I’m sorry New Zealand….

I was going to come and visit you on my way home from Bolivia, but instead…. I’m going to New York!!! Woohoooo!!! yes, I am very excited!! (thanks Jock…) I’ve of course never been to New York before. I’ll be there for 4 days- two days in a meeting on gender and emergencies, and then 2 days hanging out with my dear old New Yorker friend Leslie who I learned Spanish with in Spain ten years ago (and who I haven’t seen since!). So, I know it has been a long time since I’ve been to NZ, but I hope you’ll forgive me this time round. And yes, as promised to Jen, I will endeavour to sample a few cosmopolitans while there. I’m so excited!! Oh, yes and for my dear folk back home…. I am coming home, should be there on 11 April, in time for easter. Looking forward to seeing you all! PS. Bolivia continues to be great. Took the weekend off this weekend and went and saw some of the world’s largest dinosaur fossil tracks safely preserved (NOT!!) in the middle of a cement factory’s quarry) and going to a market in a small town of Tarabuco where they all wear funny helmets and funny hats- the story goes that this is one of the few places they defeated the conquistadores and when they did they took all their helmets- and to this day still wear them! Love this place!

Amazon Adventure

Ok, so it’s a bit late in the telling of this story, but I’ll tell it quickly and then put some photos up for you. So, about 2 weeks ago now we went to do an assessment in Pando, which is in the northern most part of Bolivia in the Amazon basin. We left from La Paz and you fly right through the middle of the Andes, with Lak Titicaca on the left and the snow capped mountain so close. Then we arrived in Pando and it is hot and tropical. The whole area is forest and rivers and is completely flooded along the rivers. To get where we needed to go we had to take an avioneta- little four seater plane. To get a better idea of the flooding we did a fly over of the flooded areas for about an hour. The landscape from above of the flooded forest and rivers looked amazing. The plane was so funny- had little pictures of Jesus and Mary on the steering wheels. When it was time to set down, we literally just landed on a little dirt street in the middle of town. No air traffic control let alone street traffic control, just pulled up and came to a stop where some locals were chatting with their bikes. From there we walked down to the river to the boats, while the pilot took off again and left us to find our way back by land and water. At the river we got into two little long boats and headed up the flooded river for about 2 hours. It was so beautiful with parrots and huge beautiful trees all the way up the river. Finally when we got to the village we were visiting, we had to take the boats in a little passage through the forest just a few metres wide to the village. In the village we did the assessment which included walking through knee deep water and mud with my colleague all the time yelling “look out for the anacondas!”. Then when we left, we had to get to the road to get a car to pick us up. To get to the road, the boats were carried a little way over the higher ground back to the roads which were flooded and we motored along in our boats over the flooded land pushing through trees and shrubs where we needed to. Then we got dropped off at the road but the car wasn’t there to pick us up so we decided to walk until either the car came or we reached the first houses. The first houses came first after about 2 hours walking in the hot sun on a road through the forest. Either side of the road was flooded and all along the way there were things to see – hundreds of butterflies all gathered to gether on the sides of the roads, a dead caiman (small crocodile), big snake tracks, what seemed like hundreds of jumping fish which flipped out of the water, birds, and then we we got to the first houses we were generously given shade and lemonade by a little old man and entertained by his grandchildren. Then the car finally arrived, a little kid got out of the car with those little baby lemurs or whatever they were turned up. We finally drove home in the moonlight and it was the end of a beautiful and adventurous day. It was everything you could imagine an Amazonian adventure would be!

Pictures of Pando

So many new friends to be had!

OK, I promise I will write a proper blog soon... like tonight, but in the meantime, check out this other new fella I found this week! Can you guess what it is?

A preview of the next blog

before I get around to writing it.... here are some little friends I met on my adventure... Are those little faces not the very prototype of Ewoks??!

