The Non Sequiturs of Travel Warnings: 29, 30 June

A surprising amount of time is devoted in these two days, to the bells, whistles and admin nightmares involved in attempting to leave Bolivia. Amazonas, our venerable airline (never travel with them if you can help it), cancelled our flight from Cochabamba to La Paz, (first leg of the final flight to Cusco, Peru) and didn't see the need to tell us. Instead they simply changed our booking to a flight from Santa Cruz to La Paz.

We found this out by accident because we were contacting them to check timings, having been warned that they frequently changed tines without notifying their passengers. We spend most of Monday sorting it out, then finding we hadn't, then trying again, then receiving a flight booking from them for a different day, then trying again, then being told that the rearranged flights they had agreed to two hours ago could not be done. We go to bed Monday none the wiser. Today is Tuesday. More hours of fun await us. Either we will get our way, have to leave at 4am to fly to Santa Cruz, then La Paz, then Cusco all in the same day as planned. And hope they don't lose our bags, which judging from their performance thus far seems unlikely. Or we get to fly to La Paz via Santa Cruz, then have to stay the night at our own expense in order to complete leg three of what used to be a simple two leg flight, the following day. Confused? Good. Us too.

So in view of this rather boring actual set of activities these two days, I will use this opportunity to talk about something that has bothered us all the way through this trip, namely, the complete non sequiturs of travel warnings.

"We are not supposed to carry cameras because they'll get stolen," I complain to a friend as we depart New Zealand for South America, "but I am supposed to take pictures of the amazing scenery. We are told not yo go out after dark or we'll be mugged, but also that we should take advantage of the night life. We are meant to take taxis in the night rather than walk, but we are also supposed to avoid taking taxis. You know, in case of kidnappings."

The fact is, reading up on South America before coming here, it is difficult not to become convinced that you will be murdered, mugged, pick pocketed, kidnapped, trafficked, smuggled, used as a drug mule or thrown off a mountain.

"Are we sure we want to go there?" I ask M, aghast.

The fact is there are a lot of horror stories. The internet is lurid and spattered with gleeful accounts of terrible things that happened to Joyce from Cleveland or Becky from Staines or Julio from Greece. It's enough to stop you sleeping.

And of course we look them up for a reason. It's useful to know before you enter a place, what sort of things to look out for and how to avoid them. But you have to become adept at picking through it, working out trends. Is that story something that would have happened if its writer was not really drunk/doing drugs/walking home in the dark/hitchhiking etc at the time? Is that story simply a reproduction of that one? Was that just an episode of pick pocketing, such as might happen just as easily in London?

The hardest of course is other travellers telling you stories. Mostly these are bluster and wheeled out to look hardcore over beers. Those are easy to spot. But every now and then you meet people who have had an experience which they didn't do anything in particular to risk happening, and they tell it matter of factly in a way you can trust.

Then the trick, apart from to take every reasonable measure to avoid it happening to you, is to listen carefully to what happened afterwards. If they were robbed at gunpoint, gave the small amount of money they were carrying to the gunman, who disappeared leaving them shaken but unhurt, and then they went to the jazz club they were going to in the first place, then hats off to them for keeping their cool (this is a real story, though it happened in a country in South America we are not visiting) and - horrible an experience as it was, it was over quick, and no one was hurt.

Because otherwise the internet may leave you forewarned, but also absolutely and constantly petrified. Not to mention confused.

I could find enough horror stories about South America to have me walking the streets in the first few days, tense and looking over my shoulder constantly, convinced everyone who passed me was a mugger and everyone who spoke to me was only doing so as a distraction while they robbed me. It is a horrible feeling, no fun for you, hugely and unfairly insulting to the country - and doesn't do anybody any favours.

But while you can find an abundance of horror stories, it's very difficult to find any practical advice on how to avoid it. Or if you can, it's non sensical. Trust taxis over walking but don't trust taxis. Ask a local to advise you but don't trust the locals. Don't take anything valuable, such as phones, out with you, but always carry a phone.

I have a snake bite kit with me, because apparently South East Asia is just full of snakes, writhing about on the streets, just waiting for a bit of tourist ankle to sink their greedy, South East Asian fangs into. I didn't see a single snake in South East Asia.

I am not saying to ignore all the warnings, or not to read them, or not to be prepared. Just that the internet, as anyone knows from looking up the symptoms of a common cold on it, is chock full of hysteria.

We have now been travelling for nine months. We have not once been robbed, threatened, followed or pick pocketed, and only with Amazonas now, have we even had any trouble with flights.

We wear money belts in which we keep just the cash we need that day, and a photocopy of our passport. We leave phones at home unless we need them - when they travel in the belt. We wear our clothes well over the belt so it's very difficult for us to get into the darn thing, let alone anyone else. If we can walk, especially in the light, we do so. If it's dark and we can walk through exclusively main, populated, well lit roads, we do so. If we can't or we have to take a taxi, we ask for a recommendation from our AirBnB host or hostal. Very often they have, not just a firm, but a specific person they recommend to you. Using AirBnB gives you a friendly local to chat to straightaway, and they are much more to be trusted when it comes to the safe and unsafe areas of a city, than the internet shriekers.

While I am taking about the nightmarish unhelpfulness of the internet, I will share this link. This is the most non hysterical but helpful advice I found, and it puts the horror stories in context.

 http://www.thisbatteredsuitcase.com/think-like-thief-avoid-theft-travelling/

In the meantime, may I assure you that travelling the world is not, despite what the internet says, a one way ticket to certain death, robbery and destruction.

(Unless you travel with Amazonas that is, in which case, throw all of the rules out of the window. It seems to be what they do.)

The Coronilla: 27, 28 June

Right opposite our block of flats there is a small hill with a statue on. I often find myself staring out at it whilst cooking or washing up, wondering about it and imagining what sad ghosts might walk it, dejected and perpetually losing their battle.

It is a hill with a sad and fascinating history.

On 27 May 1812, the Peruvian/Spanish General José Manuel de Goyeneche, attacked Cochabamba from La Paz as part of the general Spanish invasion of South America at that time. It is very difficult to find full information in English about this event, but I understand the basics. As part of an attempt to defend what they felt to be their 'sacred homeland', the indigenous people fought back. When all the men of Cochabamba had been defeated, the women stepped in. Led by an old, blind woman, named Manuela Gandarilla, they climbed to the top of the hill outside my window, then known as La Coronilla and fought bravely to defend their homeland.

They were all killed by the invading Spanish.

Nowadays Bolivians celebrate Mothers Day on 27 May to commemorate the 'Heroines of the Coronilla' and the bravery and hard work of women in Bolivia generally. At the top of the hill there is a statue of the Heroinas de la Coronilla, and on the approach to the statue are several busts, including two of the women known to have fought in that bloody battle.

We spend most of Saturday travelling back from Toro Toro but on Sunday we climb the hill to pay our respects.

It's wonderful that the women are so commemorated, (the statues were erected, I believe, in 2012), but there are a few things with bother me about that hill, and which make it stay so firmly in my mind.

Firstly, the hill has been renamed. It's now called 'San Sebastian' hill. After a Spanish saint. 

Secondly, the busts depict mostly men, only two women. I aalrighure who the men are but the balance, on a hill so famous for the bravery of the women, seems wrong.

Thirdly, when we climb up to look at the statue we find the statue itself is enclosed behind a large iron fence, and the gate padlocked, the rusted state of which makes me wonder if it is ever opened. From our vantage point we can barely see the Heroinas statue which is on a much lower plinth.

Finally, and by far the most damningly, there is the status of the hill itself. 

"You can get a funicular to the top of San Pedro hill," the guide books and internet resources all agree, "but avoid San Sebastian. It is extremely dangerous, even in day time."

We find one solitary source that tells us it should be fine before dark, and climb it anyway. It's a wide, paved path visible for miles around. There's not another soul there. 

Why is it "extremely dangerous'? Is it out of date information, and has been paved and cleaned up since then? Is it dangerous because people have been mugged or attacked up there? By whom? The poor? Which seems almost always to mean, the indigenous people. I have not seen a single Spanish descended beggar or street sleeper. 

Or is it simply assumed to be dangerous? The same way the district we are staying in is assumed to be dangerous? Tourists, presumably, are supposed to stay either right in the very centre of town, or in the posher, plainer, duller, more sophisticated European influenced end of town. If we'd stayed there I would have had a much less fond impression of Cochabamba. It might have seemed indistinguishable from anywhere else. Are indigenous areas assumed also to be dangerous? I have seen no evidence of this, though we have of course been careful.

There is a clear divide between indigenous and European descended Bolivians. But is it a divide made by choice, each to hold to his own culture, or something socially enforced?

Certainly I understand that the plight of indigenous people, particularly deep in the countryside, has improved since the election of an indigenous president. But as we journey through countryside I often see the slogan,

"Somos mas, somos el pueblo"

We are more, we are the people. 

The word 'pueblo' often signifies a specific group, usually ethnic, as opposed to 'gente', which dignifies a more general sense of the word.

The slogan is spray painted on the sides of houses, cliff faces, even rocks. Often it is shortened simply to 'mas'.

I may have misunderstood. Finding these things out is difficult given my hesitant Spanish and the fact that many indigenous people, who would be best placed to answer my question, speak only Kechwa. 

But I rather agree with them. The indigenous people do seem to be more in abundance than the European descended. And they certainly are a lot tougher. 

I don't know enough about Bolivian politics and the prejudices or otherwise between the two groups. I don't know how fairly society is delineated, or how each group looks upon the other. It is yet another of those things I have promised myself to get a book and read up on when I get home and, perversely, have more time.

