Late night trip to the Bolivian Cinema

Today was a really peaceful day after arriving in the mining village of Potosi at 1 AM after taking a rattley night bus from Salar de Uyuni (the salt flats).

But in the evening me and 2 friends decided to take a trip to the cinema. It was a completely unreal experience. The film that we went to see was called "Blackthorn", a Hollywood film in English translated into Spanish. But we didn´t know what we had let ourselves in for. The film was set in the little village we were staying in and the whole village had decided to turn up for the screening. It was by far the funniest cinema experience I have ever had. The room was packed, you could barely hear the film over the wirring projector,  there were people sitting in the stairwell, there were people on the phone, everyone was talking and laughing really loudly at the aweful jokes. The woman next to us just fell asleep, after spending what is probably the equivalent of half the average weekly wage on her ticket. People even brought their tiny bambinos, though the film was far to gory for me let alone tiny children.

But it was truely amazing seeing the landscapes we were seeing places we had been just the day before. The horse chase on Salar de Uyuni was too much and  "ohmygodwevebeenthere!!" squeeling could probably be heard throughout the cinema.
We also got a sneak preview of the working mines that we visit tomorrow. They look truely terrifying, but our guide is an ex-miner and has promised us that if we bring the miners presents of cigerettes and coca leaves they will be nice to us. hmmmmmm

I don´t think I´ll ever experience such a large coincidence again, it was a completely and wonderfully bizzare.

Jogar Clinica

On Wednesday the Spanish school took us to one of the clinics they fund and students volunteer at.
The clinic was for children with physical and mental disabilities, mainly from rural areas of Puru. I wasn´t really prepared for what we saw.

None of the children were able to walk unaided, most of them were in wheelchairs and some of them were visibly very physically disabled. The clinic was very liberal and let us play with the children, dress them, feed them and take them outside. I think most of the volunteers were completely overwhelmed when they met the children, but they soon let us know what we should be doing.

The children themselves were amazing! They never complained and they were very patient, with the clumsy volunteers who had to carry them to their wheelchairs or help them put their jumpers on. I spent most of my time with one girl, called Catrina, who would make me take my headscarf off because she didn´t like it and then pull my hair until she decided she didn´t like that either and made me put it back on again. I don´t blame her, my hair is completely ridiculous.

 Before I left I helped her put on her pyjamas and she had to hold onto me while I did. But when I finshed she wouldn´t let go. She was like a little limpit. I asked if I could take her home but the answer was a no. So I left her with a packet of crisps, which I think she preferred anyway...

La Selva (JUNGLE!!!)

¡Hola!

I´m fresh from the jungle and missing is already. It was exactly how you would imagine it, hot, humid and not another person for miles around.

The thing that surprised me most about it was that as soon as we got of the one hour river boat and stepped into the jungle it was full of noises and movement. The jungle is never still and it is certainly not quite. There is always something falling out of a tree (or a tree falling out of the sky) or an aminal scuttingly away into a bush. And the birds! The birds are loco! They have no fear in there they just hoot, swoop and coo...and fall out of trees.

The weirdest thing about the jungle was not the animals though, it was the trees. It´s like a ghetto out there. There are trees that strangle each other, poison each other, trees covered in spines, there are walking trees, WALKING TREES, this is what kept me awake at night. These and the "arboles erotica" ....don´t ask. Obviously the tree world is not as fast paced as the human world. But this just made it more scary, like they would only move when you are not looking.

I think my most native experience would have to be eatting the Suri on our pre-breakfast walk. The Suri is a large maggot like worm found inside these nuts that grow on trees. They are considered a tasty fruit by the locals. I´m not so sure about tasty, because I swallowed mine whole, but I now live in constant fear that it is living in my stomach  eatting all my peruvian papas.

My favourite thing about the jungle was the stars. There is a different set of stars on this side of the world, so you can´t recognise anything. That and the moon eclipses from top to bottom instead of side to side.
At night it was so dark we could see the milky way, so at night we would sit for 3-5 hours around a camp fire drinking rum and talking shaky spanish with our guide under the stars.

Unfortunately the jungle was a bit to naturalistic for my poor camera, which promptly melted upon entering it, so the photos are severly limited.

Aaaah Jungle,

xxxx

La Familia

Last Sunday my family came to pick me up from my hostel in the center of Cusco. Oskar and Sarita, the mother and father.... and Cheespa (the dog). I quickly realised that I was going to have to do a lot of talking in Spanish, because neither of them spoke any English and if they did they certainly weren't going to make it that easy for me. 

We drove out of the center of Cusco which is full of tourists (gringos) into the hills that surrounded the town. The scenery changed incredibly quickly. We soon lost the huddle North Face shops, llama print jumpers and ATMs and were plunged into a world of street sellers, stray dogs, men huddled around small tables in cafes and the native women in their layered skirts and giant top hats. So, in this dusty neighbourhood, you can imagine my surprise when we pulled up to a giant gated house. Their house was absolutely massive! They bundled me in quickly and showed me my room. It was small, painted white and absolutely covered in pictures of Jesus, much like the rest of the house. When I went to hang my coat up I noticed the coat hooks were made out of tiny goats feet, hooves pointing to the ceiling (not a vegetarian friendly house then).

I didn't have any time to unpack, because I was quickly escorted to the garden to help make traditional Peruvian potatoes. We built a fire in a small mud oven the dad had made that morning and after about an hour chucked in about 20 potatoes before pulling the oven down and reducing the it to a smoldering patch of dirt. And this, was apparently, how we cooked the potatoes. It turned out to be the mothers birthday so we had a big celebration with the whole extended family. 

