Dinero Management

Buenos dias mis amigos... I´ve arrived in Peru, more specifically in Cusco, the ancient capital of the Incas. Been here about five or six days and its a great place. I´ve got to tell you the truth, but I was a little bit apprehensive about Peru. When I encountered travellers coming from Peru, I frequently felt that they were quite negative about the country, especially its many touristy places (i.e. Cusco especially). Having enjoyed Bolivia and the company of the Bolivian people so much, I was afraid that Peru might be a bit of a downer... I heard stories of locals jumping into your frame when you took a picture and then demanding cash for it afterwards... about being ripped off left right and centre and about a general extortionist attitude of the localstowards foreigners.

I am thrilled to say that so far my fears have been completely misplaced. Although Peru is much more developed than Bolivia, Cusco especially being a significant hub on the Gringo trail (grace a Macchu Picchu), and the locals here are much better adapted to make the best of a thriving tourist industry, I find them pleasent and chatty and open to foreigners. Sure, they come up to you asking you to take a photo, or to buy something, but I think I have a very convincing first rejection that sends them walking immediately (as opposed to hounding you for hours)...

What follows is Conor´s guide to avoid getting ripped off and for getting value for money: (rules in no particular order of importance)

• Rule 1: Knowledge is power. First of all, if you do want a product of a service, then try to ask a gringo who has already done or bought it to tell you how much they paid and whether they felt they got good value for money. I.e. get an idea of the actual price before you approach the local seller... it gives you a significant advantage... you can react to his prices in a much more meaningful way.
• Rule 2: Don´t guarantee your custom. No prices are displayed anywhere and people generally make up prices on the spur of the moment depending on how much they think they can get away with. So before expressing any kind of interest, always ask the price (i.e. don´t put yourself in a position where you consume something without knowing how much it is, or that you let the seller know that you simply must buy something... let them think that you´re browsing or comparing prices... even if your purchase is already certain).
• Rule 3: Remember that all prices are flexible... the existence of a menu , price list or other form of formalised pricing does not mean that prices are set in stone... frequently if you say to people "Listen, what´s your bottom line for X, Y, Z?" then they will give it to (again, showing them that your custom is not guaranteed is always good... in a restaurant for instance, look at the menu before sitting down, choose (or just make up) what you want and go for a good price while standing... only then do you sit down!)
• Rule 4: Be chatty and friendly with people before you purchase, i.e. "buen dia amigo, como te vas" etc... if they like you, it´s less likely that they will rip you off...
• Rule 5: One chance. If looking for something for which there are lots of alternative offers... (i.e. taxi from station into town or something) and someone offers you their product or service (Señor, señor... ciere taxi?), you turn to them and basically say "OK, buddy... I'll go with you if your first price is right... you have one chance at my custom". Now they think to themselves (in Spanish of course): "bollix, what´ll I do... should I try to fuck this gringo over... but if he already knows how much its worth, then I´ll definitely lose him... maybe I´ll just give him the right price so as to be sure of his custom" and they generally make the right decision and give you a decent price. At this point, I usually then take away about ten percent and counter offer... its almost always accepted and if the service is good, I put the ten percent back on as a tip... and I´ve found that this way, I almost always pay very close to the local price and not highly inflated (x2, x3, x15...) gringo prices. If they give you an inflated price, then shake your head in a disappointed manner, turn around and walk away.
• Rule 6: Offer direct purchase. When there are lots of alternative offers, say to people "Listen, I´ll sign up with you / go with you / buy from you right now, without hesitation,at a price of X... anything else and I´ll look around first"... sometimes that works too.
• Rule 7: Downright bribery. This, the "piece de la resistance" works only when you are paying to pass into something or through someone (museum, site, national park etc.)... you wait until the ticket seller is on their own and you approch them to ask the price... you put on your best shocked face and say "What, that much, that´s very pricey... why is it so pricey... I mean how about I pay you a little less... and to tell you the truth, I don´t really need a ticket, I just need to pass through you... ". I find that I pay between 10 and 50 percent of the ticket price (which for national parks can be very expensive). Obviously this is actually bribery, and if you don´t get a ticket, the cash goes straight into the ticket sellers back pocket, but I have no qualms with it, as the corruption down here will guarantee that a certain percentage of the ticket price will disappear into some politicians back pocket so you might as well give it to the ticket seller who gets paid pittance...
• Rule 8: Stick with good people. If people offer you value for money straight up and it is clear that they´re not ripping you off, then buy as many things that you can there (i.e. there´s only one place in Cusco that I buy bottled water from, because on my first day there, the lady charged me the same price for a bottle of water that she had charged to the local who was in front of me - this may seem trivial but is actually quite rare - so now I go back there for almost everything).
• Rule 9: Steer clear from bad people. If someone really tries to rip you off in a bad way, then that´t the way they are... turn around, walk away and even if they shout lower prices after you, even something that you would consider paying... don´t give them your custom!
• Rule 10: Mass is important: Try to do things as groups, or to buy in bulk... an increased amount of business helps your leverage on price...