But every time I look out at that hill, so condemned to tourists, I wonder.

The women of Coronilla lost their battle. But is it still being fought?

And who is losing?

Caverns and Condors

Up bright and early, we meet our guide and climb into a van to be transported to the first of two main sites for our day tour, namely the 'Ciudad de Inta'. Ciudad means 'City'. An 'Ita', if my Spanish translation serves me correctly, is the Kechwa word for a parasite which lives within the skin of human, though more commonly animals. I believe that the strange, cellular type patterns in the rock may have been in some way cause by the Ita, hence the name.

As we walk, and in many places, as we climb, our guide points out various animal shaped rocks.

"Here - a huge elephant...there, see the tortoise? Here is his nose...and his shell..and there, you see the fish?"

As these things I am very impressed by the actual resemblance of these rock formations to the animals. The tortoise, especially, is very clear. I start to wonder whether there might be some natural balance of shapes, which somehow means that rock formations mirror the shapes of creatures, or vice versa, given how commonly we see this kind of phenomenon. It's hard to say, and perhaps more likely that our human minds simply automatically find patterns in the landscapes, much the same way as we create monsters out of shadows and make sense of text which omits vowels, and so on and so forth. That, rather pedestrian explanation doesn't appeal to me as much however, especially later when, in the cavern, we come across two stalacmites which our guide names, 'the Madonna and Child'.

"That," says M to me, "is the Madonna and Child. Apparently."

We both look sceptically at it until, perhaps sensing our lack of conviction, our guide points to the smaller one.

"You see? There is the baby's nose, and his eyes..."

He has barely began speaking however, when the whole group suddenly sees it. In the otherwise rough stalacmite surface, there is a perfectly smooth, perfectly white  face. It is as if it had been carved, perfectly done. The eyes, nose and mouth all eerily baby like. It's a little bit scary. Coincidence? Maybe. Trickery? Perhaps. But if someone did carve that in by hand I must say it remains pretty impressive.

More about the cavern later. In the meantime we continue to walk and scramble our way around the Ciudad de Ita. It is beautiful. The views out across the mountain range are amazing, with that same blue, white tinge to the mountain ranges on the horizon, made surreal by the smog. The rock faces have been carved and painted and polished by water, lava, creatures and time and it strikes me, not for the first time, how beautiful the process of damage, essentially what erosion is, can render a landscape. Were the rocks more or less beautiful before that happened? Was it some kind of Eden, an echo of which is all we see now? Or are rocks themselves, being formed only through the process of erosion, and thus existing only because of the ongoing state of decay to which all things on earth must fall?  If beauty is caused by damage, perhaps humankind would do well to redefine its, currently rather negative, perception of ageing.

I climb around, largely without either panic or incident, apart from one place in which we are casually asked to climb a rickety ladder attached to the rocks by a wire, transfer to a second rickety ladder and then scramble directly up the rock face onto a ledge above. I handle both ladders with white knuckles, gritted teeth and an attempt, even with my knees, to hold onto the ladder. But letting go of the second ladder to scramble up the rock face is too much. I freeze for a moment, emitting small and quite embarrassing mewing noises, and it is the patience of the guide telling me to be 'mas tranquil' (more calm), and that 'todas bien' (everything is fine), along with some fairly firm pointing out of the hollows and hooks in which to plant my feet. There is also a sympathetic outstretched arm from M, who has scrambled up ahead of me. I manage to get up in the end without it, as a matter of personal pride, but I am still deeply grateful, and deeply reassured by the presence of that hand, whether I use it or otherwise.

Fear is a strange thing. It is, in these instances, a deeply uncomfortable sensation, with nothing in it to soften it, or to recommend it as a desired state. But something about it,, perhaps the associated adrenaline, perhaps the sense of triumph afterwards, or the sensation that you are in mortal danger and therefore may be seeing all this for the final time - but landscapes do somehow become more amazing when you've had such a fear filled encounter with them. Maybe it  is  the fear itself which lifts the status of a view from something 'bonito', (pretty) to something 'bellisimo'.

This is particularly true of our afternoon tour, to the cavern.

Entering a cavern in Bolivia to view stalacmites, stalactites and underwater lakes, is not a case of donning a hard hat and following a wooden walking path, with lights.

It involves descending 110 metres into the earth by climbing. As we begin, dread starts to take over and that delicate balance between thrill and terror, tips. I am standing in a hard hat at the entrance to a cave which the guide has just told me requires me to descend at least 8 metres purely with the aid of a rope.

My imagination paints a lurid picture in which I have to abseil down a vast hole, 110 metres deep, in pitch darkness, and if I let go of the rope, I will die.

"Es peligroso?" (Is it dangerous?) I ask, hoping for reassurance.

"Yes," says our guide, "very dangerous. And slippery."

"Isn't this cool?" says M as we pick our way gingerly over boulders by the light of the torches attached to our helmets.

"No." I say miserably, "for a person scared of heights this is my worst nightmare. I don't know if I can do this."


Sensibly, M doesn't react other than to point out, gently, that I do not have to do it at all, and could simply wait at the mouth of the cavern for our party to re-emerge.

But I'm not about to do that. I have, in this journey, faced many things, particularly in respect to heights, which have me nearly paralysed with fear. But I have always faced them. I haven't opted out of anything yet. And we are 8 months in. I'm not going to start now.

In reality of course, as is the case with all fears, the situation is nowhere near as perilous as I had imagined. We do indeed descend in pitch black by our own hands, feet and, increasingly, bottoms, but there is light from our helmets and, whilst the rock is slippery, it is also a tight cave, and I can grip wall and ceiling as well as floor. Also, we never face one enormous drop, but simply clamber from one, 2 to 3 metre height down into the next chamber and then, separately, another.

In fact, I start to rather enjoy it. By the time we have descended all 110 metres, viewed the fish in the underground lake and clambered back up again, I am thinking rather fondly about caving. I find the small spaces, for some claustrophobic, rather comforting, especially when dealing with heights.

There are only two discrete moments when I find myself properly shaking with terror and sweating so much I think I will fall for the sheer slipperyness of my hands. Both involve a rope, though neither are actually as terrifying as my original imagination. The fear comes form the necessity to trust, not in your own hands and feet, but in a rope. If it falls, I do. If I let go, I do. But in neither case would I actually fall very far.

In the end, as we emerge, wet bottomed and pleasantly filthy from sliding about in the wet, sandy rocks, I feel highly triumphant and as though I could, quite easily, turn around and do the entire decent again.

I don't, of course.

But it's been quite a visit to Toro Toro, and not something we will forget in a hurry. In the Ciudad de Ita, there were condors soaring above our heads, still too high to see clearly, but closer than I have ever been. I could make out their round heads and thick beaks and the 3 distinct feathers at the end of each wing.

They were probably searching for their next meal. After all, they finished off the last dead tourist yesterday.

Canyons and Countryside

Today, as I may have mentioned in a previous blog, we plan to travel to Toro Toro and spend a few days there. Toro Toro is a national park, only recently designated as such, surrounding a small village.

To get there, we need to take a Micro at 6am.  This is a challenge, because the place we have to get the Micro from is considered ‘’very dangerous’, especially in the dark early hours.

Our host, Will (pseudonym), who I realise I haven’t talked about much before now, has not only booked us a taxi to take us to the Micro, but gets up and comes with us himself to make sure we are OK! He stays with us all the way until he has seen us safely loaded onto a Micro, and only then does he leave us. It’s lucky actually, because there is initially much confusion over which Micro is going to Toro Toro today, and where it will leave from. Without him I suspect we would have been a bit stumped.

Of course, Micros only leave when they are full, so we sit there until 7.20, because the Micro leaves, clattering and jerking its way along the road. I suspect that the seats we are sitting on have been removed from another vehicle and screwed on to make additional seats in this one, so it’s a little cramped and wobbly. Which, after all, is part of the fun.

The scenery is both beautiful and fascinating. Huge, still lagoons lie in the shadow of the grassy mountains the more distant of which are made surreal and blue tinged by the drifting smog which hangs low in the distance. A lady drives a donkey, loaded with a bale of hay, across the road in front of us. A family stand outside their isolated house, staring, a flock of geese around them. It’s very remote here. We pass tumble down houses made of adobe mud and clay, half built or half destroyed, taken over by the thick green, spikey leaves of cactus plants. Goats, sheep, pigs and even dogs, run around, painted with bright pink paint to denote ownership. They graze and leap about, their fluorescent heads incongruous in the brown, green surroundings.

As we drive, there are less and less people, less even of the isolated smallholdings. We drive on windy, cobbled roads, here and there the roads lose their cobbles and seem to be disintegrating into the valley below. I judder along, the driver is more careful than I had dared to hope and I am actually feeling quite safe in the Micro, despite the sheer drops, though the winding and bumpy surfaces combine to create a distinctly queasy feeling in my stomach. I find myself wondering why they don’t pave the roads rather than cobble them, which would be smoother, and then realise the cobbles probably create better friction and grip, making it less easy to skid over the edge. It’s funny how patronising you can find yourself being about another country, particularly one you have been told is ‘poor’ or ‘not developed’. In actual fact what I have mostly found in such countries is that they have got right things that we, in the ‘developed’ west, have not, or have long since forgotten.

We are driving very high now, M mostly asleep, but I am too captured by the scenery to close my eyes. At one point the rattle of our van startle a flock of tiny green parakeets, at another we drive with six huge eagles soaring majestically above us.

