choo choo choo choo beep beep

A little late pulling this together but better the later than the never never. These songs were hand picked by my own ears mostly while trying to block out the sound of some random commuter from Portlaoise ingesting their greasy stinking Supermacs while sitting mere inches from my grimacing, exhale-only face on the choo choo choo choo (beep beep). Hence the liberal references to my fellow commuters (who I love nearly as much as they love their chicken burgers).

I've discovered this holiday season that traditions are mostly a pain in the ass. As soon as these Audio Christmas Cards for the Blind become painful (for me .......it's already painful for you :) I will desist. I promise. In the meantime I hope y'all enjoy the free and hopefully new for some of you music. Contact me privately if you wish to be taken off the Christmas Card list ;) I've stuck up only the covers I like from some of the records to relieve the visual monotony a little.



choo choo choo choo beep beep 1 Christmas 2007

1. menomena..............................wet and rusting

"I made you a present, you never expected And when you unravel the secret will travel". I love this album. This is the first song I heard from it. We've been having great fun re-writing the chorus with things like....It's hard to eat crisps, when you've broke your wrists.....etc. All good things come from Portland. Sometimes good things go to Portland.

2. animal collective.....................grass
A rollicking oldie. Saw these guys again this year but they were only operating on 1 cylinder. Poor oul Avey Tare - he who sings Peacebone - had the flu so all he could do was abuse the cowbell. If busby isnt a runner, what about noah?

3. the unicorns............................sea ghost

Who Islands used to be. If you can get over the really annoying tin whistley bit at the start (particularly annoying at full volume through tinny headphones when everyone else on the train thinks you're a member of the provisional IRA marching band) this is a great tune. islands are playing here this year aswell...

4. the weakerthans....................psalm for the elks lodge last callA Canadian throwback. First heard them in a coffee shop on Commercial Drive in Voncoover and politely enquired of the waitress what it was. They live and work from Winnipeg I believe and they apparently make cleverly melodic guitar music to lift the soul. "Let the toast to absent members push through the ceiling". Breakfast time meltdowns are great cos you get them out of the way early and don't get embarrassingly ambushed in bank queues or while being vox popped on Talbot Street. Who is less present - someone who has left, or someone who hasn't arrived yet?

5. band of horses........................the funeral
Epic whinery. Graham is gonna burn me the new album. When he gets the chance. What I have heard is very amazing. We have the cant-waits.

6. bowerbirds.............................in our talons

Dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee. From the album Hymns for a Dark Horse. Proof that measured use of the accordion is possible in folk tunes. This landed in my inbox via a feed from some music blog just after we got home from our away spell. And I've been enjoying it ever since.

7. the breeders..........................off youAhh the Breeders. I did not show love when I harboured repeatedly lustful thoughts for Kim Deal and her great skin. Until she resurfaced with the Pixies wearing several wintercoats and a couple of gilets. I love the farty techno noise that loudly gate crashes the acousticness at the start of this song and is never heard from again. Not sure what it's all about but it's kind of haunting and quirky, the words are nice and it has been on many exotic road trips with us not to mention several trips on the Dublin Portlaiose train.

8. mccarthy trenching..............wedding song
Apropriate enough given we're currently auditioning the ether for members of our own Bluegrass .....Bayyyyynd. A dobro daughter OR a mandolin pickin' son will suffice :) I found this as I was putting the CDs together so if it gets really old really soon I had nothing to do with it, time was agin me.

9. black kids...............................i'm not going to teach your boyfriend how to dance
M found this one and it melts her heart every time. From the loveliliy titled Wizard of Ahhhhs EP. I don't think these guys are actually black but man do they like reverb. Ohh the irony.

10. meat puppets......................lost

Sung by the mad brother (appears here in the stone wash denim jacket) who has just recently been released from prison for attacking a security guard in a post office with his own baton whilst on a crack cocaine binge. The Kirkwood brothers have a similar relationship to the Deal sisters it would appear. What is it about wayward bass players? Anways, he got shot a couple of times and was given a prison sentence for his trouble. They're currently reformed and touring again. This song is from Meat Puppets II (1983) during the height of their cowpunk phase and everyone should have a copy of this in their home.

11. modest mouse.....................missed the boat
Ohhhhhhh. The only thing Johnny Marr has added to Modest Mouse is some lovely vocal harmonies. Isaac Brock is still writing great lyrics. Saw them finally at the Electric Picnic in 2007 and despite the soundman really letting them down twas a good gig. Even if Martini and M were blocking every disabled ramp in the place :)

12. menomena..........................rotten hell
More menomena.

13. my first earthquake..........designer boyfriend
Another one of those tunes you'll probably get sick of really quickly but it made me smile the first 3 times. I know absolutely nothing about these guys either.

