Why Travel?

The following posts recount my recent travels in Colombia and the long return—via land and boat—to Bolivia, where I joyfully arrived "home" on February 17^th. This present post is dated today in real time.  The following posts I will backdate, according to the time they were scribbled in my travel journal, from Dec 25^th thru Feb 17^th.

One of my trip highlights: Sunrise in the Cordillera Huayhuash in Central Peru

I recently spent nearly 8 weeks living out of a backpack.  After 120 hours in bus, 4 days in boat, 12 hours in plane, and 14 days on foot -- one asks one's self: Why on earth am I doing this?  What is traveling?  What is it for?

The natural human desire to explore?  The fascinating (albeit brief) encounter with new and different cultures?  The filling of Facebook with flashy fotos?  The attempt to orient oneself in the big big world–like a large experiential cultural map?

A month into traveling, set to head the following day to the Peruvian coast for rest (from the exhausting, privileged "work" of travel), I asked myself: will I actually know anything of the people and culture of Peru—or of Colombia—after all this?  How will it affect my perspective of Bolivia?  How will the mere time away or even the books I'm reading play into my perspective?

Parque Nacional de los Nevados (glaciated mountains) in Colombia

After saying goodbye to my parents in Colombia, traversing its high mountains in the "Parque Nacional de los Nevados"  and boating several days up the Peruvian Amazon, my travel partner Karl and I found ourselves in the northern mountains of Peru, in the pueblo of Chachapoyas. Tours in Chachapoyas are affordable but obligatory, as all the sites are 1-2 hours away, accessible only by organized bus (save those who have their own vehicle).  But without regret! Our minibus filled with mostly Peruvians, including Eduardo, Lisset and Nando, an Argentian Family and an Italian-Egyptian-Argentinian who became "family" for our brief Chachapoyas stay. We even when out for family style Peruvian-Chinese (Chaufa) dinner. Reason to travel:  connections, family—a little bit of home on the road.  Makes one wonder why one leaves home if the goal is to find it.

I have never been so excited to see a border.
Welcome home.

Amidst the green northern Peruvian Andes we saw Kuelap, the great "Macchu Picchu of the North" (except without the lines of tourists); maybe 30-40 people pass through everyday.  It's "tranquilo" as though you could have come upon the massive ruins—this pre-Incan city—on an afternoon mountain stroll.  Along with our "family" we hiked to Gocta, (supposedly) the third tallest waterfall in the world.

I don't like tourist crowds: anywhere where the tourist dynamic is so overwhelming that it feels unlikely to make genuine connections with others, where the tone of a place is so defined by tourism that it's the only kind of relationship possible.  When it consumes the character of a town, a place, a people.

Celebrating Snow Day in the Cordillera Huayhuash.  Summer
means the Rainy Season in the Andes; means snow at 16,000ft.

In a Bogotá afternoon that began as lunch and lingered into a long walk, coffee, and enough intense conversation that my Spanish-brain fried out, my new Colombian friend Ella said something that struck me:  Everyone should travel.  Everyone (should). Europeans and Americans should come to South America, and Latinos ought to go the opposite direction. And to Asia. And to the Middle East. And.

I doubt she meant as mere tourists, which is a form of never leaving where you are, just doing so in a different place.  The same conveniences and expectations, pre-packed in a safe hotel room and (in my case) gringa-ized cafes that excuse the tourist from vulnerability.  Or, as my friends at Maryknoll might call it, from cross-conversion. 

In this wide world, what a wonder to be able to exchange and interchange with others.  The best of spirituality and food and politics and literature from one family, one pueblo, one region, one country—can be shared with another.  If her arms are open and her ego's closed, a beautiful exchange is possible.  Obviously it's not all objective.  I would never exchange my diet for that of Cochabambinos, nor do I think they'd be too keen on adopting my (what has at times been called) "rabbit food" as their regular culinary fare. 

One a hike to the next pueblo over from Tocoli on
Lake Titicaca, this fishing family gave us a row back 

Eight weeks of travel outside Bolivia upped the irony that I had never been to the Bolivian tourist hotspot, Lake Titicaca. Last week after the incredible blessing of a quick 2-day rendezvous in La Paz with my dear friend Kate, and working observing a La Paz sister-school of the colegio in Cochabamba where I am now employed, I decided to head to the Lake.  By luck, after our observation of Colegio Kurmiwasi in La Paz, my friend Heidi (leading a group of 20 study-abroad students) was headed to a tiny pueblo on the lakeshore, where the students home-stay with the local indigenous families (while Heidi housed up in the one-room schoolhouse, grading papers).  Knowing the hospitality of the community and my desire to avoid a stuffy-touristy encounter with Titicaca, Heidi extended the invitation to Tocoli.