All the same, when we eventually arrive, five hours later, find a hostal and buy our tickets, arranging to meet our guide later and then embarking on a nearly entirely fruitless search in the village for something we can (being vegetarian), eat, my stomach and my legs are quite pleased to be out of the van. We order, not quite the only thing we can eat, but the only thing we can afford, in a rather expensive restaurant, having drawn an absolute blank in the market – an egg sandwich.

As it happens, the egg sandwich is huge, involves two fried eggs, four pieces of bread and some chips so it is substantial, if not exactly healthy.

After much faffing around and trying to understand the Spanish explanations about which tour includes what and for how much, we team up with another, Bolivian, couple and set off with our guide on an afternoon tour.

We start walking straight out of the town and I am pleased that we don’t seem to be using any kind of motorised transport. It professes to be approximately a 4k walk, but I am suspicious of this, given that it apparently takes 5 hours. I challenge anybody to take 5 hours to walk 4k.

“It depends,” says our guide (in Spanish), “on how fast you go.”

By which, as we will discover, he means not how fast you can walk, but how fast you can scramble up and down rock faces.

The scenery is beautiful. We begin walking along near a gorge, and then quickly dip into it, to examine the ‘dinosaur’ footprints. There are, unmistakably, huge indentations in the rock, that look very much as though they might have been made by a huge mammal.  Indeed, because of the nature of the landscape, so barren and isolated and so devastating it is not so difficult to imagine dinosaurs running along here.

This would have been a beach, our guide tells us, but movements of the plates of the earth over time shifted its location, until it became a plate of rock in a gorge in Bolivia. He is explaining in Spanish and so I don’t quite understand the reason why the footprints would have lasted long enough to harden from mud or sand into rock. M suggests that an earthquake or similar swift and drastic change in the landscape may have slid the plates over each other so quickly as to preserve the prints, but mostly its conjecture. I am not sure of the scientific evidence here, but I don’t really mind. As I’ve said before, in these dramatic landscapes everything seems plausible. And the dinosaurs, as with the Inca ruins a few days earlier, are not the main point of this excursion, but the walk itself is. And, as I believe I was also saying of the Inca ruins a few days earlier, what a walk!

In this case, to be fair, I don’t think it could really be called simply a ‘walk’, more of a scramble and climb. As we continue, we start to descend into the canyon, some 250 metres high. We cannot immediately see the size of the canyon we are descending into, but the path becomes narrow, steep and slippery, with the steep drops, covered in greenery, to the canyon side. It doesn’t feel especially exposed, my feverish height sensitive brain has already calculated that, were it to slip, I could probably cling to a tree or a bush or two, but the sliding loose stones make us very careful where we put our feet.

A little further down, we begin to clamber over and around large boulders, sometimes to jump between them, sometimes to scramble up them, more or less vertically, where the boulder in question is larger than twice our size. I am a little afraid, but mostly it is exhilarating rather than excruciating, and M has a huge grin on his face.

“Isn’t this amazing!” he says, and I rather agree with him. Nowhere in England, quote possible nowhere in Europe, would you be permitted such unadulterated casual hands on experience with this kind of landscape.  If sitting on a rock in the Andes desert mountains felt like ‘touching the world’, without a blanket or chair or some other man made intervention, then how much more so is this scrabbling, teeth gritted, hands gripping directly onto the ancient rocks, soils and slippery surfaces of the huge canyon in the national park?

There are moments, I admit, especially as we emerge more out of the greenery and the height and nature of what we are descending into becomes more obvious, when I have serious concerns about the safety precautions, or lack thereof. We are not wearing hard hats, or any kind of rope and our guide, though quite hands on in the more obviously difficult parts (“put your foot here, now put your other foot there” etc) he is often so far ahead as to be out of sight of us, seemingly impatient at our apparent ineptitude when it comes to scaling cliff faces.

In fact, when I have passed whichever particular hurdle it us, and look back to watch the Bolivian couple handle it, I find that, whilst she in particular is showing much of the sort of mix of tentativity and doggedness that I suspect I do, the heights are not quite as steep as they seem when you are making the climb. The canyon itself is enormous, but we are never right on the rock face. The most we would ever fall in each section we climb is a few metres. I calculate that it wouldn’t kill us, maybe we might twist an ankle. It’s a lot better in context.

Even so, when we reach the base of the canyon, and are climbing along the edge of a shallow stream, edging along the rock face, I have one panic stricken moment when the guide says something I don’t catch in Spanish and M helpfully translates, ‘he says up’’.

I look up.

The sheer rock face of the canyon looms above me. On no other tour would I think it believable that the guide might suggest we simply climb up the rock face without safety equipment but for this tour it does not seem at all unbelievable.

“En Serio??” I say, (Are you serious??). I am trying to work out what would be more sensible, to flatly refuse on the grounds that it is not safe, rendering me stranded in the bottom of a canyon just before dark, or to grit my teeth and do it.

“No,” says M, seeing my confusion, “not all the way up. Just up a bit and along that more helpful ledge just above you.”

Ah. Well that, I admit, does seem more reasonable.

The scenery itself, which is the main reason for all this adventuring, is stunning. It looks like something out of a film, or better, a brochure or an advert. In fact on of the main sights on this tour is a waterfall which looks, as M points out, like something out of a Timotei advert.

Water pours down the canyon, which at this point, opens out slightly, and allows the light to reflect off the streams of water. And they are multiple streams, cascading down and dripping off the many, verdant green plants, trees and hanging mosses which adorn the cliff face.

“You can just imagine it,” says M, “there would be a model in a bikini under each of those streams of water, washing her hair and throwing it about in slow motion.”

I can indeed just imagine it. But I chose to lie back on the rock and contemplate my scenery without the addition of shampoo.

It seems much later when we begin, slowly, to wind our way back up the canyon, this time using rock steps carved out of the cliff. It’s hard work though, we are all sweating and breathing heavily, though we watch our guide leap, mountain goat like up ahead of us with apparent ease. Despite the fact he apparently recently hurt his leg falling off a motorcycle. And the fact that he still has another hour to walk home, even after he returns us to the town.

The rest of us limp a little in his wake, and we fall more or less silent, the gaps between us growing wider as we plod our way home on feet and limbs that we only now notice are aching.

It’s twilight now and very quiet. We can hear crickets humming and sheep and pigs grunting and baaing on the hillside. We pause on the way, to stop at a viewpoint looking out over the canyon, and are treated to a flock of tiny green parakeets with red beaks flying over the canyon to perch, so well camouflaged as  to be almost invisible, on the outcroppings of small green trees on the rock.

Home – and exhausted – we somewhat successfully navigate the evening market and eat a plate of pasta with a potato on the side. It’s essentially a plate of everything the lady has that’s not meat. She is most suspicious that we don’t want chicken. That, in Bolivia, is truly unheard of.

We fall into bed at barely nine o clock and are asleep almost immediately.

There is even more fun to be had tomorrow.

The Price of a Cool Beer: 23 and 24 June

Wednesday, as you will understand in a moment when I tell you about Tuesday, is a quiet day, the main highlight of which is the 'virtual beer' we have over Skype with Michael, Helen and the marvellous Mark, so missed from our number in New Zealand. It is, as these things usually are, lovely. It's a simple day, but perfect. And an antidote to Tuesday.

We decide, on Tuesday, to journey to Sipe Sipe, a small town at the foot of some huge rolling green hills (or technically, mountains) in order to take a 'two and a half to three hour walk' to see some Inca ruins. The internet, in its wisdom, tells us the ruins are, well, quite ruined, but that it's a nice walk.

Two and a half to three hours, we say breezily, is a bit of a short walk by our standards, but still, it will be worth getting out of the city. Actually I am rather fond of the Cochabamba bustle, with its constant noise at all hours, its little group of people who seem to meet on a certain corner to argue at 4am, the men who played panpipes at five am one morning, and the fact that whatever hour of the day or night, someone, somewhere, is cheering on a football match. I like life in this end of town. But it will be nice to get away from the traffic.

To get to Sipe Sipe we have to take two Micros. I like Micros very much. They seem such an easy and sensible way to run public transport. Essentially they are small mini buses, with about eight seats, which display a colourful sign in their windows stating where they are going. There are plenty of then, so all you have to do is hang around on the road, flag one down that is going in your direction, and hop in. It's very easy, much easier than trying to hail a taxi in London, which I have always found to be impossible.

Once in the micro, you slot yourself into a seat, feel around like true English people for a seatbelt, and find there is none, or more accurately, there is a place to plug in but no belt. Or vice versa. You give up and hold onto the seat in front of you as you bump and grind your way along the road. When you want to get off you shout. Simple as that. There are no set stops. It's very easy and makes a lot of sense.  The only down side is that the drivers will stop for anybody to get on, on the way, even if they hail at the last minute, and for anyone who wants to get off, even if they shout at the last minute. This entails, depending on the apparent craziness of your driver, a lot of screeching to a halt and/or mounting the curb. I grit my teeth a little, swallowing visions of bloody death rolls in rattling minivans, but in fact I don't see any accidents and the roads are too congested for anyone to go very fast, though I note the drivers are undeterred by this, and floor it anyway. Before arriving in Bolivia I had become quite uneasy about travelling by road, but have since realised the 'death roads' are known as such and can be avoided and that really, once you are in a vehicle, assuming you have been sensible about choosing both it and your route, well what can you do about it anyway - and it will probably be fine.

We jump nimbly out of our Micro at Quillacollo and, with absolutely no difficulty at all (once we figure out what side of the road we should be on), just jump into another one heading for Sipe Sipe.

