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I reached the ugly border town and crossed into Peru exactly ninety days after arriving in Bolivia. As I did so I became a backpacker again, skimming over the surface, choosing only the most worthwhile pursuits, knowing almost nothing about the place I was in. The nightly processions through the streets, the graffiti on the walls, the names of the streets and restaurants and plazas all meant next to nothing to me.
Peru is full of thieves, I had been warned by many Bolivians. I don’t know that this is true; I wasn’t robbed, but I did find my cash disappearing much faster across the border. Peru a country far more accustomed to tourist hordes, and to finding ways both legitimate and illegitimate to make tourists part with their cash.
I spent three nights in Peru, in the town of Puno on the shores of Lake Titicaca. It was a time of oscillation between loneliness and boredom within the town, and wonder and contentment out by the lake.
I had written about Puno, and more specifically about a town further along the fringe of the lake, Chucuito, in Lord of Miracles (which I swear will be on every book shelf one of these days), and so felt I should go pay my respects. A bus crammed full of people and one llama took me out of the grit of Puno and into the beautiful crystalline light of lakeside Peru. The great expanse of the lake lay pale and blue beyond the floodplains, which were being reclaimed by agriculture, stranded boats lying crooked among the crops and flocks.
Chucuito has been put on the tourist radar by the Templo de la Fertilidad, an Inca ruin perched on a hill overlooking the lake. Within the perfectly fitted stone walls of the tiny temple are arranged row upon on row of stone phalluses, which Inca maidens would visit, pouring out offerings of coca and booze, and squatting over the monolithic cocks in hope of conceiving an emperor or a warrior or a boy or a girl or whatever. That, as best I can tell, is the official line, explained to me by two kids who had learned the history word for word and recited it in singsong voices.
There is something suspicious about the temple, thought. It is in part the lack of any government or university investment or official anthropo-archaeological interest in the site; it is in part that the stone phalluses look exactly like the carved stones used by the Incas to fix the thatched roofs to their buildings, it is also in part that the temple and its phalluses lie across the road from a colonial church, which was erected (ha ha ha) during the age of the Inquisition, at a time when the church took great delight in smashing and burning anything or anyone deemed offensive or heretical. Rows of pagan penises would surely qualify for destruction for multiple reasons.
Even if the temple isn’t authentic, even if the phalluses were added later to draw curious tourists, the temple remains a fascinating place to visit. It is a testament to the added value that the word ‘inca’ adds to any tourist site. Other cultures – Tiahuanaco, Moche, Chavin, Mapuche – excite next to no interest in the tourist world, but Inca trails, Inca temples, Inca ruins are all goldmines. It is hardly surprising that Chucuito should want in on the lucrative business. And given how funny the temple is, and how pretty the town is, why shouldn’t they make use of the heritage of the region to make a few dollars?
On my other full day in Peru I headed out onto the lake on a tour of the islands. The day started lugubrious and overcast, and I soon found myself excessively unhappy to be stuck on a tour boat.
Our first stop was the floating islands of the Uros people. It is said that hundreds of years ago these peaceful people took to man-made islands of reeds to escape the predations of their warlike neighbours. The lives of the people have been woven into the lives of the great beds of reeds that grow thick in Peruvian Titicaca. The reeds are eaten, they are made into islands and houses and boats. The many-layers of reeds that float upon the lake are constantly replenished to keep the islands high and dry. It is a funny, funny feeling, walking on these folded beds of reeds.
Naturally, these floating islands are a major curiosity for tourists. The locals have long moved on to wooden boats, some with motors, and away from the many tourist islands larger houses are made of wood and metal, though they still float upon the lake. The traditional life of the Uros is preserved today only in parody, for the sake of luring tourists and their dollars to the handicraft stalls and boat rides of the islanders. Spending a few hours visiting various islands, eating with the locals, spending time with them might be fun, but as it is every tourist boat (and they are legion) visits one islands, receives a brief explanation of how the reeds float, and then is given thirty minutes to take photos and buy souvenirs. It is not particularly fun or interesting.