14. dead milkmen ...................punk rock girl


A classic. From "Beelzebubba". We could of course also name it Mini-Pearl but neither of our dads are the Duke of Earl. Pity. More biblically restrained accordion playing from Rodney Anonymous in the face of much temptation as the rest of the band freaks out.

15. the national........................the geese of beverley road
Great drumbeat. "Hey Love we will get away with this. We'll run like we're awesome totally genius. Hey Love". Another band we saw live this year. The Ambassador is the worst venue I've ever ever been in. The National were great though even if they have graduated to wearing shiny showbiz shirts onstage. I have this theory about it all being Tom Dunne's fault. I'll offload my Tom Dunne psychosis offline to anyone who cares to listen.

16. pedro the lion....................when they really get to know you
Another bequest of the random button. Great guitar music from Seattle.

17. q and not u........................wonderful people
Dischord does disco.

18. sleater kinney..................modern girlI really like this one despite the horrendous mastering on the Woods album (it gets really loud and distorted at the end of this song for example). I've been trying for months to get M to dress up as Sleater Kinney complete with strap on SG and do the washing up so I can photograph her. As soon as I have it I'll throw it up here :) In the meantime here are the sapphic punkers in action on one of the Burn to Shine DVDs - an *excellent* series of DVDs the brainchild of Brendan Canty drummer from Fugazi where he picks a condemned house (which is due to be demolished) in Washington DC and gets his freinds' bands to come around and play one song live for the cameras. The idea was brought to Chicago a year later by Bob Weston - Shellac's bass player and bands like Tortoise played. The Sleater Kinney one is taken from Burn to Shine 03 shot in Portland. Ahhh Portland. I love the bit where the drummer comes in the window to play her harmonica bit :)

19. sparta................................the host
Read this. It's kinda scary.

20. youngblood brass band.....brooklynGalway sometime in 2004. We wander into Cuba during the Jazz festival and get blown away by a group of about 15 young American college students toting various weapons of percussion and brass destruction. Acoustic hip hop. Neat party trick of generating amazing beats with seperate people playing bass drum, snare and toms. Blow man, Blow!

choo choo choo choo beep beep 2 Christmas 2007
1. animal collective....................peaceboneOne of my top 3 musical moments of 2007.

2. deerhoof.................................believe ESP

Cowbell alert. Pookey Ookey to you too.

3. rollerskate skinny.................goodnight diamondGalavant your ankle free. Advice for life. Get Marc to tell you about that hitch hiker we picked up and decapitated with this song once upon a time in a misty bog far far away.

4. the breeders..........................huffer
Ahhhh ahhhhh. New album iminent and playing Vicar Street in April. Hopefully I'll be allowed go...... Also from Title TK. Great pop song.

5. the clash.................................safe european home"Wouldnt it be luvallay?" Best breakdown of any rock song ever. Mick Jones' clever arrangements within the limits of simple 3 chord punk tunes never fails to delight me. After our now mostly forgotten adventures in the Southern hemisphere this song will always remind me of 3 bed semi-detatched living in a flesh coloured housing estate somwehere on the plains of Leinster, Ireland.

6. wipers.....................................i'll be around
More snotty nosedeness from the Pacific North West *blesses himself*

7. the weakerthans...................the reasons
Yadda yadda yadda.

8. neutral milk hotel.................aeroplane over the sea

"But for now we are young let us lay in the sun and count every beautiful thing we can see" Amaaaazing hurling. Judicious use of the saw AND the trumpet.

9. midlake..................................roscoe
Fleetwood Mac for the 21st century. Thanks to Graham for convincing me that not only are midlake not shite, they're actually great.
10. wilco.....................................jesus etcHere they are on the Chicago "Burn To Shine". What's that saying about too many guitarists? Not a huge Wilco fan but we likes this song.
11. hayden.................................home by saturday
Great song. Know absolutely nothing about him. But fair feckin play dough.

12. the evens............................around the corner"There is no around the corner any more". Marco Van brought this to me on my wedding day and we listened to it in synchronised head nodding silence while we solemnly passed a bottle of champagne over and back as we drove to the church contemplating the end of life as we knew it.

13.tommy guerrero............... .today like every day
Brought to you in association with the random button from Winamp.....Constantly rediscovering interesting noises in my badly catalogued collection of digital recordings.

14.pulse programming............blooms eventually
Cher totally ripped these dudes off. Do you Believe in life after love?

15.mum....................................dancing behind my eyelids
I love the way mum's music sounds like it was made by kids. And their judicious use of Michael Flatley.

16.why?....................................darlaBecause we're fuckin groovin. A smile out loud song featuring the most innovative use of a cock in recorded music history :)

17.tortoise................................seneca

The best hand clapping bit of any song ever. Once you get it you'll be very pleased with yourself and you'll secretly use it to applaud every wedding speech you hear from now on.

18.q and not u.........................L.A.X
Cowbell alert. Whatever that means.