Have I said how much I like the Micros? Despite their bone crunching judderiness (which is in fact part of the fun), and the vague sense that we may be doing gymnastics over the curb at any moment. They are easy, plentiful, better for the environment than the European style of everyone having at least one car and no one using the rapidly dwindling public transport available, and above all interesting.

Our friends from San Pedro talked about their Micro journey to Toro Toro (where we also plan to go), which had involved a longish wait for the Micro to fill up. (Micros tend to wait for there to be a reasonable number of people in them before departing - also better for the environment, and whilst this wait is generally minimal (about ten minutes for us on the way back from Sipe Sipe to Quillacollo, and much of that was spent still moving slowly, while the driver's assistant ran alongside holding the door open and calling for custom), it can be as long as an hour or two from the less frequently travelled to places.)

"It was great," they said, "we waited for two hours sat on the wall by the Micro, and saw all kinds of people walking by. It was fascinating!"

And yes, Micros are the very best of places to people watch. All kinds of other passengers jump on and off throughout the journey, including a lady with a huge cooler box, a very old couple, literally holding each other up but with such obvious and absolute adoration one for the other than I wondered if all the clutching was, after all, absolutely necessary. School children giggle together, babies are bundled on, passively chewing their fists as they are jolted and juggled and squeezed between seats. A lady dons a full face of make up, with elaborate care, despite the near impossibility of successfully doing so, given the jerky nature of our ride.

Reading back, I realise you can see all this and more on buses in England. Why do we romanticise things so much in other countries? Or, perhaps more to the point, why are we not similarly fascinated by our own?

We disembark at Sipe Sipe, and easily find the path we need to take for our 'two and a half to three hour' walk.

The path is in fact a road, very easy to follow, and winding up the hillside. Looking down we can see the blue black shadows of other mountains in the far distance, made dreamlike by the layer of smog hanging between us, the tiny, glinting lego town that becomes Sipe Sipe the higher we climb, and the distant mountains. The smog, as I comment to M, does not look as unappealing as you might think, given what it is made of, but more like a wispy, white mist, the way artists might depict things in fantasy pictures, so that everything behind it looks a little unreal.

As we wind our way round and round the mountain, we look down and across at other mountains and hillsides adjacent to it. The mountains are dotted with dry, brittle green bushes, which serve to give them the impression, from a distance, of being covered entirely in soft green moss, like the green felt used for hillsides in model railways. Between one mountain and another we look down into chasms of reddish rock, like wounds and scars in the landscape, but, like the smog, much more beautiful than they sound. It's blissfully quiet. We can't hear any cars and, apart from the odd truck passing us rather narrowly on the road, we don't see another human being. (Actually there is one incident early on when we pass some Bolivian ladies working on the roadside with pucks, shovels and wheelbarrows. We say 'Buenas Dias' and are greeted by a hard stare. As we retreat, one of the women calls out mockingly, 'que pasa, signora' followed by something I don't quite catch about my legs. I am wearing shorts which is most unusual in Bolivia, but was aiming for comfort and cool and assuming we wouldn't see many people out here. It's unusual in friendly Bolivia, but I shrug it off, though when we pass them again on the way down we don't bother to wish them a 'buena' day. The fact is my legs are just too darn beautiful and they were jealous. Or that's what I tell myself anyway. Sometimes its useful not to be fluent in colloquial Spanish.)

Birds sing, the sun shines, the sky is a bright blue with a few tiny streaks of white cloud, as if for decoration, and we are, as we had hoped, walking in stunning and peaceful countryside.

Except. There is one flaw in this plan, which makes it one of those walks which are much more enjoyable in retrospect than at the time. The 'two and a half to three hour walk' is in fact three hours. Each way. We are constantly climbing, albeit on a paved road in a relatively shallow gradient, and the sun is very, very hot with zero shade. Despite constant reapplication of sun tan lotion and wide brimmed hats, I burn the backs of my knees and M his neck. It's very dry. Little dust devils swirl up, every now and then out of nowhere, spiraling along the path ahead of us. Dust sticks to the sweat and the sun tan lotion on our skin and our feet begin to complain, even through their walking boots, about the cobbled road surface they are trying to climb on. Our water supply, sufficient for two to three hours of climbing, not six, becomes warm and sparse very quickly. The combination of heat and altitude does strange things to my stomach so that I have to retreat inside a half broken down abandoned stone shed half way up and therein have an experience I wish neither to recount, nor to think about. The longer we climb, the more frequently we have to stop to try to flatten ourselves against the rock face to try to take advantage of the tiny sliver of shade there. Eventually, we reach the ruins. They are indeed, 'quite ruined ruins' and so rather than walk the additional distance to reach the entrance, we stop at a good vantage point, though sadly without shade, to eat our lunch and gaze out at them. It has, for both of us, always been about the walk itself rather than any huge anticipation of the ruins.

And what a walk. It has felt much harder than climbing Tongariro in New Zealand and we were much less prepared for it. By the end of the climb up I was really struggling - and a little ashamed of it.

It all becomes clearer when we have staggered back down, stopped for chips at a street stall, clambered back into our Micros, arrived home, grabbed a beer from the shop next door, showered off our layer of dust, and collapsed on the sofa to look it up.

We have climbed 660 metres, starting at 2600 above sea level, and climbing to 3260. We walked, more or less constantly (without shade it wasn't an especially welcoming environment to stop in) for just under six hours, never on the flat. The round trip was a full twenty six kilometres.

It wasn't a special, artisinale beer that we drank on the sofa, it was, for me at least, just a normal Corona with a wedge of lime stuck in it.

But I think we had earned it.

An Ode...

...to Bolivia's markets.

We get up today and go early to spend some time simply soaking up the atmosphere of the markets of Cochabamba.

They are, by a long way, the image, or to be more precise, the sights, sounds, smells and bustling, that I will take home with me, closely associated with my memories and impressions of Bolivia.

Women, in the pleated, knee length skirts which are the every day wear for indigenous people here, bend over stalls, tables, cooking pots and  grinding stones. They are, themselves, a bright splash of colour, the skirts made of velvet or heavy fabrics, sometimes with white lace petticoats, and always in a strong, distinctive colour. As Diana had indeed remarked on the Salt Flats, the general shape here is round in the middle but legs are always toned and slim, used to walking, carrying wares and babies, and there seems to be a general pride in the wearing of dainty, colourful shoes. On their backs they carry the items they sell, or their babies, wrapped tightly in heavy, brightly patterned fabric and tied expertly around their shoulders. These bundles seem to share the same fabric and I look for it, constantly, in the stores, hoping to bring some home with me, so distinctive is it and so ubiquitous. I can find it nowhere. Perhaps it is a secret of Bolivian women. Perhaps they weave it themselves. Perhaps it is passed down through generations. It seems to me to be a special token of indigenous Bolivian womanhood, a thing only for those who were born into this culture, who bear the burdens of baby and market stall, not for pampered tourists or those Bolivian women who are more European descended, and who wear black bomber jackets and jeans and shop in the supermarkets at the other end of town.

Probably I simply haven't found the right market stall.

And the markets themselves are sprawling, delicious in their colour, in their random design, which, apparently, is based on logic, but which allows for a stall selling dried baby alpacas to sit next to a guitar vendor, who is next to a phone store, beside some raw meat.

We duck and side step our way past the vendors, still setting up, hard at work, their heads with their long black, weighted plaits bent hard over their offerings. One woman pounds tiny, marble coloured potatoes using a grinding stone, to mash them. When we pass again she is pounding chilli, and when we pass for the fourth time (it's both very easy and quite fun to get lost), she is pounding tomatoes. Others bend over pots of steaming liquid, boiling potatoes or rice over little gas stoves. Someone else beats slabs of meat against a table to soften it to prepare what is known as 'fake rabbit', (actually softened pork). A lady chats to another while they both, expertly peel an enormous pule of potatoes, an equally large pile of newly balded versions either side of them. A lady in one of the traditional little bowler hats, which sit right on top of the head, above the plaits and about the size of a larger wedding fascinator in the UK, is washing the floor around her meat restaurant stall, sending bloodied water neatly into the drain in the middle of the walkway.

It's heady and beautiful. We see cats slyly weaving their way under tables to steal scraps, ignoring the pigeons, too fat to fly far from them, for other, newly tenderised fare. We walk through corridors hung with artificial fruits and flowers, so colourful it makes your eyes hurt. We spend an hour absorbed in the artisinal section, the part designed to captivate tourists, poring over painted guitars, bright fabrics, ceramics and mobiles. A woman pushes past us carrying a basket full of roasted potatoes of different kinds, making our mouths water so much we want to call her back and buy some, but she has gone, absorbed into the clamour and colour. We search for her in vain.

Finally, though perhaps not sated (I am unsure I will ever tire of Bolivian markets), we male our way to a tiny market restaurant which advertises 'comida vegetariano'. As soon as we sit down the lady who owns the, very popular, store, arrives and beams at us.

"Almuerzo completo?" (Complete lunch), she asks.

We nod and are presented with, in order; a bright raw salad featuring onion, grated radish, tomato, 'mote blanco' (a kind of very large corn, tasting similar to a large pearl of barley), and cucumber; a huge bowl of brorh like soup with potatoes, beans, herbs, rice and countless vegetables in it and; rice with potatoes and a beautifully seasoned lentil stew.

We roll out, our purses barely any lighter, and our tummies certainly not light at all.

