters, that´s about 13,000 feet) the spanish, and now the Bolivians have extracted millions of tonnes of silver, lead, tin and zinc ore, which is processed in small local smelters and shipped all over the world.

In the old days, the silver in partuclar was fairly pure and relatively near the surface, and thus easy to extract and process. Since the 1800s, however, it has been necessary to delve deeper into the mountain to find anything of value. Now the mines are so spent and the work so hard that large companies have abandoned the mines altogether, and they are operated only by small cooperatives of miners. Matt and I went on a tour of one of these cooperative mines.

The first stop was the mercado minero, where we bought items to give to the miners as gifts (this is customary when visiting the mines.) The usual gifts are bags of coca leaves, cigarettes, bottles of pop and (I kid you not!) sticks of dynamite. All of these things (along with puro, a kind of everclear drink consisting of 96% pure alcohol) were available from various shops for a minimal cost (a stick of dynamite with detonator and bag of amonium nitrate costs $2.50.) Off to the mines we went. The tunnels were very small to begin with ... I had to duck my head and then crawl for the entire 2 hours we were underground. We did have helmets and protective suits. Deeper in the mine, the temperature increased to about 90 degrees and the air was thick with a fine dust consisting of fine silicate particles. Occasionally we would have to move to the side of the shaft to make way for a hand operated railcar full of ore on its way out of the mine. Soon we were deeper in the mine, and had to crawl for lack of space.

We met several miners. One man had been working down in the mine for over 24 years. He had 4 kids, and made about 50 bolivianos a day (about $6.70) Matt L talked to a 17 year old miner deep down in the mine who had been working all day at hand-hammering a dynamite shaft in the rock. He had to lay down on his stomach to fit in the small space in which he was working. We left the mine sort of stunned and shocked. On our way out we met 2 other miners who couldn`t have been more than 15 years old. Then there was a dynamite demonstration, and we were done.

The conditions under which these miners work are unbelievable. Many can only work for a few years before they are sickened by silicosis or cancer. I`ve never seen anything like it. Since the days of slavery and Spanish rule, it is estimated that over 8,000,000 people have died working the mines at Potosi.

Sweet Sucre

Hello all ... here we are in the beautiful city of Sucre, city of amorous young couples, city of whilewashed colonial palacios, chocolate capital of the upper Andes, home of the best tapas in South America, and place where Simon Bolivar, libertador of libertadores, told to Spanish where to get off. It´s also the city in which we lost or cheap but long serving little card reader (we didn´t lose any photos, just the reader) so for now, I will have to supply a canned photo of this superlative Bolivian capital.

For indeed, though La Paz may have unjustly stolen the title of ¨capital¨ in some absurd civil war or other, any sureño will quickly tell you that Sucre is indeed the seat of all legitimate authority in Bolivia, as evidenced by the fact that the supreme court still sits here. Lately, Sucre has made headlines by being the city in which Bolivia´s new constitution is being negotiated. This political drama has in recent months intensified into somewhat of a war between president Evo Morales and his shrinking cadre of supporters, and the rest of the country who live outside of La Paz. So ours is not the only nation with an unpopular president. The main issues surround autonomy for Bolivia´s regions, such as the one containing this fairest of cities.

Today Matt and I were in the town of Tarabuco (about 60 km and somewhat higher than apline Sucre.) On Sunday, the little town explodes into activity with a market, at which you can buy very distinctive hand woven shawls, blankets and ponchos that are only found in this little region. Matt and I now own some. We also saw many fellows who looked kind of like this gentleman (in fact this gentleman may have tried to sell us artisania several times, he looks rather familiar.) The market wasn´t exactly tranquil, as tourists are generally attacked by vendors like sharks to bloody fishmeal, but it was an exciting day.

We are getting more and more toward the end of this awesome journey, but we still have some hilights left. In particular, we are looking forward to seeing the city fo Potosì (we will be the Wednesday and Thursday of this week) and then to heading to this place:

The great Salar de Uyuni, the world´s largest salt desert and home of many dead buses, aparently. Hopefully our mode of transport will not end up like this. The Salar is on the Bolivia/Chile border, at over 11,500 feet. It´s home to some of the strangest landscapes on earth, inlcuding lakes that are bright green and bright red and huge flocks of flamingos. Wish us luck. Much love.

MP

Down the Road

Well late last week we left our temporary home in Montero, saying goodbye to kids and housemates, and headed for the hills. Our first stop was the cool (in every sense of the word) town of Samaipata, where we spent Holy week. Samaipata is up in the mountains a ways, and is consequently free of the horrible heat and many, if not all, of the mosquitoes, that we had been fighting in recent weeks.

We were in Samaipata for Holy Week, which was very cool indeed. On good friday a procession of several thousand people took Jesus out of his chapel in the town church (which, incidentally had an amazing gold sanctum) and took him on a funeral procession around the town, stopping at each of 13 houses which had been prepared as stations of the cross. At each, the priest said a prayer over the loud speaker and there was singing as the walk continued. There must have been an army base near Samaipata, beacuase there were always young soldiers lolling around the plaza with nothing to do. On good friday, however, they were pressed into action as Jesus´ body guards.

We left Samaipata on an overnight bus that traversed a mostly dirt road for about 12 hours up into the mountains, finally arriving at Bolivia´s judicial capital, the lovely city of Sucre. Somewhere in there I (MattP) started feeling kind of sick, a condition from which I am still recovering. Matt L has started some spanish lessions, and I will too when I get my voice back. Until then, I will rest and enjoy the inexpensive fresh juice which friendly women sell all over this city. More on Sucre soon. It really is a cool place.

MP

Grandma

Dear friends, family and loved ones who read this blog:
I just learned a few hours ago about the death of my Grandma Liechty. From what little I've gathered up to now, she died peacefully Wednesday evening. Her viewing is happening even as I write this. I wish I could be there.

This is not unexpected. I spoke with my mom and dad this past weekend and knew that she was not doing well. She was 96 and had been in declining health for a quite awhile. I'm grateful for the end of her suffering. And I'm grateful for her long and, until the last few years, very healthy life. She drove until she was 90 and lived independently until 5 years ago. And I'm grateful that she lived a life full of love, both given and received. And I'm grateful to have had a grandma that I (and the rest of my family) at times got such a kick out of!!!

It is a good, good life.
ML