This all sounds very scabby and miserly, but people will exploit if you don´t take care... You should also turn the tables on yourself and let your value-for-money paradigm work both ways, not only in your pockets favour... i.e. pay for the value you recieve, no more, but no less!

Also, don´t grind people down to a price where they make no margin... this is unfair! I don´t think you feel a sense of achievement if you have haggled some poor person down to a point where they are not making cash... If you decide to buy from a vendor, sometimes there should be an element of charity in your purchase... you have to distinguish that from a purely functional purchase in a store.

Anyway, enough rambligs on how to be miserish, I´m off to the jungle on Tuesday for a months work in an Eco Lodge called the Picaflor Research Centre (website here)... Its volunteerish and it will guarantee me a cheap month... Won´t have internet access so will not update v. often (if at all)...

Have spent my time in Cusco boozing and seeing some Inca stuff... but I will go to Macchu Picchu upon my return from the Jungle at which point I will tell you all about the Inca´s and all the crazy stuff they got up to... because it really is very interesting. I will also be able to talk more authoritavely on Peru and its people, so I look foward to that...

Will try to update with a small post before I go direction Jungle... que se vayan bien, compadres!

Your thoughts are required...

Been in Copacabana for the past few days (the less well known Bolivian one and not the crazy Brazilian one... Spanish-speaking South America is the rule... remember...).

Anyway, this place is by Lake Titicaca, a huge big lake in the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes and its the staging post for trips to the Lake´s two main islands, Isla del Sol and Isla de la Luna...

I´m just back from two nights on Isla del Sol and it was absolutely fantastic... it´s obvious where the island gets its name from, because there´s one thing that you can´t miss when you´re there, you have the sun beating down on you from the moment its rises to the moment it sets... got sunburned on my ears... which is a bit of a first!

On the first night I hiked (something else that can´t be avoided on this island) to a less-visited town on the east coast, where I met a french couple and we had a lovely meal of fresh trout followed by great craic around a campfire... I travelled around the rest of the island with them for the next day and half (Yvan and Valerie... click here for their blog - pour les francophones) and we had a couple more trout and perch meals and generally enjoyed ourselves around campfires with beer and music (the former being a permanent travelling companion, the latter a rare treat). You can find pictures of the island here.

Anyway, I´m back on the mainland now and am having another intellectual epiphany that I thought I would share with you without being a ponsy fucker... I´ve been reading a book of JP Sartre´s plays, "No Exit" being the main one (I´ve read the French version, "Huis Clos", before, but I´m understanding the English version a little bit better). It´s an illustration of Sartre´s concept of existentialism... Without being to arty-farty about the whole thing, let me explain this briefly:

Sartre reckons that the human essence (i.e. your essence or what it means to be you) is defined by the human existence (i.e. your life or the sum of its parts)... This means that essence follows existence, and that what it means to be you is defined by your life and what you do in it, and not that essence precedes existence, or that your essence has been designed by some higher being before your creation.

This gives each of us the ability to define ourselves and says that we must take full responsibility for our own persona's and not shove it off on some divinity that created us "for better or for worse"... Furthermore, Sartre says that it is solely the appearance (Conor´s interpretation: our actions) that create our essence from our existence and not anything hidden behind these appearances (i.e. our feelings???)