19. the jesus lizard..................rope

This gets included purely on the merit of the following piece of Agatha Christie-esque lyrical envelope pushing :
"He lay beneath a broken branch face down in the grass | No mason or bricklayer he, a trowel was in his ass " And also because its a great example of how to fill 2 minutes with masterfully focused agression and dexterity and because I will always be a dirty snot nosed punker at heart.

20. meat puppets...................six gallon pieWhat happens when the bluegrass band you've raised discovers drugs.
21.ween...................................ocean man

From the legends Dean and Gene Ween. This is the song which makes me dangerously elated in very restricted spaces on the train. How can you all just sit there reading free newspapers half asleep when there's DANCING to be done!? Discos on the Train = Commuting 2.0. You heard it here first. This song is also known as the bipolarity test song. One meeeeelion dollars to anyone who knows what this pitch-shifted freakshow song is about. Here they are pitch shifted in the other direction. Some of the bizzarest shit you'll see on youtube this week (other than this of course - Hi Aine!) - watch out for the "surprise" Prince sample :)

22. deerhoof.......................... +81Saw these at the Electric Picnic. For such a group of dysfunctional looking and acting individuals they're exceptionally tight live. Their drummer is a wizard of syncopation.

Happy New Year (binary finery)

here's a nice new years gift to you all.

and some freaky arithmetic :

2 + 0 + 0 + 8 = 1 0
1 + 9 + 7 + 4 = 2 1
1 + 9 + 7 + 6 = 2 3
________________________
5 4

Calling Occupants....

Siamak, microwaves and some olives

Spider Maisie

On the road again

To lighten the mind numbing boredom of job hunting and to the plug the gap between proper posts here's a pictorial update. We're moving back into our home tomorrow and, given the holes in the wall we've stayed in over the past few months, we are truly thankful to have it to move in to. A brought flowers on her first visit so M dressed up as Spider Man to celebrate.

Spider Maisie

I will get round to finishing the tale of the tail end of our adventures and depositing one more post in the bloggybank. Soon. I'm sure you all can't wait. And there'll be a house warming of sorts as soon as we get the smell of benjy out of the place. So there's that to look forward to aswell. Wowow Weewoo.

A Wimba Way (Gold Teeth and a Curse for this town)

La Paz is Crazytown. Buckets of slop and car horn wars. Bolar hats and cheekbone hatstands. Being shouted at everywhere you go. Paul Theroux in The Old Patagonian express spotted a bizarre trend on his travels throughout South America whereby cities and towns and rivers and mountains would be so inappropriately named that the misnaming seemed deliberate. And so we have La Paz, meaning peaceful, but by far the noisiest city we've probably ever visited.


It’s located at an altitude of 3600m making it the highest capital city in the world. There’s several other interesting aspects to this beguiling city which contribute freely to the craziness, not least its people and their colourful culture and traditions, its bizarre topography and its swarming, restless streetlife. Poverty is endemic and the housing and accommodation is meagre at best. There’s very little room for the population in the valley so the city has expanded vertically, the ramshackle housing dramatically clawing its way up the side of the mountains overlooking La Paz. Building blocks are sold individually here and you get the impression that the primitive settlements are literally cobbled together in the most restrictive and inhospitable of spaces, brick by brick with minimal infrastructure to support them.


The Bolivians are a fecund people so the combination of the tiny houses and the very large families results in the colourful sacraments of Bolivian life pouring out onto the bustling chaotic streets. Other less palatable and even more colourful sacraments pour out onto the streets aswell but we don’t like to talk about those.


Meals in particular are public events with stews of many hues and ingredients being served from buckets and makeshift streetstalls to the food loving but hygiene starved Bolivians. Seeing a full family sit around one plate of dinner on a kerbside, each of them politely taking turns to retrieve their mouthfuls, is a common simultaneously touching and tragic sight. It’s very much a hand to mouth existence here. They’re very obviously a proud people and even though most meals are eaten in public, the meals are almost bashfully consumed. These goulash medleys are prepared al fresco on every street corner and in some doorways resulting in the headiest and most potent of smells singeing your nasal hair from very early morning. Llama stew for breakfast? Be still my thrashing stomach. For a fussy vegetarian like me, who likes his food it really was tough to find anything even vaguely edible. Anything I touched would either taste of meat or feature a surprise cameo meat derivative and I got a dodgy tummy on a couple of occasions. The one place where I could get guaranteed satisfactory sustenance was at an overpriced Burger King where I’d be charged full price for a Whopper……..without meat. Even this got really stale after a week.



The downtown area’s main thoroughfare is a landingstrip oasis of level land surrounded on all sides by steep hills rushing up and down around it. The effect of this bowl shaped city is that people and traffic tend to tumble out of the sidestreets belching cigarette smoke and diesel fumes only half in control of their own momentum and collisions between men and men and men and metal are common. La Paz has a relatively small but very heavily condensed population of about 1 million. All roads to and from La Paz are treacherous narrow arteries winding through threadlike mountain passes (more about them later ) giving the city a feeling of remote isolation, a sanctuary from the hardships of life in the rural Andes, a refuge from the biting winds.


