6 pairs of shoes

Yep, that’s right. I have 6 pairs of shoes with me on my trip.  I guess that is one of the luxuries you can indulge when you roll solo in a SUV.  The list…

 

Vasque hiking boots, full steel shank, crampon compatible for Patagonia and hopefully Antarctica.

Salomon trail running shoes. Easy to slip on, comfortable, covered in mud.

Adidas running shoes. More comfortable, lighter, and not as hot as the Salomons. Felt like a waste until Cartagena where I walked for 5 days. I was glad I had them.

Chaco sandals. Primarily for the ocean and beach. Sometimes for longer walks where bugs/snakes aren’t a concern.

Chaco flip flops, quick hikes, short saunters through town, showering in iffy motels.

Reef wicker (no other way to describe them) flip flops. For driving. Very thin, absorb the sweat, cheap and easy to throw away when I get home.

 

So after all I have been through over the last 10 days why would I be talking about shoes?  Well I posted a bunch of pics in the gallery. You’ll notice a ripped and bloody big toe.  That is exactly what you get when you wander through a under-construction gas station in the wicker Reefs. Among the other highlights, the 14 year old kids ‘piloting’ me and Ruby Claire across Lake Titicaca on a single vehicle barge. Many Salar de Uyuni pics, the Falls of Iguazu. Sunsets in the Gran Chaco and Altiplano.  Toothless locals enjoying a hit of coca. A rampant addiction that affected the majority of the men Justin and I talked to in Bolivia.  Crowded colonial streets.  Water and more water. We missed the worst of the flooding in Bolivia (although it is raining so hard outside right now I’m not sure tomorrow is going to be so easy) but managed to spend a bit of time dealing with the effects.  The river that almost swallowed my truck, a dark pic of the muddy creeks we crossed dozens of times. Draining the diesel fuel out of my tank at 11:30pm. And a few pics of the town of Huari.

 

I’m going to save most of the time spent with Justin here for print because it was that memorable and adventurous but I want to talk about Huari and the surreal event that occurred there.  Huari is a town about 3 hours south of La Paz, Bolivia en route to the Salar de Uyuni.  How we ended up staying the night there is the result of a dozen different factors, any one of which would have changed the course of our evening.

Justin’s flight was 2 hours late arriving in La Paz.  I spent 3 hours on the phone with AT&T trying to fix my phone at the hotel.  The abundance of toll booths between here and there.  The blockade outside the town of Oruro. Essentially a bunch of upset locals filling the road with rocks and burning tires.  Getting lost in the disgusting town of Oruro.  By far the dirtiest, grimiest, lest appealing town of my trip. I could try to describe it but I would fail.  Since camping was on the agenda we stopped in Cha’llapata to track down food. That took 25 mins to find some bad bread.  A few more stops clarifying the right direction with locals and then Huari.  As we were passing through on our way south to camp we spotted a kid in a KC Royals hat carrying a laptop.  I backed up the truck and rolled down the window.

“are you guys really from Utah?”

“yep” 

 

Brandon is in Huari with the Peace Corp helping them with obtaining potable water.  Come to find out there were 2 Peace Corp volunteers in the tiny hamlet of 3000, primarily indigenous, Bolivians.  Not only that but 3 others from the region were also in town because the blockade outside Oruro had altered their plans. Having been alone and spoken with very few native English speakers (my Canadian friends on motorcycles) since the first week of December I found myself in Huari at a table eating dinner with 6 other Americans.  I really struggled to wrap my head around it.  To make the night even more surreal after returning to our $4 motel we sat and chatted with Jessica for over an hour. A young lady, and Fulbright Scholar, from Texas researching the role of females in the indigenous cultures.  

 

So our time in Huari satisfied a few different needs.  I was able to speak English exclusively for a few hours.  We gained insight into the local culture and community from people living there amongst them. Info you can never get from the locals as you pass through. They are too hesitant to open up to strangers.  I felt like I was asking way too many questions, to the point of sounding like a 5 yr old arguing with a babysitter. ‘but why?’ and ‘how come?’ and ‘what about?’  they were good to answer the questions Justin and I threw at them and more importantly for me I felt some sense of Americanism in the heart of the Bolivian Altiplano.  I wasn’t looking for it  and didn’t realize how much I missed conversation, true communication, but I found it in Huari and it felt good.   A very unexpected and appreciated gift in the middle of my journey.

 

Huari was not only the site of the unlikely gathering of Americans but also a very quirky town in itself.  Home to the Huari Cervezaria it is very different from all other towns in that it is clean. The brewery pays a staff of locals to clean the streets of trash and debris.  They also take all the water from the community and employ very few of them in the plant. A very weird arrangement.  The shared ‘bathroom’ at our Alojamiento required the following procedure to flush.  You had to carry water, in a cut in half milk carton, from the 55 gallon drum of collected rain water and dump it into the toilet.  Luckily for me one trip was sufficient.  I’d hate to see how many trips it would take if I had really used the toilet instead of just adding a fresh coat to the putrid urine scent.  The whole town was this way. Sacrificing their water to the brewery, that employed very few of them and clouded their skies in exchange for clean streets.  A weird town. A surreal evening. Both I doubt I will ever forget.

 

Justin flew out yesterday and J is arriving in a few hours.  More English and the entire length of Chile lie ahead.  But first another stop in Huari on the way to the Atacama.