A farewell to legs (hello arms)

Hola! Bueno, ya salimos de La Paz mañana! Nos despedimos de las piernas porque vamos por el salar de Uyuni, Laguna Colorada, etc. Eso significa que no vamos a pedalear mucho sino que vamos a empujar! Entonces, no vamos a estar en contacto un ratito por internet. Pero no se preocupen ... seguiremos con el blog cuando volvamos a la civilizacion! :c) Un beso y un abrazo a todos que nos han ayudado aqui en La Paz. Tengo ganas seguir la ruta (ya no nos falta mucho para terminar!) pero estoy agradecido haber conocido a tanta gente buena. Gracias!

Hey all, just a note to say that we probably won´t be blogging for a couple of weeks. We are headed into SW Bolivia, which is extremely rural. We have been stocking up on lots of extra food which thankfully is getting a ride up the hill out of La Paz. Our casa de ciclistas hosts are taking it up in their jeep, but we´ll labor up the 13 kilometers with Cristian and two Germans (one of who´s bike frame broke worse than Eric´s!) Anyway, we´ll be spending our days pushing our bikes through sandy, washboard tracks in order to see all the beautiful scenery that we hear is there. We´ll get back to you when we return to civilization...

PS

Newly refinished floor!

Bock and President

Eric starting his wheel rebuild

Eric's alter ego

Oreo cake!


By the way, we are Big.Fat.Liars. We just bought our homeward bound tickets today. We have exactly 3 months and 5 days to make it to...Buenos Aires! What can we say, we saved 300 bucks that way :c)

Peace out La Paz

Guy, Max and Eric

Nick's amazing pants

Eric, Chris, Mer, Nick

Cristian, Jacob, Morton, Eric, Mer

Martin, Victor, and Jan packing their bikes for their flights back to Europe


Our stay in La Paz is quickly coming to a close...I can't believe we've already been here for three weeks! We have been getting to know lots of great people here at the casa de ciclistas, and it has been truly lovely sharing meals, going out for drinks, and eating giant oreo cakes while playing cards until three in the morning. Thank you to all of you who have made this a cozy home away from home for us! Our stay began with Benoit, a Frenchman riding his bike around the world with the aid of a few plane rides. He is currently en route to the US from Lima and will be eating a jar of peanut butter for Eric when he gets there! Our friend Mia also arrived here, a special guest in the house of bike, motor and pedal, tourists. She was only here a couple of days, but we had a ton of fun together...even though she was subjected to a high percentage of bathroom humor given the state of our bowels at the time! Before leaving she gifted us a miniature roll of toilet paper, "For good digestive health," in the coming year. Next up were two Danes...Jacob and Morton. They had just recently begun their trip, and we were soooo jealous of the impeccable state of their gear! They proved to be super friendly, and we enjoyed having their company. Three guys from Slovakia were also here during that time - Jan, Victor, and Martin. They were good photo subjects and left us tons of canned and dried products for us to take with us to SW Bolivia where provisions are scarce. They also left us some delish tea of three varieties which we greatly appreciate as we are now religiously boiling tap water! Max, who we met in Puno, was our hero when he arrived here with our spokes from a friend in Seattle. Piset was awesome and managed to get us a whole new set of spokes so Eric could rebuild his rear wheel - you rock!! Max didn't get to stay long, but he cooked us an amazing meal for Cristian's birthday (the owner of the casa de ciclistas). Two great motorcycle tourists also made their way to the casa...Guy from Switzerland, and Estefan from France. Eric and I have decided that we really must learn French! Our friend Antonio from Peru also caught up with us, even though he took a different route. We went out to play pool together, eat popcorn and have some beer since the movie theater decided not to play the film we planned to see. "There's a 15 person minimum." We were the only people there, so... Last but not least were Chris and Nick, two highly entertaining Brits that showed us how to play President until the wee hours of the morning. On top of quoting Napoleon Dynamite for several days and reading aloud about the normalcy of Wife Spanking from a '60s marriage manual, we ate spaghetti, pancakes, and aforementioned cake, and had several cups of tea together. It was all around lovely!

In other news our 'work' has been keeping us rather busy. We currently have two part time jobs: volunteering at the school, and sprucing up the apartment. Working at the school is easier in the morning with the little kids because they are fresh and generally in good spirits. The afternoon is a bit more challenging as the kids have already been in school all day and are just wanting to play rather than do a second school day. In the house our most recent, and biggest, project has been refinishing the wood floors. Over the course of three days we scrubbed the filthy planks with steel wool and applied two fresh coats of wax by hand. We FINALLY finished this morning, but it looks great. Now we are on to the last phase of our stay here, which is to get all of our ducks in order. Buy food and some warm clothing, find gasoline for our camp stove, get other random odds and ends, and also finish building Eric's wheel.

In actual news, I hope the senate overturns what the house of reps has voted for. Nixing funding for AmeriCorps, Planned Parenthood, PBS and NPR? Seriously, how can we be doing this?