All commerce in La Paz is negotiated on the street. A one-stop-shop supermarket in La Paz is rarer than rocking-horse shit. Everything from random cuts of bruised meat, vegetables in distress, cleaning products in filthy containers, stationary, small marble headstones, mechanical lubrication products, electrical switches, baby clothes, counterfeit sportswear, bolar hats and lucky charms are all sold in dedicated highly specialised streetside stalls packed to absolute capacity and manned by cocoa chomping women and children in their colourful native dress. The dark and musty cobblestone streets of the famous Witches Market is a very disturbing place.

Anyone there for the last of the baby tombs...

The indigenous peoples of Bolivia are very religious and one of their primary deitys is Pachamama – Mother Earth. All kinds of ritual and occult ceremony are performed in her honour and the accoutrements to these oft performed sacraments are freely available in the Witches Market. For example no building is erected anywhere in the country without a llama foetus buried underneath one of the corners as a sacrifice to Pachamama to protect the building. Other macabre ingredients for spells and customs include dried frogs (used for luck and riches) and armadilloes (hung over an entrance to ward off thieves).

Miniature talismans are also big business and the Bolivians believe that if you acquire your heart’s desire in miniature, the real thing will follow within the year. So you have racks of miniature ceramic houses, laptops, butcher shops, cars, babies, pianos – you name it, lining the stalls of the Witches Market and they’re some of the most popular purchases for squeamish tourists who wouldn’t feel right offering a llama foetus up as a souvenir.

How Do!

The footpath real estate business is cut throat, each pedestrian passageway colonised to its very edges by ambitious vendors and their unruly wares. The net effect of the congestion on the footpaths is that the hordes of pedestrians are forced out onto the street into the path of the Ben Hur movie that is La Paz’s traffic. Chaos seems to be encouraged here as a trial to be overcome. Chaos and cities normally coexist quite harmoniously. Chaos in La Paz was no fun. It was like bad jazz. The main artery, an integral link in the chain of one way street rat's nests which keep the city’s traffic moving, is commandeered on average 3 or 4 times a day by demonstrators or protestors hopelessly making some representation for their plight. Everything grinds to a vexed halt until the demonstration winds up or is broken down. We’ve seen several individual groups of protestors, apostles for completely separate causes, literally queue up on the periphery of the busiest junctions waiting their turn to contribute to the entropy. Demonstration is an art form in Bolivia, but apparently a highly ineffective one. Dynamite and fireworks are used in abundance to call attention to whatever demonstration du jour is snaking its way through the city. When you have 4 major demonstrations a day, with all of the protests unimaginatively incorporating dynamite to highlight their specific plight, all you get is annoyed. Like I’ve already said, La Paz is 24 hour noisy town.


Another primary contributor to the brain numbing noise pollution is the interesting Bolivian rule of the road which states that at a junction, whoever blows their horn first has right of way. So at every junction in the city you have upto 4 carhorns in competition to rise above the din and gain right of way. This rule becomes even more ridiculous if you’re trying to sleep anywhere near the city at night.

Dawn on the morning we arrived in La Paz

The place is an endless taxi/minibus traffic jam. Very few of the population own a car so the millions of taxis or collectivos (communal minibuses which run on a dedicated route and stop indiscriminately, anytime anywhere to pick up passengers on that route) offer relief from walking up the steeper-than-stairs hills all throughout the city. Each collectivo or minibus has a designated Demis (Roussos) who, through the open window, bellows out the speed-dial list of stops on the route into the already heavily congested soundscape. It gets unbearable when the traffic has ground to a halt and there’s collectivos as far as the eye can see all competing for the same fares and the clamour of car horns and deranged destination incantations bounce off the walls and right into your brain. Another curious road rule is that any vehicle entering a roundabout has right of way – the complete opposite to what most people are used to. There are several Red Cow like roundabouts in La Paz which defy comprehension at rush hour.


Let me preface this next bit by saying we weren’t in the family way during the shooting of this next scene….. We had heard from several travellers we’d bumped into along the way that taking a bike trip down the World's Most Dangerous Road, or the Road of Death as it’s affectionately referred to locally, was an unmissable experience if visiting La Paz.

The Death Road - Photo borrowed from travelblog.org

It’s not just sensationalism to draw tourists either. Hundreds of people are killed on this stretch of road each year with packed passenger buses plummeting over the edge of the precipitous cliffs or cars and trucks colliding on the incredibly narrow corkscrew track which constitutes the roadway. There’s even a couple of cyclists a year (generally thrill seeking gringoes) killed while doing the very trip we’d be undertaking. Earlier in April a young Israeli guy died when his front fork snapped and he went over the side of the cliff at high speed at a particularly notorious bend. The company he went on the trip with are still doing business today under a different name and have accepted absolutely no responsibility whatsoever for his death. Ahh Bolivia.