Anyway, I am l finding myself drawn to this point of view and would very much appreciate if we could start a moral debate on the issue. You can find more info about Sartre´s existentialism here and it would be great if you could use the comments function on this post (its not very difficult, its the one that says Comments on the bottom left of this post, then go to the bottom of the page to post yourself...).

Your thoughts are required here, so if you have the ability to think, then please express yourself... I´m new to this whole philosophy thing, so don´t be afraid to tell me that I´m talking through my h%$* (ahem, have had some complaints regarding language!!!)...

It´s about time this blog got interactive...

Going to Cuzco in Peru next, where hopefully I´ll see these Macchu Picchu ruins... I´m over the 30 day visa in Bolivia though, and am now officially an illegal immigrant, so if I don´t update again, it means that I´ve been sent to jail for ten years trying to cross the border (or else that I´ve had my hands cut off and I can´t type anymore - "What a disaster that would be", I hear you say)...

Peaceful La Paz

I promised you a La Paz dedicated post, and here she is in all her glory...

Although La Paz shares its status as capital with Sucre, the latter is purely administration and doesn´t capture Bolivia´s "essence" as much as the former. La Paz is a microcosm of the country as a whole, a vibrant, buzzing city set in spectacular surroundings.

As previously mentioned, the city is at about 3.600 metres above sea level, which makes for a somewhat surreal cityscape and climate. Set in a canyon in the Andes, the city sprawls up and down its walls, and in its background, the snowy peaks reveal the extremeness of this altitude. Like San Francisco, the cities streets are rarely level, and most of the time you find yourself either battling uphill in a breathless frenzy or stumbling downhill trying not to snot yourself on the many pathway hazards. These endless possibilities to trip up (potholes, uneven paving, no paving, kids playing, old women sitting on the ground with their "moichandice") require you to keep your eyes down when walking, but if you can manage to rip them away from the ground for a second, you´re almost always rewarded with a fantastic view of the urban sprawl and its Andean backdrop.

La Paz isn´t far off the size of Dublin, with a nudge over a million people (although estimates vary... statistics isn´t a priority in Bolivia). However, walking around during the day, you would swear its a lot more than that. Every square inch of the city is dedicated to some kind of commercial activity... and from early morning until late at night swarms of Bolivians move in and amongst each other going about their daily business in the most chaotic manner. The concept of a shop being limited to its four walls is not for La Paz... you buy and sell everything and anything on the street, the shops have to spill out onto the pavement and road to compete with the rest of the marketeers, or else they´ll be left in the recesses, unable even to be seen by any potential customer.

Different roads have different "moichendice" specialities: you can find your DIY road, your fresh fruit & veg road, your meat road, your toiletries road, your household cleaning equipment road, your catholic icon road, your car accessory road, your makeup road, etc, etc, etc... the list goes on...! Somewhere, buried in every stall you have your standard Bolivian women slumbering among her tightly packed and immaculately arranged choice of products. Every now and then you have one of the many support trolleys common to every road: fresh fruit juices, nuts and crisps, shoe cleaners (who all wear balaclavas for some reason). Frequently you have people standing in front of the stalls, shouting and screaming their heads off so that you buy their soap//DVDs/tomatoes/detergent. And things get a lot less organised than that... in any available spot that hasn´t been taken by some "official" market booth, you will always get someone who plonks themselves down and sells some randomly bizarre product (or mix of products) from a small rug.

Then there´s the transport: There are no trains or darts or trams or anything like that, if you want to get somewhere and you don´t want to walk, then you go by road. The roads are chockablock with a plethora of different four-(and two-) wheel vehicles, none of which appear to be in any way privately owned or operated.

First of all, there´s the official buses, these are usually old American school buses which have been painted in extravagant colours and dedicated either to some catholic icon or someone from Bolivia´s glorious past. These beasts trundle through the roads (actually, they are usually limited to about one lane with market booths at a hair´s breadth either side) spitting out diesel fumes into the faces of all they pass.

