Sierra Blogging Post Archives

Join The Blogging Post as we head around-the-world with our friends Drew & Erin. They’ll be sending us regular dispatches and updates from around, across, and all over the globe. This is their first post from Bolivia…

Bolivia

While I was sad to leave incredibly beautiful, yet unsung, northern Argentina... it was time to move on. Erin and I had plans to stay with a local family in Tarija, a city across the border in the south of Bolivia. To get from Salta, Argentina, to Tarija, Bolivia, we faced an arduous two days of travel through the hot, humid, and green territory of northwest Argentina and southwest Bolivia.



After spending the night in the underwhelming town of Oran in a bleak, dingy hotel (the kind of place you cannot wait to leave because there are stains on the walls and you fear for bed bugs), we crossed the border at the remote outpost of Bermejo. This is not a common border crossing for foreigners, a point that was driven home when we crossed the Bermejo River by small watercraft and there was no sign of an immigration office on the far side. We had to seek out the border office ourselves and actually take a taxi three kilometers down the road to get there. Not exactly what you'd call a secure border.

The stark difference between the heavily-guarded and secure Argentine side of the river and the lax, open Bolivian side was a clear sign that Bolivia was a far different place than the countries we had come from in South America. While Argentina and Chile are two of the wealthiest and more advanced nations in South America, Bolivia is the poorest with about two-thirds of its people living in poverty, often as subsistence farmers. It is also one of the most interesting and one that faces many challenges.

First and foremost, its landscape is one of the most formidable and imposing of any country that I have visited. To begin with, it is totally landlocked, owing to a war it lost to Chile in the late 1800's. The western part of the country is a huge, high-altitude plateau known as the Altiplano with an average height above 11,000 feet. On the eastern edge of the Altiplano are a number of towering mountain ranges that soar to over 21,000 feet. Then from the mountains, the land slopes steeply away to the east in a fruitful belt of land that is one of the most productive and wealthier parts of the country. That land falls father away to the east, the jungles of the Amazon basin and the Brazilian and Paraguayan borders.

In addition to a wild physical landscape, the country also has a colorful demographic landscape. Bolivia has the highest proportion of indigenous people of any country on the continent with a native population of roughly 60%. This native majority includes mainly Quechua- and Aymara- speaking people who still have strong cultural identities and traditions. The non-native portion of the population consists of mestizo (a mix of native and white) and white people, mostly of Spanish descent. With this backdrop, the country is in the midst of a dynamic, swirling political situation in which socialist leader Evo Morales, the country's first indigenous head of state, is making radical reforms including nationalizing industries, trying to enact land reform, and attempting to write a new constitution. These reforms are widely supported among the poor, indigenous groups who live in the highlands but are quite unpopular with the residents of the wealthier eastern regions around Santa Cruz, Tarija, and Sucre. These eastern regions are taking their own political steps to oppose these changes, including votes for autonomy and even potential secession. All together this wild mix of different lands, peoples, cultures, and politics adds up to a very colorful and intriguing place to travel.

Fortunately, Erin and I had some newfound friends of friends in Bolivia and, as a result, had an opportunity to get somewhat of an insider experience. We were invited by a friend of Erin's, who grew up in Bolivia but now lives in the U.S., to stay with her family in Tarija. Tarija is a pleasant city of about 170,000 people in the productive temperate belt of southeast Bolivia with a host of churches, plazas, and parks sprinkled throughout the downtown. The family we stayed with consists of the mother Anna, father Justino, and their fourteen-year-old son Fernando, who is the youngest of four and the only child still living at home. His older siblings having gone off to university and professional jobs in the U.S., Peru, and elsewhere in Bolivia. The Perales family lives in a modern, comfortable Western-style home, and they treated us like family. They were amazingly generous and giving, and we ate like kings for our entire stay.

Erin and I value the opportunity to stay with local people whenever we get the chance because it allows us a window into life in a foreign place that we would not otherwise get the chance to see or experience from a strictly tourist or backpacker standpoint. In this case, the family spoke strictly Spanish so it was another great chance to enhance and expand our language skills. We also had an opportunity to eat the delicious home cooking of Anna who was like a mom away from home to us. We enjoyed three hearty meals a day and had a taste of Bolivian delicacies such as saice, grilled dorado, and a beef asado (barbecue) Tarija-style A pleasant surprise that added to the local flavor was the quality of wine that is produced in Tarija. A tasty bottle of local Tarija wine costs only 10 bolivianos, or just over $1.50.

We also had the pleasure of following Anna around town to gain insights into day-to-day life in Tarija. We joined her for a visit to the raucous campesino's market to pick out some fish for dinner. Campesino is the name for the poor native peasants or farmers in Bolivia, and their market is a wild frenzy of farmers and fisherman and merchants hawking everything under the sun with music blaring, crowds swarming, and the smell of food wafting through the air. Anna went from vendor to vendor before selecting and bargaining for the largest, freshest fish she could find. Then we made our way to another area where families would clean and dress the fish for a pittance. Six- and eight-year-old sons and daughters were working side by side with moms and dads and grandmas cleaning the scales off the fish with the equivalent of a barbecue grill brush and then slicing the fish and removing their innards. With fish scales flying, the traditional music cranking, and sellers hawking goods everywhere, it was a wild and colorful scene.

Later that day we joined Anna for a trip to Catholic mass on the religious holiday of Corpus Christi. About 80% of Bolivia`s population is Roman Catholic, often with a unique blend of native and Christian beliefs forming their religious makeup. This day we stood in the main, rear doorway of the majestic cathedral among a standing-room-only crowd in which hundreds of people spilled out into the square behind the church. The bishop led the mass that day and subsequently led a parade through the town after the ceremony, complete with police, armed forces, marching bands, and crowds of local people joining the procession. It was another very colorful Bolivian scene that we were fortunate to witness.

Being invited into the Perales home, enjoying their hospitality, and joining in their everyday lives for a week was a fascinating experience that we would not have otherwise enjoyed without their kindness and generosity. We owe a huge debt to them and have offered to host any of their family members that visit the U.S. as a gesture of thanksgiving. In fact, one of the lessons I want to take away from this year of travel is a desire to be as generous of a host to other travelers as I can in the future. Countless times on this trip we have had people open their homes to us or otherwise go out of their way to be generous and helpful, and I aim to pay that forward in the future. But alas, after a wonderful and welcome stay in Tarija it was time for us to make the long journey north across the Altiplano to La Paz for a visit there with some other newfound friends of friends as our Bolivian journey continues.

PHOTOS

Photo #1 - Our new friends Anna and Justino
Photo #2 - The Bolivian landscape
Photo #3 - The colorful campesino's market
Photo #4 - El dorado