Despite these horror stories, I think we were only in the city for 2 days when we had our trip booked such was our enthusiasm. We went with a company called Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking (there’s up 10 companies providing equipment and tours) who completely sold us on their excellent equipment and safety record. The bikes were top of the range Kona downhill mountain bikes, dual suspension monsters with hydraulic disc brakes sensitive to even the slightest little finger squeeze – worth about $3500 a piece. We’d need them as the ride was 64Kms of mostly downhill riding with some lung busting uphill stretches over some of the diciest terrain on a public road anywhere in the world. The leisurely spin would involve a descent from a starting point of 4700m to a couple of hundred metres above sea level and we were told to dress for ice, snow, rain, sun, mosquitoes and humidity – a pretty impossible task but given the altitude we’d be starting at and where we’d be finishing we were told to expect any imaginable combination of weather conditions over a very short space of time.

Me hair'll be ruined!

We were both pretty excited at the prospect but also well respectfully terrified. It was our first downhill biking adventure and we didn’t need to be told we’d chosen a pretty challenging cherry popper. M was initially pretty nervous but our guides were great, exceptionally good, with a detailed pre-ride safety and technique lecture and several hardware checks and shouts of encouragement all the way down. The ride started off on tarmac but quickly deteriorated into a narrow muddy subsiding gravel trail with apparently bottomless drops just at your elbow. The exhilaration induced by the breakneck speed you’re travelling and the ensuing massive rushes of adrenaline clouding your judgement and response times combined with the harum scarum loose gravelly surface, unexpected hairpins and scarily steep /drops into the rainforest hundreds of metres below made this trip …..special. The scenery was incredible aswell but you very rarely got a chance to enjoy it as you were generally concentrating really hard on staying on the bike. An interesting physics tip given to us by the guides was that a bike travelling downhill at speed will go where your eyes are looking. It's basic physics. And it’s scarily true. So throwing your head around in awe or even sneaking a peek at the scenery really wasn’t an option as you struggled to control the trajectory of your missile mount with minimal margin for error or adversity.


But what unbelievably great fun! It was like someone had managed to engineer a rollercoaster with a 60km downhill stretch. It was a jowl flapping, dramatic, teary eyed ride which we’ll never forget. At several stages it was impossible not to break out in the widest grin imaginable. We thankfully managed to complete it without any mishaps. There were however 2 nasty spills in our group alone which served to keep our minds focused and concentrated and us hopefully safe. M thoroughly enjoyed it aswell and although I told her I was hanging back to keep her company and protect her, there were times when I was right on the edge of my abilities barely touching the brakes travelling at an eye popping speed on a very volatile surface and she’d be right on my shoulder grinning maniacally to the bottom of the hill. Fair play to us. Another memorable highlight and proud achievement of our South American holidays. For obvious reasons I didn’t bring my camera on the trip but there’s a slideshow here and a photo here which will give you the gist (that's the road weaving its way down the mountain.)


And for some independent observer’s perspective here’s an excerpt from Lonely Planet: "Many agencies offering the La Cumbre to Coroico mountain bike plunge give travellers T-shirts plastered with: "I've survived the World's Most Dangerous Road." Keep in mind, the gravel road is just that: it's narrow (just over 3.2m wide) and has precipitous cliffs up to 900m high... and there's traffic. At the time of research, in the past 3 years eight people (higher figures sometimes quoted) have died doing the 64km trip (with a 3600m vertical drop) and readers have reported close encounters and nasty accidents. Most of these are due to little or no instruction and preparation, and poor quality mountain bikes (beware bogus rebranded bikes). In short, many agencies are less than ideal. Be aware of outfits which deflate prices - cost cutting can mean dodgy brakes, poor quality parts and literally, a deadly treadly. Multilingual guides are necessary for coaching and control. Ask agencies for proof of rescue equipment (rope rescue, harnesses, belays, oxygen), and a predeparture briefing. Ensure a quality company on this spectacular route before you freewheel your life away."


So without us really planning it, Bolivia - and La Paz in particular - has become a pretty important stop on our South American adventure. My comment about enjoying backpacking more in countries with depressed or backward economies notwithstanding, it’s an intriguing country where you regularly see sights that would turn your stomach, lift your soul or break your heart. As a people Bolivians are the most beautiful, kind and friendly we have ever experienced. Generally they have nothing more than a smile to offer but they do so unquestioningly, automatically but completely sincerely. Bolivians bring new meaning to the term beautiful people. They generally look like they’ve just woken up from an illicit sleep, puffy eyed, red cheeked and tousle haired. The kids are absolutely amazing – wandering the streets hand in hand in knitted woollen jump suits, funky sun hats up to their ears in shit but smiling greeting blue eyed gringos with the politest fascination and a shy “Ola”. They’re the most angelic, charming, self contained and happy kids in the world, watching the world go by as they bounce along on their mothers backs chewing a banana twice their size or sitting guarding the family’s streetside stall.