I love the markets for their chaos and four, and their human touches. It's nice to buy tomatoes and pears from one vendor, bread from another, and dried baby alpacas from a third (we don't buy the baby alpacas, only joking). But it's nice to have three different interactions, whether they are a simply grunt and a nod, a smiling but basic transaction, or a friendly chat. It's nice to buy tomatoes, picking them out from the one tomato tray on the stall. Nice not to spend ages peering at bar codes and price labels, and refreshing that, with all of this, you still don't have to get involved in the dreaded 'barter'.

We have been to the other end of town, where the flats are posh and come with elevators and concierge, and the shops are buildings with tills and price stickers. Where the restaurants are Italian and the bars are expensive, and feature those stalls you always feel like you're falling from.

The markets, and our flat, are in the poorer end of town. Where the clothes are traditional and the living is simple. I'm not going to glamorise poverty, but to tell the truth, I haven't seen any more than I would on the homeless streets in Southampton or London. The majority of people look perfectly happy, well fed and well clothed. They man a market stall rather than work in an office. They wear colour and chose to identify with their heritage. Probably it's a tough life, they work hard for their living. But they seem, somehow, to imbue the place with more life.

I am a romantic. And I know nothing of the daily reality for this community.

But I like it so much more than the other side of town.

To Stand and Stare: 20, 21 June

"What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare"
Leisure, William Henry Davies

You would think, of course, that travelling for a year is all about having time to stand and stare. After all, we are not working? And what does anyone fill their time with if not work?

I think I would like to dispel a myth. I'm not on a 'poor us we have the terrible misfortune to be travelling' rant. On the contrary I am acutely aware of how incredibly lucky we are.

It's just that I would like to point out that it's not the same as 'having all the time in the world'.

I made the same assumption before we left.

"Probably I will finish Neville and start the new novel while we are away", I said, "and we'll have loads of time so I will learn yoga online. Oh and blog... Maybe I could turn the blogs into a book. And make gifts for people out of local materials...and...and...and..."

The reality is that I am, at least in the two days that sparked this blog, feeling the pressure. I am struggling to keep up with blog entries and fill in New Zealand, which is currently a huge gap because I didn't have time to write down the experiences there because I was too busy, well, having the experiences. I have to re edit Neville but I don't know when I will fit it in, even with my six am starts. And really I should be preparing to try to get him published, either self or otherwise but I definitely have no time to squeeze that in...

If you are incredulous, sure, as I was, that travelling would be replete with time because we wouldn't be working, think about retired people. They don't work, but I know a few and they definitely get busy! There is an attitude to work in the west in particular that demonises it. Work is the only reason we can't do anything we want,  is a necessary evil that ties up our lives so they are unfulfilled and empty.

I have talked before about the problem of work and people assuming the best thing about this trip is that we get out of going to it. I have already ranted about work being part of life and the responsibility we have to ourselves to do anything possible to enjoy our work, rather than carving a work shaped misery gap out of our lives and saying 'of course I cry every Sunday in dread of Monday. That's what work is...'

So taking that aspect out of it, it is not true that without work you would have all the time in the world. You would have the same amount of time, and even more importantly, the same amount of energy to spread over the things you would chose to do in your day.

Travelling is pretty much your replacement job. You could never conscience simply sitting in a country and not going out to see it, and so each day you are going to do something in that country. In our case we are travelling relatively slowly, compared to others who are doing it for less time overall. So we do have days where we don't do as much. But we are always HERE. Wherever 'here' is. And being 'here' is largely unfamiliar. We very rarely have parts of our day which we can do on autopilot. Everything's new.

It is wonderful, exhilarating, life affirming and beautiful.

It's also tiring. The reason I squeeze Neville the novel into the early hours of the morning, is because I have to fit other things into the day. I squeeze blog writing into basically any brief pause in the day - scribbling while I drink water or coffee, planning in my head on journeys or if we pause at the top of hills or mountains, and we both suffer from the same need to somehow unwind and relax at the end of the day.

When you travel, you are still human. You still get tired and long to watch a film or read a book in the evenings. And you still squeeze things in, just the same as at home. Maybe we have a little more personal choice about our 'working' hours, (though often the country we are in has no small say in that), but we have the same number of them, the same finiteness of hours in the day.

All of which is building up to say that in these two days, M and I have a mini 'crash'. I am feeling hassled and beginning to see blogs and Neville in much the same way as I have just complained that people view work. M is tired and, by Saturday, has come down with what turns out to be a 24 hour mild flu bug. We are both, though we haven't quite admitted it, started to look at Bolivia through tired eyes, not really taking it in, not finding it in ourselves to have an emotional reaction to what we are seeing. It feels a little like 'gallery fatigue', we have seen so much that now we look at new pictures with hollow eyes. We need to go to the gallery canteen and get a coffee.

So we take a break. Somehow both of us are a little releived that M's flu will keep us both indoors for a couple of days. (Because I have to look after him, obviously!) We put ourselves on the sofa, and permit ourselves, for two days, to temporarily ignore Bolivia. In the hope that by doing so we will repair our eyes and be able to rush out of our door into it on Monday, with newly appreciative, and open minds.

As for the time to stand and stare, I think that's still something to work on. Both here and at home. How often do we really stop and look, without an internal monologue, listing all the petty tasks we should do when we get moving again?

Beautiful Things: 18, 19, June

These days are more or less filled with us simply walking about. And trying to absorb Bolivia. We are a little tired, and I feel my gaze is a little hazy, a little, (if you can believe it), travel worn.

Highlights include stumbling on a music festival, and going to see an absurdist play in Spanish, which we mostly follow, though we assume we must be mistranslating - until we realise it is by Ionesco which means a) it isn't supposed to make sense, and they really were saying the crazy things we thought they might be, and b) we can read the script online in English.

Those apart, this is my list of random and beautiful moments in Bolivia these two days:

1) Children at the very front by the stage at the music festival, with their own little space, celebrating the jazz that's playing in their own way, by blowing bubbles.

2) A child, carried in the traditional way tied onto the back of her mother with bright fabric, peeping out at us with beautiful dark eyes, releasing one small hand, and waving at us.

3) A couple dancing Bacchata in a small cafe. There isn't a dance floor or anything. Just a space. And some music. It's all that they need.

4) The fact that the Ionesco play, which takes place in an old disused abattoir, now transformed into a makeshift theatre space, is absolutely packed out (though sadly entirely with Spanish descended Bolivians. There is not an indigenous face amoung them.)

5) On a similar note, the Palaccio Portables, built for a rich man and his family to live in, though they never did, preferring his other houses dotted around the world, which is enormously opulent, is opened for artists to put their shows on. It's free for the artists and for the audience.

6) A humming bird in the Palaccio gardens, bright electric blue and feeding with enormous, purple, bell shaped flowers.

7) 'Gopal', an amazing Bolivian/Indian inspired buffet, which costs 20 Bolivians each for a full meal, drink and sweet, and which is staffed by the smiliest lady imaginable.

8) That cultural dress is still worn by the indigenous people, who are dark skinned and beautiful, in their pleated knee length skirts of all colours and fabrics (people can be on their knees pounding potato at a market store, in thick velvet or bright satin), with their bright stretches of material tied around their shoulders, carrying market bundles or babies.

9) Avocados. Huge and green and EVERYWHERE. They taste fantastic. No meal is complete without them.

10) The stray dogs. Friendly and gentle. In all shapes, pedigrees and colours. They seem, far from unkempt, very happy and free, eating scraps off the market and trotting about or sleeping in the sun. Give one a stroke or a scratch behind the ears and you've made a faithful friend for life. (Though you may not be permitted to stop the stroking).

The Face of Jesus: 16-17 June

At the top of the largest hill, gazing out over all of Cochabamba, is a huge statue of Jesus, arms outstretched as if to embrace or to entreat, and rendered in white stone. It is an image you can see from virtually anywhere in Cochabamba.

On 16th, we climb that hill to see it. On 17th we go to visit the ancient Santa Teresa Convent, a Carmelite convent dating back to the eighteenth Century, now with only a dwindling handful of nuns, living in the more comfortable building adjacent to it, and under rather different rules to their original counterparts.

They knew a very different Jesus. In fact, as I reach the top of that hill and take my first close up glimpse of his face, it seems to me that our global conception of Jesus is undergoing somewhat of an identity crisis.

"Oh." I say, stopping and frowning up at the statue.

"What's wrong?" asks M.

"Well it's just...it's just I don't know if I like his face..."

Jesus, in this conception, is looking out over the town with all of the usual nobility, but rather less obvious compassion. He looks concerned, there is the suggestion of a frown, though none of anger and nothing to suggest anything so simple as 'disapproval'. But he seems just a little, well, less kind.

Jesus, as depicted in words or art in the UK, or more precisely, in the tradition of Christianity I tend to belong to, has a long suffering, but overwhelmingly patient face. The outstretched arms, so consistant in artistic portrayals of him, seem, in conjunction with that face, to be opening out purely that we might run into them. It is the face of a Christ that loves children and animals, that might sweep you up into his arms and whisper sweet words of forgiveness and reassurance, ultimately inviting, but also, perhaps, a little too uncomplicated.

Looking further at the carved face looking out at us, it occurs to me that it is rather more realistic. A Christ looking out over a humankind which, though loved, and still beautiful, is cannibalising itself through war and greed, and suffering terribly as a result, a Christ contemplating a long, bloody, and humiliating death for the sake of this people, with all the complexities involved in any great love, and facing the enormous challenge of guiding a flailing humankind through the immense mazes of their own creations, understandings or misconceptions of what it is to be good, and what it is to be God, knowing they probably won't listen - might well portray a rather more complicated set of emotions, than simple, and rather soppy looking, kindness.