Then there´s the "truffi´s" or Japanese mini-vans. Each of these run different routes through the city and are essentially a private bus network... there´s one driver who appears to glue his hand to the horn every morning and then there´s usually some little teenager who hangs out the open door shouting out the destinations and the prices... When one of these passes you, you have to be very careful not to make eye contact with the "shouter" or else he´ll hop out and bail you into the van before you can say knickerbockerglory.

Finally, there´s the ever present normal taxi... I say "normal" but I think that to be a driver of these instruments of death you have to be certified pathologically homicidal. They´re all over the place... and whereas in Europe our taxi´s have the objective of picking people up and delivering them to their stated destinations... here they seem to aim to maim, and take delightful pleasure in ignoring anyone who actually wants to exchange money for private motorised propulsion! When you cross a street here, all the taxis seem to actually turn around and go for you... I swear to God, they completely deviate from their course, and speed up so as to hit you or one of your extremities if at all possible. And just to make this assault all the more petrifying, they beep their horns manically as they swerve to hit you...

I believe that I have survived here, only because I always pretend that I´m actually looking for a taxi... if you cross the road with your hand in the air... they´ll all do a runner, god forbid they might pick up a fair!

So all this motorised and commercial activity gives La Paz a loud buzz which rings in your ears when you lie in bed at night. It´s by the far the most dynamic city I´ve ever been to and a complete contrast to its tranquil capital-buddy, Sucre.

I´ve got to say that I love it though, its energy is inexhautible!

Tomorrow, I´ll wave goodbye to the murderous taxi drivers and sleepy marketeers, and I´m gonna make my way to Copacabana, a city on Lake Titicaca, right by the Peruvian border where my last look at Bolivia will be Lake Titicaca´s Isla del Sol.

Buenos noches, compadres...

Itinerary

Am bored today, so have drawn up a map of where I have been and where I plan to go.

By the way, I don´t know if I have mentioned it yet, but I have now booked my flight home. I will fly from Caracas on the 13th of December, and will somehow have to make ends meet up until then (Donations to my travel budget are always heartily accepted by the way - in case you thought that I might be offended by such).

The Man Conor

back in La Paz after a short plane journey in a little 12 seater... Got some great views. From the Jungle (at about 500m a.s.l.), you basically just climb with the plane until you get to La Paz. The scenery is great from the plane, the lush jungle landscape turning mountainous and barren until La Paz appears sprawled in a valley. I had the pleasure of a London lass´s company on this journey who filled me in on life in that British metropole that I am considering moving to upon my return to old Europe.

Have uploaded some photos today. Follow this link for photos of the Junlge and this link for the Pampas.

The plan for the next few days is to finally do a humungous clear-out on my bag and reduce my 25 kilos to 16/17 at the most (by ditching most of my cold-weather gear). I´m gonna do some souvenir shopping too. For some reason, I always regard all souvenirs as tacky shite and steer clear of them. The only time I ever buy anything, is when I´m with friends and they force me to, and then I´m always thrilled with my purchase... (bought a machete in the Jungle for instance, which I now gaze upon with manly pride every time I see it strapped to the side of my backpack - declaring to any potential mugger that messing with yours truly could unleash the wrath and fury of hell upon them) so now I´m gonna take advantage of La Paz´s cheapness and do some serious souvenir shopping. I´m gonna send my newly acquired knicks and knacks home, along with all superflous clothes and at Xmas I´ll pawn them off on my family...hehe! I´m sure that Mumsi would really love one of those dried llama foetuses to hang up in the kitchen...

Anyway, in the last week, I´ve read some good classics in my quest to get up to speed in English literature: first of all Robinson Crusoe (by Daniel Dafoe) was a good read; I also read On The Road (Jack Kerouac), a fantastic travel novel which apparantly captured the beat generation of the American road (I had given this book a try about two years ago but couldn´t get beyond the first two chapters... however, this time, it was an absolute pleasure); finally, I read Mary Shelley´s Frankenstein, which is actually quite the tradgedy and made me feel sorry for the poor dejected "wretch". I now have a small library of about ten books that I have read and I am trying my best to swap them with other travellers.