Things I love about Bolivia part II

You look out the window of the office and there is the most beautiful snow covered mountain
Just like the cities of Jerusalem, Damascus and Amman, the hills are alive with lights at night and twinkle away at you
You get on the plane and one minute you are above the snow capped Andes and so close you could touch them, and in an hour later you are landing at the edge of the Amazon
The first official Amazon woman I have met lived up to expectations, big, tough, wearing jeans, t shirt and thongs and riding a motorbike! Also one of the most important politicians in the Department (state).
I have a ticket to see Manu Chao on Saturday night (ok, I already said that one last time but im counting it again cos its double exciting!)
The tropical feel of the edge of the Amazon
The way the Andes are so big they make you realize just how big mountains can be, and how small our little hills are.
The way the women wear little bowler hats that don’t seem to fit but rather perch precariously on their head.
The bounce in the skirts they wear.
The fact that in the four blocks from my hotel to the office there are funky cafes and bars playing great jazz music on a Monday night.
The fact that I got off the plane in the Amazon and got dragged to a meeting of the Federation of Campesinos (small farmers). Normally I would dread such a dull meeting, but this time they talked about land titling and big companies coming in and forcing them out of their land and cutting down the rainforest, and while I’ve heard it before especially in Asia and the Pacific, somehow in the Amazon it was like, the real thing! The thing young lefties are brought up on!
Today I went to Brazil for lunch! Just a little car ride over a bridge and we in a town called Brasileira eating the best meat lovers feast ever. You sit at the table they bring you skewer after skewer of carved meat of all types and carve what you want at the table- a bit like the yum cha of roast meat! And the most delicious passionfruit juice to go with it!
The fact that yesterday I reckon I had about the best ever adventure I’ve ever had on a work day, so much so that it deserves it’s own blog, which I will write later!
That after a trip in the field I’m back in La Paz in a hotel where the people are so nice and friendly!

Bolivia

I have exciting news!!!!

Dumdumdum…. Wait for it, drumrolll….. Manu Chao is playing in La Paz next week!!! Hooray! And I am going to go! Now, I know not many people will actually appreciate this news (though I know A&A and Gracie will!), but it’s so exciting I feel like a teenager about to go to her first rock concert. I mean, how cool is that! Seeing Manu Chao at an open air amphitheatre in Bolivia! So cool…. Anyway, yes I promise I am working hard! Back to 16 hour days 7 days a week which is why I haven’t blogged until now (having a quiet Friday night in the hotel room to recover!) but its been great so far. ok, yes, it is a disaster and lots of people are living in shit, but the work is good this time and one has to enjoy oneself sometimes when you do disasters for a living…. So for those who don’t know what the disaster is (which would be pretty much everyone cos its not really big enough to make the news) basically lots of bad weather has flooded people out of their communities and destroyed everything in the low lands and in the highlands the bad weather has destroyed crops, water systems and swept crop lands away into the river. We are organizing camps for the displaced communities etc etc. Bolivia has the Andes in the west, lowlands in the west and the amazon basin in the north. I arrived into La Paz which has an altitude of 12,000 feet, the when east to the lowlands where the camps are, and then up to the highlands again to Potosi where the famous silver mines. Now I’m back in La Paz, and going up north to the Amazon basin on Monday for 3 days. The scenery is beautiful, the food is good, the people are very lovely and helpful. The culture is colourful and fascinating. There are so many beautiful old Spanish colonial buildings. It’s just great. Oh, it was Carnaval too so we got to go dancing in the street and in every town in the country people got drunk and danced through the streets each with their own band for four days straight, more in the countryside, and threw water bombs at each other. It was so funny. And what else is really nice is that I don’t particularly feel like a foreigner sticking out like a sore thumb here like you do elsewhere. Don’t know if it’s a language things, or a cultural thing but its nice. Anyway, that’s about it for now… I’ll try and attach some photos.

Hooray for Bolivia!

Ok, sorry, really busy working but just a quick note to say I love Bolivia! It's great!! anyway, will write more when i have more time....