Our understanding of such complex emotions should, given the notorious complexity of human emotions, be rather better. But there is something, I think in all of us, that hopes for simplicity, for a straightforward black and white set of rules, which we can grasp in our human hands, and follow. We want rules from our Christ, we want wisdom and justification, nothing so messy as emotion.

And yet, the rules themselves, are complex. How could they be otherwise? Is it possible to create something which can span cultures, ages, individuals and multiple linguistic translations - and have it be simple? Surely the only way to make a concept stand through time, is to use stories and metaphors, images and proverbs? And yet, this method of communicating meaning allows, perhaps rightly, for multiple understandings, for each individual to read the same text and confer on it a special meaning.

"I am the way, the truth and the life," reads one inscription at the foot of the statue, "nobody comes to the Father except through me."

It's a well known verse. But M doesn't like it.

"Isn't it arrogant?" He asks, "to insinuate that all other religions are wrong. Isn't it the verse that has given Christians throughout history the justification for bloody crusades and patronising attitudes to indigenous peoples when colonising islands?"

Actually he is not so direct as that, those are my words and my bug bear, but his thought is along similar lines.

"It has been used like that," I say bitterly, because everything in me rails against the way my faith has been used to harm others, "but as I see it, that's not what it actually means. I think it's actually an opening up of the ideas at the time about access to God."

To explain, Jesus was talking to a society which had made up its own, ever more complicated and ever more exclusive, rules about God. You had to sacrifice a dove, which were enormously expensive and sold for a profit in the temple grounds. You had to be seen to give lots of money, with no leeway given in respect of how much you actually had, only certain people could speak directly to God so you conducted your relationship via expensive intermediaries and if you were ill, menstruating, or conducting your life in a way the rich temple authorities considered 'unclean', you may not have been allowed in the temple at all - and only in the temple could you worship God...

A relationship with God was an expensive business, for some perhaps not possible, and more and more barriers were being piled in the way. Jesus, in my view, was cutting through all that, and opening up the telephone lines to all.

Of course that is one view. Others interpret this differently. Many believe it really was a statement to the effect that all other religions and concepts of God were wrong and should convert to Christianity. Some factions, interestingly including some branches of Catholicism, a key religion of this country, still take the view that your path to God must be conducted via a priest intermediary.

The face of Jesus, depending on your viewpoint, can look very different.

The second inscription, "love one another as I have loved you", brings to mind another of the major points of discussion in respect of what exactly, might have been meant, namely Jesus' entreaty to "love the lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind."

As part of his 'summing up' of the key two principles to follow in pursuit of a Godly life, along with the famous and rather less ambiguous "love your neighbour as yourself", this should be one of the most straightforward, right?

But in fact it causes many people to knit their brow in confusion, and to follow very different paths according to the way they interpret it.

After all, is it possible to love a God with ALL your heart, soul and mind? Surely there needs to be some room given over in your heart, to spouse and friends and family, in your mind to your work, your plans, your moral choices? Wouldn't a literal obedience to that endorsement render you intellectually and physically incapable of carrying out the most basic requirements of life?

Personally, having struggled with this for years, ("Are other people really doing this? How are they managing? My heart is already full with loving fellow humans. Do I have to evict them?") I found a more reasonable understanding via a very good friend some years back.

Love for a God feels very different to love for another human. It can't be compared because a God cannot easily be compared to a human. Love for someone physically in front of you, which takes a physical or an actual form, is different to love for a concept you can only vaguely begin to give form to, and which is, in fact, more powerful than you can imagine and which is in and of everything you see, feel and touch and indeed, created it.

In my mind loving the lord your God with all of your heart, soul and mind, involves embracing all of life, in the belief that you have it purely through His design, that everything beautiful that you see and love in the world and in others is part of that God, that everything you do for others, you do, indirectly for that God.

Your love for God is therefore expressed in your gratitude for the good things in life, in your willingness to enjoy it, and to expect good and strive hard to put it there, if it isn't there already.

This, however, is entirely at odds with the, also very popular, view, that the world is a place you should be somehow avoiding, full of temptations and shallow desires, and that the best way you can love God is to shut yourself off from it, mentally or physically or both. In the most extreme of these views, the act of feeling comfortable or happy in this world is in some way wrong, a hindrance to your focus on more lasting treasures, such as your eternal heavenly home. This world is an evil, broken place and you should be wishing daily for your ticket out of it. In the lesser extreme the logic does follow, there are a lot of distractions here and loving the lord your God with all your heart rather insists that you do optimise space by shifting focus, and sidelining other things.

Personally, I think a God who created this world would be rather sad to see me shrug it off and ignore it wholesale, preferring my full engagement with it, but perhaps with a little discernment. But what do I know? I know only one face of Jesus, the one through which I understand his teachings.

But there are many, many others, equally valid and, given that this is a huge, superhuman deity we are talking about, quite possibly equally real.

The nuns in the original eighteenth century Santa Teresa convent, took a vow to shut themselves away, forever, from the corrupting influences of the world. And every influence counted as corrupting. The walls of the convent are three metres thick, and stretch high, only allowing a small view of the sky in one little courtyard, its walls even higher and deliberately unscaleable. There are rotating shelves on which the nuns could place a shopping list, to be swivelled round so that they had no contact and no sight of, their shopper. There is a hatch through which the priest could slide the communion bread, with curtains to ensure no sight of the church, and a separate place where the nuns could sit and sing, and hear the sermon, without perceiving anything else of it, particularly any young men of the town. Hair being a thing of vanity, they wore their hair short, and the long locks they may have previously treasured before their entry into the convent were cut off and used to form the hair on the many models and icons of the various female saints which adorned the convent for the sister's reflection. Once they passed through that door, they would never set foot, or even eyes, on the outside world again.

Which is an admirable, and frankly amazing, sacrifice, assuming all the sisters were there by choice. Unfortunately it was socially very fashionable to have a daughter in the convent, a great honour, in fact, to be enjoyed by those lucky family members who got to stay outside and enjoy it. If you were unfortunate enough to be born the second daughter, you would, quite literally, be bought into the convent, there being a rather hefty price to be paid to admit you in. Whether you liked it or not, your future would be sacrificed for the vanity of your family, and to ensure their entry into heaven. This Jesus, the face of whom looks sternly down through the thick stone walls of the convent, is one of social nicety - and social strata. The nuns were split into groups, depending on social status and the amount paid to buy their entry. The luckier ones spent their time praying and sewing, the others were not very much more than slaves to their more affluent sisters. This Jesus does not require equal sacrifice from his subjects. He is oddly at peace with the social hierarchy of the outside world, replicating it without irony, inside the convent.

And this Jesus has no mercy. We are shown a small, cramped stone corridor, not tall enough to stand up in and not wide enough to sit down. The sisters, historians believe, would be walled up inside this corridor for days as a punishment for any transgression. It seems that the sister in charge did not know a Jesus who whispered forgiveness and love, but a powerful overlord, wielding thunderbolts and lightning.

But what of the poor sisters in the corridor, being punished? Our guide shows us markings on the wall. There are the usual lines to delineate the passing of time, or try to, which are common in various prisons across the globe, particularly the more horrific ones. But there are also, over and over again, and seemingly by different hands, the three heart shapes familiar to the sisters, which represented Mary, Jesus and God.

"For hope" says our guide.

Perhaps those captive sisters, alone in the dark, drew the hearts as part of a plea to a Jesus who they believed had condemned them to this fate. Perhaps as a cry for mercy. Perhaps as a comfort, a sense of compassion, of company. Maybe the hearts drawn by each different hand, represent to their artist, a different Jesus.

As for Teresa herself, she escaped from the convent twice. This is, don't forget, a situation you escape from, not a voluntary act. Both times she was caught with two boyfriends at once.

I rather like the sound of Teresa.

"Two boyfriends!" says one of our party, in laughing mock disapproval.

"Well if you're know you're likely to get caught again," I tell her, "you haven't got much time to waste. Better cram all your life experiences in quickly.'

In fact Teresa, after her second capture, decided the answer was not in flight, but reform, and it is thanks to her dedication to changing the system from the inside, that the present day nuns have a very different experience. I suspect her concept of the nature of Jesus would have been unrecognisable to the culture inside the convent at the time.

Nowadays the nuns know a new face of Jesus, one which permits external excursions, rejects the unfair hierarchical system, but preserves a sense of a life devoted. We see the nuns in the streets, on errands of mercy, or buying their own groceries. They live in the building adjacent to the old convent, which is warmer and, though not luxurious, more comfortable. They are, though probably not without some social  disapproval, free at any time to break their vows and leave.

Interestingly, the system now works based on personal choice. There are still some in their number who choose to shut themselves away from the world every bit as completely as their original sisters. They know another face of Jesus, every bit as real to them, every bit as valid.

Throughout this journey I have been struck by how many different concepts of God there are, around the world. In some places God is in the earth, in some in heaven, in some he manifests himself in multiple forms based on myth and metaphor, in others he is an empty chair, an inconceivable power.

I have strong suspicions, talking to people who are, equally fervently, practising different faiths, that we are all of us searching for the same thing, and that all of us have found it. We just disagree on what it looks like, and the details of its teachings. We have more in common than we have in contrast, though mostly we chose to argue.

But what I have perhaps forgotten in commenting on these things, is that even within the exact same religion, our personal God figure looks very different.

And why should he not? Don't human beings also have many facets, many moods, many faces? How much more so a God? Particularly when framed by a human imagination.