Thats it for the time being... will continue soon with some Bolivian insights because I am finding that this country and its people are a significant discovery!

Grapefruit Juice and Hammocks

this place is great... I´m pretty sure that its about as close as you can get to paradise. And I´m doing absolutely nothing... This is what my daily routine has become since I came back from the Jungle (oh this is going to kill all you investment bankers out there):

• 8.00am - Rise and shine for brekkie. Brekkie consists of a plethora of different fresh fruit juices (mango, pineapple, orange, grapefruit) and a continental style bread and jam with the occassional scrambled eggs.
• 9.00am - Séjour to my hammock from where I watch the world going by and read my book for about two or three hours
• Midday - Siesta time... have a little doze for an hour or two, after which I usually have a fresh grapefruit juice to clean out my mouth.
• 2.00pm - After my grapefruit juice, I force myself to walk the block and half to the pool where I lie in the sun, swim, read my book or doze until the sun goes down... (I usually have a tuna sambo for my lunch here)
• 7.00pm - check my emails (and reality) on my way back from the pool and then shower and change into my evening attire (which must be long-sleeved and long-legged due to mosquitos)
• 8/9.00pm - Have a beer or two talking to people in the hammock area, or else go out for dinner. Am usually in bed by about 10 or 11.00pm, after a brief mosquito hunt in my room.
• Sometimes I´ll go out for a late one and the next day´s activities will all be pushed back due to sleeping in.

Yesterday was a bit of a shock to the system though, at about 2.30pm it started getting windy and overcast and at 3.15pm it began to lash rain. In the dry season it doesn´t rain often here, but when it does, boy does it rain... it came down in bucketfuls and you couldn´t walk two feet without getting completely drenched (you know that rain that feels like you´re standing under a power shower).

I decided to inaugurate my poncho (which my brother, Gavin, lent me but which I haven´t had occassion to use yet - and which has been very heavy to lug around and needed justification of its presence). I donned it and walked around town in the rain (being deprived of my usual poolside chill-out). The water streamed down the sides of the road almost at knee-level. Down by the river, you could see the level rising by the minute, it was incredible.

Anyway, I´m flying (yes, flying) back to La Paz tomorrow when I must really get in touch with reality and do a big clear out on my rucksack... (get rid of cold clothes etc.).

In other news, I am half-deaf since yesterday and am having my ears cleaned out tomorrow (a wax blockage, which I am convinced is because of my use of those cotton ear bud thingys...).

Have burned all my photos onto CD and will load them up when I get to fast and cheap internet in La Paz.

Ciao amigos

King of the Swingers

So I´m back from the jungle... well, I´m actually still in the Jungle, but I´m back from my Jungle experience trips... I have to keep this post short and sweet cos the Internet prices here are pretty scandalous...

I am in a town called Rurrenabaque in the Beni region of Bolivia. It´s a blood-curdling 18 hour drive north from La Paz. Logging and timber was the main industry here until they discovered that they could charge tourists to take them for walks... and whats more, they could charge them in the mighty dollar... so tourism is the name of the game here. But I´ve got to say that its a very charming place and so far, it appears to be a fine example of a well-managed and regulated tourist industry.

There are a million tour agencies and the most popular trips are three day trips to the Jungle (or Rainforest) and the Pampas (the surrounding wetlands)... I did both!

I went to the Rainforest with Helen and we had a great three days... our guide was seventy years old and his name was Innocencio and we had a cook as well. We drove up the river for about two hours and then hiked inland for about half an hour until we got to our camp: a basic set-up with some tables, chairs and a couple of beds (if you can call suspended timber wrapped in mosquito mesh a bed)... beautiful setting though, just beside the river. In the dry season the river shrinks to a bit of a stream and its always crossible by stepping stones, but you can imagine the torrents that must prevail in the wet season. The river plain was great just to sit by and to read your book or just to relax... there was the rush of the stream among the rocks and butterflys dancing around all about you... quite idyllic indeed! (pic here)

Every day we went for walks in the Jungle. Sometimes, the paths were well-maintained and frequently used, but sometimes we went on the Jungle equivalent of off-piste where you really have to lay into the vines and plants with your machete if you want to get anywhere... and its very demanding work...If a path isn´t used for a couple of weeks, then the jungle starts to reclaim it and you have to fight for it back... Luckily though, we had out septagerian innocence to reclaim it for us... He also stopped every now and then and told us about some of the trees, vines and other plants... a lot of them have medicinal purposes and there are quite a few novelty trees which so some kind of song or dance which makes them exiting (for instance theres a tree whose roots just sit on top of the soil and it walks along looking for water with them)...