El Alto

I’m having a hard time trying to figure out how these still so impoverished and abandoned. Its probably just ignorance or naivety on my part but it’s the 21st century and these people are still living hand to mouth in subsistence conditions where you wouldn’t put animals. Bolivia is the second most corrupt country in the world (Pedro, our miner guide, delivered the deadpan punchline that he was personally working on getting Bolivia to the top of the list) and this is apparently the prime cause of the people’s suffering. The top 2% of the population, the rich non indigenous white colonial descendent population, govern and control with only their own financial interests at heart leaving the indigenous population uneducated and lacking even the most basic infrastructure.

My iPad

An eye opening example of this was the New Road, the road which was to replace the World's Most Dangerous Road for heavy traffic, which was just opened in December. It took 12 years to build and has been opened 5 months and already it's crumbling. Stretches of the road were built over landslides without even the most basic engineering input. Holding walls themselves are crumbling onto the road causing a serious hazard in themselves. Apparently massive budget overruns and corner cutting took place with the majority of the funding for the road pocketed by the corrupt officials and used for the usual palatial mansions with swimming pools filled with hookers and cocaine.

Waiting for the bus to Copacabana and Lake Titicaca

On a lighter note, the mannequin spotting got completely out of hand in La Paz. There was also some impressive graffiti and stencil art aswell which I didn't expect. I'll put together a post soon dedicated exclusively to the most tragic mannequins in distress we experienced on our travels. The graffiti photos would make up a whole post on their own as well. But anyways, stay tuned for the wrap up in Rio, how we got there and the culture shock of returning home.

PotosiPotosiPotoseeeeeeee

Spare polka dots for the background

Weary wanderers have returned. They say the best part of any journey is coming home. The best part of coming home for me is definitely not having to cocoon myself from the filth of a random bed in my far from unfilthy itself sleeping bag.

So I’m gonna throw up some photos and words to complete the tales of our adventures. The laptop died in Bolivia and left me with the choice of endeavouring to continue the updates but with exponentially more hardship - blogging in Bolivia is bad buzz, or taking a holiday from the blog altogether. I chose the easier option as usual. So some of the words were written already and recovered kicking and screaming from the belly of my comatose laptop. Some of it will be entirely from memory and given my far from reliable recollective abilities please don’t expect factual accuracy.

We left Uyuni and its one solitary ATM which was out of service the morning we were leaving and as a result we had to promise the owners of Tonito hotel that we’d get them the $30 we owed them as soon as we got to La Paz. But they’d have to wait until after Potosi and we jumped on a minibus run by the equivalent of Fennells or Behans or Rickys – the kind of company whose bread and butter is ferrying revellers to remote dens of iniquity at all hours of the morning - outside the town at 10am to bring us there. Buses in Bolivia are incredibly adhoc affairs. They’re generally very old minibuses imported either semi or completely clapped out from Japan, the steering wheels ripped out and sellotaped to the left hand side and a furry dashboard and a Child of Prague installed while they’re at it. Generally there’s a gaudy mural of Jesus or a beatific Llama on the back and the dodgiest of Bolivian folk music blaring out the windows. Bolivia definitely wins the prize for the worst indigenous music. But again, it was so bad as to be almost endearing.

Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft

The bus we took through the desert up into the mountains to Potosi had no air conditioning and cling film on the seats to protect the beautiful upholstery from the buckets of airborne dust kicked up during this and countless previous journeys. This combination of events lead to an incredibly sweaty 6 hour spin. The buses very rarely leave on time, each time the driver goes to pull out a woman in a bolar hat with a hundred-weight of randomness and a couple of swaddled babbies on her back appears out of the dust demanding to be let on the bus before it embarks. Then when the bus finally gets going, it stops at random intervals to pick up or let off these enterprising women to sell their wares to God knows who in the middle of God knows where – I’d say even God would need SatNav to find one of these ladies if he needed some half cooked llama meat in a hurry.


But interestingly no piss stops. So you had a situation where every time the bus would stop to pick up a passenger there’d be a rush by several incontinent German girls (Cabáistes) to the door to slash against a wall or behind a bush. The driver had no qualms about leaving people behind if they couldn’t close the deal quick enough. Bolivia’s international initials are BO and by jaysus did we know it on that bus. These colourful indigenous ladies with their blanket fulls of half baked goods travel in packs between towns and all the unfortunate outposts in between to sell their wares. One woman, a late arrival who had previously been sitting on the floor in the drivers compartment almost under the steering wheel was ushered into the passenger compartment the instant a seat became free. Within seconds we knew why. The bang of benjy humming from her every pore made our heads spin and the driver obviously felt it was affecting his ability to drive. This was pure, concentrated body odour from years of water and soap avoidance. This woman was like a black hole of hygiene, her filthy gnarled feet wouldn’t look out of place attached to a freshly excavated mummified Cro-Magnon man - or woman. Time to stop inhaling through your nose again – I did a lot of that in sunny BO which is extremely debilitating when the air is as thin as it is. But we survived as usual dining on a full packet of half melted “Kukys” (A Bolivian trademarked brand of chocolate chip cookies) and arrived in Potosi in the afternoon.

