this post won´t be very long, i think, because the keyboard that i use in the hotel sucks… yet i have so much to say.
susan, donee, jeff and myself left to cochabamba (cbb) last monday, despite the threat of transportation stops. we looked on the tv for news, and they had canceled them that day. we were lucky…. we later found out that they held the transportation stops on thursday and friday. we could see the remants of the blockages as we drove into cbb this saturday the 23.
so, anyway, the drive to yanayo was super long. we woke up early, around 6am, and we did not arrive in yanayo until 2am. we had taken the first half of the day to buy some food and equipment. we traveled on the main highway between cbb and potosi. but this main highway is a sketchy dirt road, far from the paved freeways of the US. we were able to make most of the way to yanayo, but about 2 km from the village, the road became impassable. we parked the car on the road, and carried our bags with essential things into the village. we later found out that the road from acacio (another village) to yanayo was passable, so we left our bags in the village and walked back to the car. we back tracked our route, and by the time we got to acacio it was 10pm. we went to german´s house (the mayor of yanayo, who was at the time staying in a little room in acacio). we picked him up, along with another fellow from yanayo called guido. both guido and german are fluent in quecha and spanish, which is very useful to us when we communicate to the rest of the mainly quechua speaking villagers. so we picked up german and guido, and drove to again to yanayo on a different route. we also picked up a woman and her two kids along the roadside. they ended up sitting in the back of the car, on top of all our food and equiment, squishing the bananas, tomatoes, and other things…
we drove in the dark. i had a headache. i was dehydrated. i was tired. the road was bumpy as hell. it was narrow in places. huge holes and rockfalls. we couldn´t really tell how bad the road was because it was dark, but in the daylight the really bad condition of the road was evident. i was feeling sick. it was rough on all of us. susan did a really good job driving on the road despite the exhaustion.
we slept in german´s house that night because we were too tired to set up our tents. that night i got a flea, and ever since then i´ve had a massive number of bites all over me. they itch like crazy… and i can´t tell if i´m getting new bites, or if they are the same old ones. i´m keeping on eye out on them incase they are anything weird, because i don´t want to get biten by the vinchuca (the kissing bug) and get chagas disease and then die at the age of 40 of intestinal problems.
then i don´t remember to clearly what happened the next day… time has been one continuum (if that´s a word) since then.
i don´t have time to write more. but i will write again when i can. tomorrow brian and i will leave to yanayo again. hopefully it won´t rain and the road will hold up. the way coming here was pretty bad… it took us 8 hours to drive 150 km, and there were rock falls and mudslides. they also say that there will be a transpòrtation stop tomorrow…
hopè all is well with everone…
andrea
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