Surprisingly, there aren´t an amazing amount of animals in the Jungle... they tend to concentrate in the surrounding wetlands (or pampas)... We saw butterflys and frogs and some monkeys and lots of insects though! (Pics of Jungle here)

After the Jungle, Helen went back to La Paz and I did a three-day tour of the Pampas. I got a bit fucked around by the agency that I had planned to do it through, so in the end, I had to demand that they sell me on to another agency, which eventually they did. With the new agency, I got a great group of six others from Holland, Belgium, France and Ecuador... and we had a great guide, Hector.

For the Pampas, you take a three-hour arse-numbing dirt-road trip to the a wetlands river and then a three-hour boat ride up along it, during which you are bombarded with a variety of different animals and birds... We spent the first hour ooing and awing at alligators and caiman (alligator-like but bigger and less friendly)... and then Hector stops the boat and tells us to get out and have a swim... I really thought that he was taking the complete piss, but then he gets his kit off and hops in...

No sooner is he in the water, then he is surrounded by.... ..... .... wait for it..... you´re thinking alligators right... no, he´s surrounded by pink freshwater dolphins... After many assurances on his part that the alligators and caiman won´t come near us (and nip at our toes as we swim), we gingerly make for the water so as to not miss this experience... I can´t believe that I actually swam in the Jungle in sight of an alligator on the banks... (mum, I think i can authoritively say that this would of been your personal hell!)... But it was worth every second of it... the dolphins were friendly and nipped in and around us at their leisure...

Our camp was significantly more developped than its jungle equivalent and we had good mosquito protection and you could even buy beer there... After a good lunch (the food is good on these organised trips), we went upriver on the boat and got off and went trekking in the pampas for hours... When we got to real swampland, the hunt for an anaconda began... The guide took me on as his sidekick and we circled all the swamps (him one way, me another) looking for anacondas. For me, it was the highlight of the three days, quite the adrenalin rush, wading through knee-deep swamp, actually hoping to see an anaconda (and praying that I wouldn´t stand on one...).

At one point, something big splashed three or four times in the water just in front of me... it was too big to be anything but an alligator or an anaconda ... but its splash appeared to have a warning purpose... so I duly began to shit myself and made ridiculous gesticulations to Hector to get his ass over here cos I wasn´t going any closer to this creature of the deep (whatever it was)...

He came over quicksmart and plunged his hands into the water at the spot indicated by yours truly while I quivered in my boots... unfortunately (not sure about this) there was nothing there and whatever had splashed me in warning had done a proverbial runner... So we didn´t see any anacondas but it was still great looking for them..

Apart from the anaconda hunting, we also did piranha fishing, nightime alligator spotting and a plethora of other tours... we saw lots of animals: capibara (looks like a cross between a pig and a mouse), kingfishers, owls, a variety of monkeys, billions of alligators and caiman, turtles, herons, condors, hawks and some more dolphins...

Every night we had some beers or singani (bolivian spirit) and played cards or walked around.... it was a fantastic three days and when we got back here to Rurrenebaque we went out for a last dinner together and then had a cocktail drinking contest in the local gringo bar... where I got slagged for being the only one not to catch a piranha (although I did pull out a killer sardine)... (Pics of Pampas here)

Anyway, now that all those trips are over, I´m going to relax here in lovely Rurrenabaque for a couple of days before I go back to the chillier highlands of La Paz....

I´ll try to burn my photos onto a CD in the next few days and see if I can upload some of them for you...

Hasta la proxima...