We have perhaps all found slightly different Gods, even within the same religion. So why make such a distinction, why claim right or wrong, between different conceptions, even different religions?

Maybe the best portrayal of Christ is as a multi faceted, literally multi faced Janus type figure. But we'd struggle with that, in the West at least, where we like to portray our Gods as human.

The Settling Itch - 14th and 15th June

In the past two days I have traveled from the salty dry deserts of Uyuni to the more populated Oruru, via a creaking bouncing Night Train which, due to one of the frequent power outages in Uyuni, is without heat or light. I have taken a crammed bust to the wild and dizzying mountain scapes, people jumping on and off while the bus is moving and every so often someone getting on to address the bus on some topic such as the health benefits of quinoa. I have been given the keys to the basic flat which will be our home in Cochabamba, Bolivia and unpacked bits and pieces into it. I have been to the market to buy supplies including washing powder, milk sold in a bag, and an unknown green vegetable (which later turned out to 'Kaywa' or 'Achojacha'). Some of these activities were thrilling, others dull and pedestrian. But they are probably not in the categories you think.

The fact is, over the last couple of weeks, (with the exception of the days in which we were crossing the salt flats, which were like a whole other world) I have actually been experiencing what I believe is commonly known as 'homesickness'.

It does involve a fair amount of looking forward to seeing particular people and particularly exciting activities, like adopting a cat, or finding a rental flat. But really for me the word 'homesickness' doesn't quite express it. I am not so much sick from missing home. I have only a few months before I will be there after all and the wonders of the Internet has allowed for much in the way of contact with people back in the UK. Instead I am just a little tiny bit sick of traveling.

Well at least I assume I am. I assume it while I try to sleep on the train, or to refrain from being sick on the bus. I assume it when my rucksack make the transition somehow from being a symbol of freedom to, well,  just a really heavy rucksack.

Until I walk through the door of a very basic flat and I think I am in heaven.

I can put my shampoo in the bathroom and leave it there! It doesn't have to be packaged up again into my lunch bag after each ablution! I can leave my towel there without later discovering it being worn on somebody else's head before disappearing together! There is a kitchen! It has very little in the way of pans, but it is ours! We can sit at a little table to eat! The bustle of external Cochabamba has that muted, homely quality that places take on in the evening. I can make a cup of tea in the kitchen in my underwear without causing offence! (Please refrain from the obvious joke here).

Then we go to the markets of Cochabamba. And everywhere, everything is a market. There is no need for a supermarket, (though we do, rather pointlessly, visit one),  because you can buy anything you want on a street market. You name it, someone has a little store on the street selling it. We walk through bustling, chatting streets, assailed with colour, oranges piled up high, cats slinking among bloody meat markets, huge rounds of fresh cheese piled up, butter and milk in buckets of ice, packets and bottles of detergents and cosmetics piled precariously on top of one another, no two bottles seemingly the same. Cars beep, children giggle, people shout, birds call. We conduct out transactions entirely in chatty, curious Spanish, with chatty, curious Cochabambinos (that is their official name - isn't it lovely?) and I feel that brief, vertiginous sense of overstimulation that is so familiar from what remainsy favourite continent, South East Asia.

It doesn't feel like travelling. It feels like coming home.

And perhaps, I reflect, curled on the sofa at the end of our days, drinking glasses of £2 Bolivian wine and listening yo the, already cozy, Cochabamba clamour outside, this is why we haven't felt homesick before.

"Don't worry," said a good friend before we left, "if you find yourself feeling really homesick. It's normal. And if you need to come home earlier than 11 months, don't beat yourself up over it."

But really, the last few weeks, and a little in Bali, are the only times I have really felt it, and never to the extent she was describing. M is the same. Do we just not like our home? No. Absolutely not. We love it, and personally I anticipate our return with the same excitement I anticipate, and anticipated, this trip.

It is more that the way we have conducted this journey, 'settling' for a month into each new place, and making like natives, means we manage, usually, to create a sense of belonging. A sense of roots, making us feel less like ghostly onlookers, just passing through.

And it is the places we have called home, spaces designed to be lived in, rather than stayed in, the local markets, the sane faces we ask for bunches of fresh herbs, the same hands each week, measuring out our chilli paste, our beans or our rice. The deepening flicker, on both sides, of recognition.

The times we have felt less comfortable in country or city are countable on two fingers (Bali and San Pedro), and have in common a sense that we could not, for differing reasons, feel as though we truly 'lived' there. Bali, because of the traffic and the resultant lack if access to the locality, and San Pedro because the hostal was very much a hostal. We made friends but we watched them passing through. In the end we were a ghostly presence too, despite our relatively long term stay.

The last, however, is mitigated by at leas two sets if people who we made proper contact with, and this is rather underlined on our second evening in Cochabamba, when we manage to meet up with one couple from San Pedro, who happen to be in Cochabamba that night.

We walk to meet them through streets and sounds already familiar. (Though I have yet to shake off an annoying, and I suspect rather overblown, sense of danger lurking around every corner, at least on paper. In reality each time we go into town I am a little more struck by how safe I feel. Precautions like not taking valuables out with us, and avoiding darker, lonelier streets late at night are sensible and, frankly, apply just as much to London. But it is not true that every Bolivian is hoping to rob you. We probably experienced more of that, though in more subtle ways, in our first few days in Cambodia.)

We chat with our friends, with the ease of those who have already made the friendship and have only to sit back and enjoy it.

Then we go back to our flat (OUR FLAT!) where I have begun, already, to pride myself on making ever more inventive Bolivian inspired breakfasts and M, to counter these efforts with ever more delicious dinners.

I don't think we ever had a 'traveling itch'.

We have a 'settling itch'.

We just want to settle in lots of places, and just a little more frequently than the expression, 'to settle' might normally imply.

The Power of Experience

"I greatly admire what you're doing. Congratulations. It really is an incredible thing to do. I am going to tell my sons about you when I see them, so that they, too, can be inspired."

This is not something we hear often, and certainly not from people we are, ourselves, inspired by.

Today would have been a very dull day, one of those days when travelling which seems not to really count as a day, but just a sort of waiting room. I don't mind those,days, in fact you need them, particularly if you are travelling for nearly a year. You can't gave an adventure every day, and nobody dies, whatever they tell you. Today we are more or less stranded as our hotel is out of town to the tune of two hundred Bolivians worth of taxi, and our train is booked for ten past midnight. It's been an amazing few days crossing the salt flats and, silly as it might sound, we are in danger of becoming a little inured to being amazed, so we need the time. We settle into a cozy nook by a fire and set to work attempting to record the events and sights of the past few days in blogs.

When a couple from Delhi ask if we would mind if they joined us, and we have the usual conversation about how long they are staying for, where we are all from and what we are doing, we don't expect it to blossom into an interaction which gives us a much needed boost.

I don't expect people to admire us, when we say what we are doing. I expect them to envy us, sometimes even to judge us for our privileged status, or to eye us strangely, wondering what we are doing, wasting our time sitting in armchairs tapping into gadgets when we should be out there, earning our travelling status with non stop adventures.

In fact, today we are feeling a little grumpy about travelling. The hotel is expensive, which we didn't quite intend, we are tired and it's just that time in the journey when home seems near enough to yearn for, just a bit.

When I tell the couple from Delhi what we are doing I attach to it automatically the usual mantra about knowing how very lucky we are, how privileged, how much we know that not everyone had the opportunity to do this. And I mean it. Despite our rather travel weary moods today, I am acutely aware of how jealous I used to be when my peers leaving university went traveling on gap years, or had already been on them before they began. Money, neither then nor for at least the next decade following, was a huge barrier to me in respect of most things, most of all travelling abroad. I had tied myself in knots made out of IOU's and bank loans, following a lot of fun - mixed with very little sense - at university. It is only because I managed to get a job which paid enough to repay the debts and save up enough to sinpky take a year put, that I am able to do this. That what I happen to enjoy and be good(ish) at happens to be paid well is absolute coincidence and nothing of my earning. (My other passion, writing, pays virtually nothing). That I was able to train to get this job required a reasonable level of academic ability, and that I had that was also coincidence. That I have 'absolutely deserved and earned and made possible this trip of my own hard work' is only true at the very surface. The rest was sheer luck. And luck is no respecter of whether you earned it.

So it is astonishing to me that these people might learn what it is we are doing and respond with such enthusiastic approval.

I express these thoughts, and our new friends explain, earning my own admiration in the process.

Travelling, they say, is one of the most effective ways of developing empathy. By seeing other cultures and learning to understand them, we may learn to look at other human beings, and see similarities rather than grate against differences. We see that every person is, just that, another person, with all the same capacity of thought and emotion as ourselves, just perhaps arranged or expressed in different patterns. If we can learn to tolerate the differences we find in other cultures, to admire the great things in them, and understand the flaws as something we too, in that position, might falter on, we will become better people. If we can see poverty, and feel something real, feel a compassion which owes more to empathy than to pity, if we can return to our own culture, where we are privileged and still remember the suffering, the beauty and the wisdom we saw elsewhere, then we can grown rich in something much greater than money.

As a result, this couple had brought up their two sons with an emphasis on travel, and through it, on tolerance, kindness and the understanding of the transient nature, not just of material goods and money itself, but of the pleasure they bring to you.

It strikes me, listening to them talking, that this couple may have inspired their sons through more than just travel itself.

"We went with our sons to Goa," they tell us, "but Goa is a party place and so they were sleeping all day and partying through the night
 We realised we wouldn't see them. So we just did the same. We slept in the day and went out partying with our sons at night."

