Mini-Adventures

Last week, with Silvia still gone, I traveled with Helena to the Isla del Sol, which is a 3-hour boat ride into the middle of Lake Titicaca. The Bolivia side of the lake is quite amazing. If you know Guatemala, it makes the Atitlan area look like South Florida or something: there are no high-rises, barely any hotels, and only a few restaurants, yet it's incredibly beautiful, with these spectacular hikes, Incan ruins (including a

labyrinth you can climb around in), and gorgeous beaches . Part of this is because people there are decidedly ambivalent towards tourists: do not want their pictures taken unless you pay them. One of the restaurants--really more of a beautiful room, with reggae playing and great food--supposedly served Bob Dylan 2 years ago. The co-proprietor, explained to Helena, and Melanie (this cool French woman we met who teaches high school literature in Marseilles and was explaining how neoliberalism has arrived in France, the left has collapsed, long vacations will soon be a thing of the past--she was as disappointed as I was that substantive changes may not have arrived with Evo ) and doing wood-carving the whole time while his kids did homework and his wife made us sandwiches, said that he had no idea who Bob Dylan was but that all the Latin American students eating there were really excited when he left, and then he checked the credit card receipt and it said Bob Dylan, and then they (the family) started listening to him after that.

We got back Wednesday night, as did Silvia, and Thursday morning she led us in yoga. She is very good and she does a lot of chants.

Then friday we prepared for Helena's despedida party. At the market, Helena and I helped carry Silvia's bags, and all of her Aymara caseras (market-women) kept asking her what was up with that, who we were and whether we were floja (translation: lazy/bourgeois). And when she said no, trabajan arto a pesar de ser gringas, the caseras were really excited and congratulated her on finding us. Silvia was really excited about the whole thing, and needless to say, I was thrilled that I had proven my lack of flojera.

Back at home we made a beautiful Lasagna de Coca. We actually made the pasta out of a mix of flours, including harina de coca. I did a lot of the pasta-making after Silvia showed me how, and we put the lasagna together with her brilliant student, Veronica. It was delicious--it's funny, all this coca has been speeding up my metabolism, but not doing much of anything, psychoactively. That's what they say (coca no es cocaina) but it's almost a little disappointing to have it do nothing at all.

After the dinner party we all went dancing at this club that plays Morenata, Bolivian traditional music/dance. Silvia and her boyfriend danced together spectacularly, until he got drunk and devolved into a slobbering mess. He is a very accomplished artist, a painter, but not really at her level. She is kind of a star there, as everywhere: the DJ announced her presence and seemed very excited to have her dancing there. It was generally a very late and crazy night. We ran into these guys I had met before, at this other bar (one of them is a poet in a kind of Jazz/modernist style, and the other, upon hearing about my research made up this whole story about how his brother had occupied a Peace Corps building in 1970, and I got out my notebook all excited. But at the end of the night he laughed and said it was all a lie). Anyway, I guess the artsy/scholarly scene in Bolivia is pretty small. And Silvia knows everyone.