Helping grandpa fish (or clear the water from the
leaky boat) and sizing up the gringa

So early Friday morning we headed up the 4000m "hill" to El Alto, caught another, then another micro-bus, and finally disembarked in the middle-of-nowhere altiplano.  Backpacks on, we crossed the highway to the dirt road noted by the small sign: "Tocoli."

The community of Tocoli is in a long struggle, much like many campesino communities.  The pressures of globalization, colonization and "development" have forced them to make accommodations to the ever-invading outside world.  It began before--but certainly most distinctly--with the Spanish, who forbade the speaking of the native Aymara tongue, forced Aymara peoples to change their dress, their religion, and in general meticulously fulfilled the requirements of heartless, oppressive colonizers.  

Fields of quinoa overlooking Lago Titicaca

Yet Tocoli managed to keep much of their culture alive.  Today they face tremendous pressure from within, as many members of their small twenty-family community leave the campo pueblo for the opportunities to be found in Argentina, in the United States, in El Alto.  Some find work in La Paz's high sister-city El Alto and "do quite well for themselves," others do not. They can't find work, or the found work is a misery and exploitative.  And even though they're surrounded by the "luxuries" of urban, civilized, modern living, suddenly they find themselves stretched by the pressures of paying rent, utilities and buying food.  With money tight, and no potatoes nor quinoa, nor barley, onions, wheat or fish right outside their door, for the first time in their lives they find themselves in a world where no one cares if they go hungry. 

The blend of permanent pueblo inhabitants and Tocoli community members who return from the big city urbanized, defined more and more by capitalism and individualism causes degrees of tension.  Tocoli isn't naïve about the realities of our changing globalized world, to which they know they must adjust.  But they're striving to do so gracefully, maintaining their cultural system and rejecting a world measured by individualism and profit at the cost of health, of nature, of tradition, of well-being. 

Ceremony celebrating the end of the students' homestays,
and recognizing the openness of the Tocoli families

"No one knew poverty here" Calixto, the Aymara Shaman/Catholic Deacon, explained to me. "There's always potato, barley, quinoa, maiz. Our economic system has always been communal, so no one ever knew hunger while others lived with plenty."  But inequality is attempting to encroach on the community. It's one of the reasons Tocoli is not interested in tourism.  The bawdy scene in Copacabana—the most-visited Lake Titicaca site—serves as a glaring reminder of what they could become if they neglect to hold tight to their communal values, their faith, their agriculture, their language, their culture.  But nor does this mean Tocoli wants to close its doors to the outside world.  On the contrary, they're quite interested in attracting visitors – they're even seeking funds and investment to make it happen.  But no tourism. "Tourists come, they pay money, they make demands: Coca Cola, fried food, wi-fi." The community of families in Tocoli is seeking inter-cultural encounters, with the expectation that both cultures will and must learn from one another. 

While the pueblo meets to discuss proposals, some play with rocks

After a potluck lunch attended by the entire community (comically, nearly all the plates were potatoes–not surprising of course, it is the altiplano–but nonetheless amusing to me—it was like an embarrassing Midwest church potluck), we sat among the entire village for their community meeting.  We were privileged to be there, chewing coca and reclining – men on one side, women on another – listening in.  They spoke mostly Aymara, but slipped into Spanish now and then, enabling us to follow the proposal of a Spiritual Center and other proposals for the community to improve the water, the soil, and attract "non-tourist" visitors. As I watched them discuss the proposals, my mind drifted to the World Bank "charla" I'd attended earlier that week.  The World Bank in Bolivia is particularly concerned about rural poverty.  I wondered if they would consider Tocoli a typical "target rural community" worthy of World Bank development, so as to save them from poverty—which the World Bank measure in dollars in cents—not in pounds of papa, harvests of quinoa, nor in community involvement, the captivating constant view of Lake Titicaca, nor the volume of laughter at a pueblo-wide potluck. 

Another sentence in Spanish.  Tune in.  Back to Aymara.

Sitting there, to the tune of Aymara discourse, I realized I was one of their first non-tourist visitors.  

In inter-cultural encounter.  Finally, I was traveling.