More random business hours you will not find

We’d gone from Uyuni at 3653m elevation to Potosi at 4090m a gain of over 400m. People in Bolivia, especially the lightweight gringos, are obsessed with altitude and talk about it like we talk about the price of houses or the traffic at home. It’s pretty important to keep track though as if you’re prone to a bout of altitude sickness it will effect your respiratory and digestive experience, not to mention your ever sensitive zen, drastically.

Potosi is a mining town with a fascinating but deeply troubled history. It was founded sometime in the mid 1500s specifically to exploit the rich reserves of silver discovered in the towering Cerro Rico the mountain on whose banks the town was formed. This remote mining outpost became the richest city in the world for a period during the 17th century so deep were its reserves of valuable silver. But these riches came at an extraordinary cost in human life. It is estimated that the Spanish put 12 million souls to work in the mines, some pulled from the indigenous population, the majority of them made up from slaves from the Congo but all of them working under the tyranny of forced labour. Over the course of the next 200 years, depending on which historical estimates you believe, between 5 and 9 million souls perished in the mines due primarily to the extremely harsh conditions but also due to the excessive exposure to the poisonous mercury which was used in the silver ore process. Workers were sent underground for periods of 6 months at a time and if they survived the incredible hardship, ended up blind when they resurfaced. There’s a saying that the Spanish could have built a bridge of silver from Potosi to Madrid. The locals have modified the saying slightly to say that they could also have built a bridge of bones. Potosi in it's heyday was more affluent than Paris or London. I met a Norwegian journalist who was working on the theory that the vast reserves of silver plundered from Potosi by the Spanish underpinned the entire European Industrial Revolution. While the silver deposits were depleted long ago, the mines are still worked to this day by Bolivians who lease the mines from the Government and work in small fragmented co-operatives to eke whatever living they can from the minerals (tin, copper, zinc) painstakingly extracted from the mountain.

A relatively tame bus mural - Potosi

We took another Torture Tourism Tour down into the mines for a full day and will never forget it. First we took a trip to get kitted out with helmets, battery packs, headlamps, wellies and overalls. Then, kitted out like Bob the Builder Gringoes we wandered the town market to pick up supplies for ourselves but also presents or offerings to the miners for allowing us to come and watch them work. These presents included cocoa leaves (the raw material for cocaine) which these guys chew incessantly, washed down with cheap and sugary fizzy drinks. Preparing round meals in a square hole, a dark tunnel hundreds of feet below the ground is problematic. So the miners forego the luxury of proper food for the more convenient short term energy boosts which Cocoa and Fanta provide. Their colourfully rotten teeth tell their own story. We also bought bottles of 96% proof alcohol – every Friday afternoon the miners, ranging in age from 12 to 62 congregate at an underground temple devoted to their underground god - a very well-hung derivative of Satan as far as I could figure out - and drink to his and their good health. Interestingly they have other gods for when they’re above ground, gods who hang out in the sky and give light and heat but not the all important mineral wealth. And the final and most interesting gifts we bought were sticks of dynamite. Dynamite is legal in Bolivia. It’s sold (in Potosi anyways) on the side of the street or in special miner’s markets which are open to the public. The majority of the miners still use the very primitive method of hand drilling holes and inserting and detonating sticks of dynamite to make progress further down into the earth’s core and to hopefully rich deposits of valuable minerals. So with pure alcohol and dynamite as gifts (these guys don’t fuck around) we took the minibus up to the entrance of the mine we’d be exploring for the rest of the day. Our guide Pedro was a small, chatty and cheeky ex-miner who escaped a life of misery by becoming a guide. It has to be said that the miners earn on average twice what a general worker earns and are very well respected locally. This doesn’t make their lives any easier. Before the tour even began, as we congregated at the tour operators office, Pedro was already scalping tickets to a local soccer derby later that evening.

Fontarama

The working mine we were visiting had 7 levels. We would be visiting the top 4 levels. Big awkward fellas like me or anyone with even the most nascent agrophobia would be well advised to avoid this trip. The tunnels are narrow and very low with dangerous outcrops of rocks and primitive electrical cabling snagging your clothes as you shuffle your way down towards the centre of the earth. All your senses are dulled by the complete absence of light, the muffling of all sound and the fact that you’re covered head to toe in restrictive protective clothing including a heavy battery pack for the even heavier miner’s helmet and a face mask to stop you inhaling the toxic mineral dust floating around down there. It would be dreamlike if it weren’t so nightmarish. The miners have devised innovative ways to traverse the tunnels and ascend or descend a level. One of which Pedro demonstrates here.