Beyond the reed beds and the floating islands sits another island, out in the greater, deeper expanse of the lake. Isla Taquile receives far few visitors, and is far less well know than the floating islands, but it is infinitely more enchanting. Here, too, the people make a living out of the tourists that rumble through, some times staying the night, sometimes just for lunch. The difference is that here life has not been bent entirely to work the tourist industry. The people still keep sheep and make most of their clothing from homespun wool. They farm and they work, and the rest of the time they congregate in the plaza looking out onto the lake, the men in their floppy red caps and puffy shorts looking either like clowns or a religious order.
It took some time to reach Taquile, and in that time the sky clear and Titicaca began to shine. On the island we were free to wander, and poke our noses in wherever we pleased. I made my way up the ridge that runs down the island, offering massive vistas of the lake, and the mountains that surround it. It was a perfectly tranquil spot, looking down on the fields and houses covering the slopes, the tall eucalyptus trees, and the stone paths that meandered in every direction. From up there, seeing the lake properly for the first time, I was struck by what a strange thing it was; too calm and pale to be a sea, but having its own ports and shipping roots and islands and bottomless depths full of myths about Atlantean cities. The insularity of this island completely different to the insularity of say, Australia; we are isolated and surrounded by sea, but Isla Taquile is isolated and surrounded by other countries. There is certainly no sense of distrust or discomfort shown by them towards the mainlanders that daily come coursing across the water to explore their homes. Rather, the sense that they give is of a simple, content life, a hybrid of ancient farming and contemporary tourism. They are managing the strange disparity very well.
I had one free hour on the island but it more than made up for the rest of the day, herded along, on and off the boat, my head nodding asleep against the window.
And then back to Puno, and the following day another border crossing back to Bolivia, and I as I received my entry stamp I couldn’t suppress a big, silly grin from spreading across my face. I was very happy to be back.
In my novel (which I will endeavour not to refer to in every post), I created a protagonist that I didn’t like. He starts the book arrogant and cynical; he writes tirades against other travellers, whom he cannot get along with; he writes to shock and to demonstrate how knowledgeable he is; he believes himself to be the highest authority on all travel matters, because he too has written a book.
Thomas Kohnstamm has written a book that does a far better job of exposing the flaws of the modern traveller. This is because his work is non-fiction, and because he is the cynical, arrogant protagonist of his book. His book – Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? – is about his first stint as a guidebook writer for Lonely Planet, researching northern Brazil.
Upon its release the book caused something of a stir. Kohnstamm not only broke most of the rules of guide book writing – such as accepting favours from hotel owners and using second-hand information to verify details – but he suggested that this was common place in the industry. In short he was saying that guide books are not as trustworthy as many people think they are.
I almost always have at least one Lonely Planet product in my pack when I travel. Over time, having often found the maps not quite right, and having in the past been directed to hostels that don’t exist, and having almost always found any price listed in the guide far lower than the actual, post-LP price, I’ve come to realise that the books are not infallible. This much should have been obvious from the beginning, and this is the biggest problem I see with LP guides; not the way they are written but the way they are read. They are given too much power. Reading them as bibles of travel is bad for travel in general. It results in an over-developed tourist trail.
Kohnstamm comes as a challenge to the infallible LP idea. But he doesn’t come as a big enough challenge. Having lamented the shift in LP from long-term, low-budget adventuring to mid-range hotel, night club and organised tour vacationing, he then fills his book with tales of how drunk or high or laid he got. He spends all his time with gringos, except when he is chasing Brazilian girls or getting into altercations with police or landladies or furious mothers.
The question should perhaps not be whether travel writers go to hell, but whether they go any place new. Whether they encourage widespread travel, travel beyond the pages of their books and off the tourist trails, or whether they merely make it easy to find a hostel and a bar. Kohnstamm’s mandate while working for LP was only to revise existing information, an approach which only saturates the existing areas. It does nothing to share around the lucrative wealth of a tourism industry. It merely over-exploits a few areas at a time.