Another thing that made me sad here was a conversation that I had about what it was like to be female and travel through Peru by bicycle, particularly on the coast. Basically it sucked. Not only was it absolutely infuriating to be constantly subjected to insults and harrassment, both verbal and physical, but it was sad to hear from Peruvian women that change was not anywhere in sight. I was trying to express my anger and sadness both for myself and for the men and women stuck in their cultural hedgemony to a group of acquaintances last weekend and was astounded by the reactions I was met with. Rather than agree that change needs to happen in relation to misogyny and opression of women (and therefore men...gender roles here are quite strong and inflexible) everyone seemed to agree that I just needed to "accept reality," that my discontent was "in my head," and that what happened to us was somehow our fault or worsened because of "how we acted and reacted - or didn't." It was very sad indeed...amazing that people still choose to blame the oppressed for the oppressors' actions...and that some men are still unbelievably ignorant as to the lived experiences of women around the planet, both positive and negative. I'm rolling up my sleeves even further because this cause is going to span the rest of my life. Thank you to all the men and women I know that are dedicated, through various means, to making their communities better, stronger, safer and more open places for everyone to develop their selves and acheive their potential. Amen with sugar on top!

And Now What!

Cordillera Real under some heavy clouds







Merilee and Luisa (owner of cafe and Casa de Ciclist) with a pan of brownies


Currently, Merilee and I find ourselves volunteering at a small daycare for people that work at the market. The organization, Corazon Inquieto, was founded by a Dutch woman named Helen who decided that the kids hanging out doing nothing all day at the market could have a fun and educational place to go. The morning session consists of kids ages 2-6 who come to play and get kind of a preschool type experience. The afternoon are kids who have entered primary school and are coming to an afternoon program to do homework, activities and hopefully have some fun. We will be here for the next two weeks before we take off for our final leg of the journey into Santiago.

We have also been keeping ourselves busy with being sick. But, we both started recently on heavy doses of antibiotics and they appear to have erradicated the bugs that make water come out for numbers 1 and 2. Too much information I am sure.

We also spend our time at the Cyclist cafe baking goods (Merilee usually), cleaning dishes, and even refilling napkin holders. But it is fun, we meet many cyclists that are on their way somewhere. Currently, there are two Englishmen and one French swiss dude at the house, so never a lack of dirty clothes and bicycles in the apartment.

And that is our small semblance of a normal life here in La Paz. Although, I hope when my real normal life returns I do not have to dodge cars driving crazily through the streets.

Hanging out in the cyclist house!!


Minis! This market is full of miniatures which people buy in hopes of bringing them real sizes in the the coming year. Although, toilet paper...unsure.


Epiphany


Cows....cows...oh my gosh cows...lets get some cows

Peering down into La Paz (photo just does not do this city justice)


Lake Titicaca


Deciding if we should bail and swim


The archway to Bolivia


View from our hotel in Copacabana

Hello Bolivia Hello!

We are so excited to be here in La Paz Bolivia. Somehow for Merilee and I it is our last major stop. We are planning on volunteering here and we are helping out at a little cafe that is run by the owners of the Casa de Ciclistas where we are staying. It is exciting too because we are coming upon our one year anniversary on the road! It is pretty amazing. Anyhow....

The ride to La Paz from the border with Peru was pretty spectacular. We rode around a section of Lake Titicaca that was just beautiful farmland and bright blue sky with terrific clouds. We stayed our first night in Copacabana, a very touristy town filled with travelers from South America. Our hotel had a lovely view of the lake. And Merilee and I saw bags of mana (giant puffed corn...kinda like popcorn but not really) the size of 3 sumo wrestlers. Needless to say we stopped bought and ate some.

The next day we rode along the lake until a small town where we had to take a small ferry crossing. The ferry was little more that planks of wood hammered together run by a small outboard motor on the back. Miraculously, it held a truck and a car and two laden bicycles. Thank goodness I did not have to swim Titicaca. We continued along really quiet back roads through small towns on the lake with grand brick houses and towards the late afternoon we came around a bend in the road and got a view of the Cordillera Real. It is a nice snow capped mountain range that runs from northern Bolivia to La Paz. That night we stayed in Batallas, a small town that had festival on it's mind as everyone appeared partially intoxicated from celebrating the Virgin del Candelaria. We waited at the main church to ask the Pastor if we could stay there. He never showed up despite the church being completely open. Perhaps too much celebrating. Instead, we found two missionaries who kindly opened their school doors to let us rest. They had seen us leave Copacabana that morning and we happy to hear about our story and help us out a bit.

The next day we had our big ride into La Paz. Thankfully, the road was very flat and we got to the cusp of the city very quickly. The edge of La Paz is amazing because you can look down 500 meters more or less over a cliff and see the city clinging to the hillsides all around. There are even some snow capped peaks to top it off. The city is tiring just to even think about. It can be snowing at the high end of over 4000 meters and a warm sunny day at under 3500 meters on the low end. Anyhow, Merilee and I began our descent into town flying down a bumpy poorly maintained road. We finally got to the Plaza de San Francisco with sore forearms from griping our breaks.

Now, we are just enjoying ourselves a bit, and trying not to be sick. Both Merilee and I have been suffering a bit more from stomach problems here in the start of Bolivia. Yay!

Photos

Not really any words for these photos. Just beautiful countryside