The food here is amazing and every lunch is a 3 course meal so I'm coming back as round as Peruvian potato. The one thing I didn't realise is quite how cold it would be. "Dry season" evidently means winter :l So the Khaki shorts, and denim hot pants can go back in the rucksack. At night I sleep fully clothed under 3 alpaca blankets. The water runs cold so today is the 1st day I washed my hair since the hostel. But the day time is an absolute scorcher, it's very confusing.

I've been having Spanish lessons for a week and next week we have them in the JUNGLE! I will miss my family already but I couldn't really say no to jungle lessons.

Chow chow,

Mariam

PERU!!

Hello dedicated followers! (Mum)

I have just touched down in Peru and discovered the wonders of actual accessible internet, something which did not exist in Nepal.

I'm hoping to continue my travel blog here to keep the memories of my South American adventures, but also to keep in touch with people from home. In Nepal I found this the most effective method of keeping my friends up to date without having to send everyone mushy emails/postcards.

I humbely hope people will read this. I'm not planning to document my accessent over the unclimbed peaks of the Andes, but hopefully it will make interesting reading (or at least reassure people I haven't eloped to marry a local wool merchant).

Watch this space,

Mariam xxx

(p.s. If I have your address you will recieve a mushy postcard)

Unlucky the chicken

Yesterday, me and Josh had promised each other we were going to buy a chicken and slaughter and give it is a gift to our families, because we love our families, not because we have a strange burning to desire to kill animals.
 Unfortunately, or maybe luckily for a certain chicken, it was the first day of "remember your dead grandparent festival" (not the official name). This meant there was no meat allowed in our house for the next 15 days. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily for a certain chicken, all of Josh's grandparents were still living. So we decided that we would both kill one chicken for Josh's family.

Everyone went on their regular trip to the nearby village of Lubhou to use the internet. I went to get ice cream and I met Josh (grinning from ear to ear) in the internet cafe. He was holding black plastic bag containing a live chicken with its little white head poking out. Kim was behind him holding back the tears after selecting the chicken that they chose to name "unlucky".

There wasn't a bus for ages so we had to walk with a chicken in a bag back to our village for about half an hour. It was getting pretty hot in its bag so we had to stop to give it a drink of water every now and again. When we got to Josh's house we started arguing about how to kill it. We had 2 knives, an extremely blunt but heavy Gurkha knife and what I can only describe as a sharpened butter knife. We went for the butter knife but I had to be demoted holding the chicken as we thought I probably wouldn't be strong enough to kill it with one swift blow. Even our resident farmer couldn't watch, she had only ever killed chickens by a shot to the head.

It all happened very fast. We took the chicken to the back of the cow shed, I took it out the bag and Josh showed me how to hold it. It was very still and didn't struggle at all. Then with one swift move Josh took its head clean off. THEN THE FLAPPING BEGAN. I had the chicken by its legs, but forgot to hold back its wings. So it flapped for a good 30 seconds, making quite a mess of us all.

Then we plucked it and I was given the gory job of gutting it. This involves putting two fingers as far up the chicken's bum you can, reaching up to its neck and pulling out everything you can feel. Laura (our resident farmer) then told us what all the internal organs were and then Tara (our resident psychotic) decided to feed them all to the local stray dog and film it.

It was amazing how fast it goes from live animal to what you see in the poultry section of the supermarket. I was expecting the experience to turn me vegetarian, but I would say it's probably made me feel better about eating meat. Especially as I found out that the Dali Lama eats meat!

Food for thought :D

Mariam

xx

Teej!

Last week we celebrated the woman's festival "Teej". It was a full weekend party all across Nepal. During Teej the women fast for 24 hours with no water or food. They all dress in red saris, with a red tikka and red glass bangles. Red is the color married women wear and the whole idea of the festival is that the women fast to wish for the long lives of their husbands, so they can provide for them or to wish for a good husband for all the single ladies. Unfortunately the volunteers couldn't cope with the fasting aspect so we will probably all have crap husbands, who will die early and produce only baby girls (sigh).
The night before the 24 hour fasting there is the "stuffing of the face ceremony", which all volunteers happily took part in. It was like a midnight feast. The families here never buy food from the shop but on this occasion they bought fruit and nuts and made us hot oily prawn crackers. We also had an array of Nepali sweets, my favorite was these doughnut type balls soaked in syrup and ginger and were sickly sweet.

Getting dressed for Teej was the most fun, the sister spent a good half an hour putting on our Saris. Then the aama squeezed tiny glass bangles onto our wrists. About 30% of the bangles broke in the process leaving our hands bloody but also sparkly, which was nice. We're pretty sure aama dislocated Mellisa's thumb as well because it's swollen quite a significant amount since the event.

Today we went on a trek, which was amazing! When we got to the top we had buffalo chow mien and Mountain Dew  drink, which we a pretty sure has been banned from the UK because of its dangerously high caffeine content. On the way back I got seriously leached. I didn't see the culprit but it has left me with a very bloody foot, which keeps sticking to my flip flop.


My body is definitely on Nepali time at the moment. I'm up at 5 AM to lube and milk the cow. Then a bit of clothes washing or corn shedding. Before a mountain walk with the mountain walk crew. Tara brought a yoga book here and I've been appointed yogi of the group. Tomorrow we plan to walk to the mountain top cafe, perform our sun salutations to the Himalayas before tucking into a bowl  of muesli. Perhaps a tad ambitious but I think a lot of the volunteers are determined to come back fit after our unforgiving diet of samosas, pakoras and buffalo. If it's not greasy and its not spicy its not getting served here in Nepal.

Ferri Bitula

Mariam

xxx