Free of LP and writing his own book, Kohnstamm does no better. He never deviates from the familiar path of the irresponsible tourist. His book reads like ever other Latin American travel narrative, incorporating girls and drink and drugs, shitty hostels and corrupt cops. His is a tale very much in the style of Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson or William S. Burroughs – all great writers, but writers belonging to a more consumptive generation of travellers.
It is time for a new generation of travel writers. Kohnstamm has the talent and the opportunity to become a part of this generation. But if he or me or anyone else is to become so, they’ll have to aim higher and discover a new spirit of adventure such as is so lacking on the LP-saturated tourist trail.
I came to Bolivia intending to volunteer, and i heard that the place to do this was in Cochabamba.
Cochabamba lies halfway down the east side of the Bolivian Andes, in a fertile valley that has long been Bolivia’s breadbasket, or more specifically its rice and potatoes basket. The drive into Cochabamba is beautiful, and agonisingly slow.
Before i chased Jules and Viv here to volunteer i had already decided that it would be a good place to spend some time. I had included the town in my novel, Lord of Miracles, and in the course of researching it had decided its springtime climate, enormous and progessive universities and general ambience sounded like my kind of place.
The Cochabamba i arrived in wasn’t quite the city i had imagined or evoked. it was smaller than i had thought, its main street little more than two lanes each way clogged with colourful traffic. Although this is the country’s third or fourth largest city, it is not an industrial or economic centre. There are no gleaming edifices, just narrow crowded streets. More than anything this is a market town, home to allegedly the largest market in South America. And that’s only one of the city’s markets.
Having friends on the inside, it wasn’t hard to find circles to move in. I attached myself to the volunteer milieu, made up mostly of short term visitors, along with a few longer-term residents and the odd Anglophile Bolivian all assembling under the misleading banner of Sustainable Bolivia.
Sustainable Bolivia is an NGO, one of the few in town that seem truly successful, and that is growing in leaps and bounds. Most of the volunteers i know have found accommodation and work through S.B. Its growth has attracted the jealousy of other more sedately-paced NGOs.
I had expected to find the volunteers of Cochabamba a bunch of bleeding hearts, expunging their own bourgeois guilt along with the problems of the developing world through the sweat of their brows and their expenditure of their savings. Instead i found normal people who give a damn, both about the world around them, and about their resumes and future career prospects. These were my people; i had been inspired to volunteer by the same muddy mix of motivations.
How much good do we do down here? We are not saints, and many of us are not even really professionals. Mostly we are arts majors. The volunteers with the most job satisfaction seem to be those least concerned about CV building, who stay a short time, work with kids, have fun, learn some Spanish, and then keep backpacking. Those of us staying longer and wanting more involved projects seem to drift between NGOs or end up stuck at a computer, questioning our own usefulness. It took me less than two weeks at my organisation – one of the most promising NGOs in terms of the projects it coordinates - to decide i was acheiving nothing, and to leave.
Outside of the shortened working hours (if we have bothered to turn up) the volunteers lead carefree lives. Elaborate meals are prepared in enormous, communal kitchens, and the worst of the mess is attended to by cleaners. Those not suffering from bouts of diarrhoea or other mystery malaises eat very well and more often than not find themselves drinking in the kitchen, in the hammock, in the garden, in the bars, or in a street. It is a very easy life.
But is it worthy of the banner ‘Sustainable’? Are we doing more good than harm by being here? Given the amount of food, drink and drugs consumed, maybe not. If our deteriorating bank balances are any indication, than there is definitely nothing sustainable about our existence here. I’ve spent more on cabs in a few weeks – and taxis cost maybe one tenth the price of those in Sydney – than i have in my entire Australian-based life. I’m told this is the only safe way too get home at night.
Our prodigious patterns of consumption really worry me: is our total impact here positive or negative? And aren’t we all a bit naive for thinking we can do any real good in a few short months here, with such limited investment? This community looks awfully like every other dissolute expat group i have ever been a part of. I wonder who is really benefitting: the volunteers or Bolivia?