It seems to me that these patents are, themselves, an inspiration to their children, albeit through the medium of travel. How many parents, rather than simply arguing with their, then grown up, sons about how they should conduct the family holiday, would simply have opened themselves up to experiencing Goa, their sons' way? And how much richer were they for acquiring that experience?

I recount the gist of an article M had read recently, which charted the length of time for which people's happiness levels spiked, depending on stimuli. The overwhelming evidence being that, once you passed a certain threshold and had enough money to be fed and comfortable, more money only have you a temporary happiness boost. Other short lived boosts included the acquisition of a new house or a new car. By far the longer lasting happiness inducers were experiences. These lifted people's overall happiness levels for a much longer period of time, barely tailing off, and this applied both to good and bad experiences.

"Exactly!" cry our friends, "we read something similar and we are trying to become rich in experiences. Money is easy to get. Happiness is harder."

Every year this couple from Delhi travel for one month. Just long enough to acquire experience and deepen their understanding and tolerance for humanity. Not so long that their work would suffer, which is something they take a pride in but the money from which, ultimately, in reinvested in the much more valuable asset - experience.

"I don't know why you're so impressed by us!" I say, "we are far more impressed by you!"

A mutual appreciation society it may be, but I really mean it. I love the way this couple have chosen to conduct their lives and the way they have brought up their children. They talk about the value of looking after others before oneself, something they tried, through travel, to imbue in their sons, and I agree wholeheartedly. (In fact they cite the key tenants of the Sikh religion here, which sound, as I comment, remarkably similar to those of Christianity. Or Buddhism. Or, for that matter, Islam.)

As for their sons, I can't imagine what more they could learn from us either.

"I seem to have too much money," one of their sons recently told them, "so I'd like to spend some on taking you on holiday." He doesn't have millions. He just has more than he needs. As do many of us in developed countries. But you very rarely hear somebody say its too much.

They have a son with a house in America, he uses the house as a means to go travelling. He lets it out through AirBnB, and the money he gets from it pays for him to view every weekend as a vacation.

What a way to live. I appreciate that these people, like me, were born lucky enough to have aptitudes which pay, and education, which untaps them, but they are taking their life seriously, the way people should, working hard to avoid the same ruts which many people spend three quarters of the lives unhappily accepting.

When we finally take our leave of these people, it is with a sense, I think on both sides, of being richer for having swapped life outlooks with them. I have ideas and principals buzzing in my mind, some previously held but now endorsed, some entirely new and to be added to my list of new wisdoms I hope to try to hang on to, once I get home.

This couple would have been an enrichment to our lives whenever we met them,but I felt that they couldn't have appeared in our landscape at a more appropriate time. Just as we began to feel jaded, they appeared to provide nor must hollow endorsement but new and dead, reinforcing and building on convictions we had held earlier, and which were still there but beginning to be stifled, starved  of air beneath piles of petty worries or wearinesses.

I wish that couple the very best in their continuing collection of experiences. May they be rich in memories, love and even greater wisdom.

We swapped email addresses. I hope we keep in touch.

Poor? Who's Poor?

"There are no poor people in Bolivia - only lazy people."

This is from Diana, our guide, who is chatting to us throughout the day, as we spend more time being awed by the salt flats, have a deliciously giggly lunch over wine in the middle of the salt flats, before finally ending this, most inspiring of journeys, at our hotel in Uyuni.

It is, to say the least, a controversial statement, and I am loath to venture an opinion of my own, being so under informed about Bolivian economics, though I suspect this is an opinion evinced by somebody who is not struck by poverty themselves. And as such, is also more under informed than they would realise.

But what does strike me, is that the definition of what poverty is, is controversial in itself. We have endless discussions with politicians in the UK, arguing over how possible it might be to live on minimum wage, or whether people on benefits are Britain's poor - or simply  'thieving cheating scum who are probably foreign' (paraphrased from regular headlines appearing in the Daily Mail and/or emerging from the venerable mouth of Nigel Farage). 

There has always been controversy over what the monetary threshold if poverty should be. And there have always been arguments put forward by groups of people to the effect that they are 'poor' - and by other groups of people to the effect that those groups are not. The word 'poor' seems to confer a higher moral status than, for example, the word 'unemployed'. Being poor is a state of being you were born into and deserve to be rescued from. Being unemployed, unacademic or similarly stuck outside the more well oiled cogs of society might well lead to the same economic definition of poverty, but those labels are a little less well respected, opening themselves to, probably unfair, accusations of laziness or undesirability.

These are age old discussions. But what about the other kind of controversy, in which a person might rail against a definition of being 'poor' which is forced upon them by a well meaning but maybe a little patronising member of a more traditionally well heeled group or culture? Bolivia presents a particular challenge in this latter category, as further conversations with Diana, anecdotes from others and my own subsequent experience will reveal.

Bolivia is a rich country in respect of its natural resources, not only in terms of arable farming, raising of alpacas and llamas for meat and wool, quinoa production, salt, oil, and natural minerals and gemstones - but in terms of beauty, tourist interest and historic and geological specimens such as Inca ruins, dinosaur footprints, mountains, volcano's and fossils.

That it does not export much in the way of goods owes much to high taxes, which Diana tells me the country is trying to change. But it also owes something to the fact that production of goods is almost never mechanised. This means that countries such as Chile, who use factories and machines for large scale farming, can produce a greater quantity, cheaper.  But Bolivia, at least according to Diana, is proud of its lack of mechanisation, something I can support, not being a huge fan of large scale mechanised farming myself. In my experience the results of upscaling the volume of production, is that the animals, where it involves those, are treated badly in the pursuit of speed and the cutting of costs, the quality suffers in support of the quality, because in order to keep up with the mechanised speeds, certain corners are cut, jobs are fewer and the environmental impact is deeper. The huge caveat on this, of course, is that I don't actually understand farming, and the effects I describe may not in fact be directly in consequence of greater volume or mechanisation, but if market forces or the personal choices of individual farmers. But it's a perception.

It's a perception that Diana, and, apparently, Bolivian people in general, shares. 

"We do not use machines," she says, "and so our products are very pure. There is not much pollution and the products are good quality. They are made carefully, not fast."

Diana is proud of this heritage. She sees a work ethic and a sense of quality in the hand made, hand reared, hand harvested nature of the goods which firm the key economic components of her country. Bolivia does not produce things by hand simply because it is poor, though as things are never simple, it might have an effect, bit because it is the way people choose to do it.

We visit a little village on the edge of the salt flats where the majority of its inhabitants earn their living by extracting, processing, bagging and selling the salt. They generally run it as a family business from their home. We go in to see, and there are the piles of salt, which the men drive out to dig for and bring back. There are piles laid out to dry, and then shaken to break it up into granules, whereupon it is funnelled into a bag which is sealed over a candle.

In the distance there is a deserted building.

"That was the old factory for processing the salt " says Diana, "but it's empty now."

I ask why. She shrugs as though really the answer is obvious.

"No one wanted to go to a factory," she says, "to work for someone else and do what they could do perfectly well at home."

What an attitude. What freedom. What work life balance. Why travel, albeit only a short distance to work in less comfort, with less ability to simultaneously look after your children, your hens and your pigs, and little say in the final division of profit? Even more challengingly, how many of us in the west go to an office to do something we could 'perfectly well do at home'? To be fair, before now I would have assumed the processing of salt was not a thing you could easily do at home, but South America, and indeed South East Asia, have rather expanded my understanding of what is possible.

Diana talks further about things the country is rich in, which she feels would be lost, sacrificed on the alter of progress, if the country were to become more 'developed' with all the changes that go along with that. People here are rich in their understanding of the properties of plants. They don't go to a chemist to buy a capsule for a minor ailment, they know that nettle tea is good for pain, mint for digestion, they know how to create poultices, infusions and foods to cure every possible minor ailment. They even know that a certain plant can be used to ward off malevolent spirits, dead family members hoping to bring another family member along with them, because they are reluctant to depart this world. What's more, the herbs and leaves required for all these cures are free. They can be found simply growing on the hillside. And every child in Bolivia knows how to identify them.

It certainly is a skill we've lost in the UK. Now we have to look it up on the internet. But before we too, were rich in our knowledge of plants and their properties, superstition aside. We knew how to cure a cold with a handful of herbs. My own knowledge of this, today, is very basic. Ginger for a cold, dock leaves for nettle stings, lavender to sleep. It's pretty limited. 

This principal extends. 

"People here do not just buy a table when they need one," Diana explains, "they are used to making use of what there is. They can make a table."

Her point is that simply buying things, as you might in a more developer country means after a generation or so, you are no longer empowered to create something for yourself. You are the poorer for the loss of that skill.

Later, we talk to some friends we made in San Pedro, who had been to visit the Potasi mines.

"We are happy," the miners told them, "we are glad you have seen because we are free. We do not have to go down into the mines every day. We share a section of the mine as our family business. If we do not want to work one day, we do not. We have a choice. We like to chat with our friends in the mines, its a nice atmosphere. We train our children how to mine not because we are poor, but because they want to learn, it is our pride. It is our business."

The Potasi miners are usually spoken of by visitors in sad voices, focusing on the shortened life span as a result of the dust. We assume the best thing would be for the mines to be closed for the sake of the miners, or for them to be employed by a company. We do not think of what they might lose. 

How patronising is it to assume somebody is poor or that their life would be better if it were more like ours? How much, unbeknown to us in the west, might others pity us for the aspects of our lifestyle in which we are the poorer?

Poor? Who's poor?