Theremin

This last weekend I went to Plaza Yungay (in spanish it sounds like "and a gay") to check out their festival. The Yungay barrio was trying to prevent tall appartments from being built, preserve their culture and keep the place clean.

One band with a gipsy folk style came out with a theremin. The guy who played it was their guitarist and he made a little speech about it before the song. He actually got a melody out of the theremin and not just a special effect.

Same hat different stories

On the metro I saw a blind man finding his way to a seat. When I saw that he was wearing a Florida Marlins baseball cap I remembered that I used to have the same one. The one I had I won at some game in Las Vegas many years ago (at least ten). His looked almost as old and had the inner rim turned inside out with the tag sticking out. It made me wonder what a different experience that hat goes through than my old one.

My butt hurts but not because of Matt OK

I'm sitting on the floor of the Baquedano metro station because there is free wifi here. The library closes at 8pm so I think this is what I'll be doing for the next three weeks when I want to get online.

Hopefully by next week I'll be building something at the Plaza de los Dominicos with constructor Enrique Rebolledo.

Trip Summary

I just came back from an intense one month trip through Chile, Bolivia and Peru. I'll sum things up city by city.

Antofagasta:
I thought I was going to stay here overnight because I arrived from Santiago (17 hour trip) at 8am. I walked around trying to find a laundrymat but the one that Lonely Planet points out was gone and the other one that someone told me about was under construction. Then I walked with my dirty clothes (didn't have time back in Santiago to wash them) around the pier and the historic center and decided that this city was not very interesting. So I went to buy the next bus ticket to San Pedro de Atacama.

San Pedro de Atacama:
Awesome!!! I got to go sandboarding, but the ride to the dunes was tought because I was crazy enough to get there on bike. Oh, also, I met up with kids from Stanford that are studying abroad in Chile. I'd met Shira the week before when I went up to the cordillera to go hiking.
Even crazier than going sandboarding was riding a bike to Valle de la Luna which was a 15km ride. The way there was ok and the sunset was spectacular. But then the ride back, even though it was downhill, took place at night with trucks and cars passing me by on the highway. The big rigs were the ones that pushed me around with their currents.

I'm Still Alive!

I'm back in Chile...Iquique!

The Saddest Trip to Machu Picchu Ever

I was even wearing her Stanford t-shirt when she broke up with me.

The ride to Machu Picchu was the loneliest ever. The broken pieces of my heart were cutting a hole in the pit of my stomach.

Granted, its my fault for leaving, my fault for following a dream.

Before, when I was traveling by myself I didn't feel alone because I had the reasurance that she was still my girl. The break has come at a time when I'm the most alone, the furthest from home, with no friends and sick from the food. This takes away the courage I had to travel.

This trip has cost me the one thing I valued most in my life. Now there is mostly uncertainty and only a bit of hope.

Peru Here I Am

Man, that was a rough ride from La Paz, Bolivia to Cusco. I left at 8am and got to my hostal at 11pm (10pm Peru time). On the way here I saw a lot of half finished houses and apparently that's done to avoid paying taxes on the house, jaja.

As I was running errands this morning in Cusco, there was a Halloween parade starting at Plaza de Armas. It turned a bit violent when kids on top of the church threw water and other things down at the paraders.

I'm uploading photos and man, the internet is twice as fast here as in Bolivia. The downside is that it rains every day now.

Time to go visit some Inka ruins

Alaxpacha

Is the name of the group that I watched last night at the Municipal Theater of La Paz. Right now there's a political campaign to move congress and the president's office to Sucre. A pacheño (person from La Paz) told me that one reason is to bring more jobs of Sucre. But he also said that people from Sucre are often called locos because the country's largest mental institution is in Sucre. Apparently there's also an east/west rivalry in Bolivia (jaja, reminds me of gansta rap) where the two groups, cambas and cayas dislike each other. For example, if a person from Santa Cruz were to come to a disco in La Paz there would probably be a fight. The more important part is that the different regions, besides their rivalries, are continuing to develop their different music dance styles (for example chacarrera in Tarija). This reminds me, my favorite dance here is not the cueca, but the diablada. And one of my favorite andean songs is Señora Chichera (video).

Well, back to Alaxpacha. One of the music video dvds that I bought at the sunday market has their videos so I'm excited about finding a dvd player back in Chile.

In other news, I can't find Bolivian violins in La Paz. They would be located in Tarija or Santa Cruz (the part of Bolivia I didn't visit). They're interesting because one is three stringed with alternating tuning and the other is just a hollow stick with a bridge and pegs. I've found a bunch of wind instruments, though. Don't know how I'm going to travel with so many instruments.

BTW, I leave for Peru tomorrow morning at 8:00. Its a 12 hour trip to Cuzco so hopefully everything goes well and I'll be back online sometime Wednesday.

Tonight I'm going to travel back up to El Alto to interview another wind instrument artisan. Today I interviewed Señor Walata, which was more of a chat about the topless beaches of Barcelona than about the instruments because he too has traveled to Barcelona.

No visit to a 3rd World country would be complete without...

Yesterday was the Sunday market in El Alto, a town next to La Paz and by next to I mean on top of the plato overlooking La Paz. One of my greatest achievements so far has to be being able to take public transportation. This SoCal guy was so used to driving everywhere that catching a bus to El Alto (2 Bolivianos) was no small feat.

There was everything from alternators to a Chavo del Ocho stuffed doll. I bought lots of music and music video DVDs.

My visit to Bolivia wouldn't have been complete if I hadn't gotten the runs. Great! Now I can move on to another 3rd world country. The food here tastes great, but it doesn't go well with my stomach. Neither did the pitchers of an orange cocktail I drank Saturday night. To back up, Saturday evening I went to Peña Parsona Bolivia to watch my charango instructor play with his group Waipala. (The name of the group is also the name of the indigenous flag which has become a big symbol now that Evo Morales is president). That peña was filled with tourists and the ten dollar cover charge felt like a huge hit to my wallet because everything else in Bolivia is so cheap (for example the 5 Bol. cover charge for the Jamuy peña/disco).

Well, after their show I hung out with my teacher, the drummer and their manager as we went peña hopping. Gota de Agua, had a cultural group playing with large drums that they carried on one shoulder and each of them playing a different style of zampoña. This is where that orange drink came into play. But as long as I don't get the stomach flu or something worse I'll manage.

¿Mande?

Jaja, on my trip trough Bolivia there's been several times when people correctly identify that I'm from Mexico. At first I thought it was because I'd grown a mustache, but the real reason I found out was when I say mande. Its an automatic response for me when I didn't understand what someone said. So much for my mexican mustach.