Munchkin inching down a mineshaft guzzying cocoa

We travelled in single file, bookended by the guides so we wouldn’t get lost. At random intervals we’d hear blood curdling, terror inducing shouts to warn us that a mining car was hurtling down the very tracks we were stumbling over. We’d have to race Indiana Jones style to a distant part of the tunnel which would be just wide enough to accommodate the fully loaded careering mining car and us, a group of disoriented and dirty tourists who just wanted some cool photos. The going was seriously tough, as tough as a lot of the treks we did, even though we were taking our time. You'd regularly lose your footing and stumble and gouge your hip or elbow on the uneven walls of the tunnel. A lot of the tour was done on our hands and knees up or down incredibly steep shafts in almost perfect darkness. Working in these sweaty claustrophobic conditions must be heartbreaking. The miners were traditional miners using very manual mining techniques handed down and hard learned through the centuries. There was 1 electric winch serving the entire mine. Everything else was powered by sweat. The ancient iron carts, which looked like relics from the early days of the American railways, are loaded using shovels and then pushed along the tracks by a team of piebald men who, once they gain momentum aren’t going to stop for anything – hence our frantic rush for a lay-by when the shout went up. The loads are then dumped into a shaft where there’s another team of shovel bearers to load the mixed rock, gravel and assorted minerals into huge rubber buckets which are then winched somewhere else to be processed. Kids as young as 12 (technically illegal) lured by the promise of high wages, or co-opted into a lifetime of pain by the weight of tradition, begin their apprenticeship here with the small jobs, bringing the miners cocoa and drinks. We couldn’t wait to see the sun after 3 hours below. I cant even begin to imagine what it must be like for a child with a lifetime of this harrowing work ahead of him who has watched his father and brothers worn to the bone by the impossibly thankless work. The trip was both physically and emotionally draining and Pedro said if there’s one thing to take from our trip to a Bolivian mine, it’s that you should never in good conscience moan about your job again.

I, Me, mining

We finished the trip with an exciting overground demonstration of the building and detonating of a live dynamite charge. All the photos from the mine are by Bronwyn, a nice ozzie girl who kindly forwarded on some photos cos I chose not to bring my camera into the mine – an English couple we’d met had their camera die a miserable death in the mines and recommended we leave ours at home.

Bleedin' Dynamite!

We paid a flying visit to Potosi bus station to book our onward ticket to La Paz and got our first introduction to the most primitive and distressing form of advertising endemic in Bolivia – shouting. People are paid (I presume) to sit on stools beside the offices of bus companies shouting destinations at the top of their voices like a deranged mantra. “A La Paz A La Paz A La Paz” was a particular favourite as was “Cochabamba Cochabamba Cochabamba!!”. The cacophany of 20 or more of these people's shouts echoing through the already bustling station has to be heard to be believed and would make a great sound effect for an ad for Hedex or Solpadeine or even Prozac. I suppose the majority of people here wouldn’t be able to read the signs on the offices advertising destinations so that might explain the shouting but it doesn’t make it any less painful to have to listen to.

Every morning in Potosi outside our hotel there would be hordes of the cutest schoolkids running pint sized down cobblestoned hilly streets to school. All of them would be immaculately turned out, doused in hair oil and wearing the obligatory mini labcoats making them look like prematurely accomplished science prodigies. A lot of them carried a set of panpipes under their arm the way Irish kids would have a tin whistle or a recorder. The kids are obviously taught the ancient art of elevator music from a very early age. We caught a couple of impromptu street performances by school bands and they were lively but painfully tuneless. I wonder does the sight of a tin whistle in other countries provoke the same feelings of dread as a set of pan pipes does when pulled out of a poncho at a party.

A broken shower curtain and an in-shower fuse box

The hotel rooms in Bolivia seemed to be custom built for the compact local clientele as each room we stayed in seemed to be getting smaller. The bathrooms were layed out in such a way as to test the functional limits of a tall man’s bend joints. You almost needed to put your foot in the toilet bowl to balance yourself enough to get out of the shower in some of the places we stayed in. We did however fare pretty well in Potosi with food. We found a café which served up nice falafels and salads and we basically ate all our meals from there. We did get adventurous and visited a Mexican place for our last meal before our overnight to La Paz and it was truly a bad decision. We instigated a new travelling rule : never try a new restaurant before a long bus journey. I spent the entire 10 hours on a flaky bus farting like a clockwork whoopee cushion. My stomach was in serious distress aswell and I vowed never again to get adventurous with food in Bolivia. M and the rest of the passengers on the bus who were assailed with my wafts of stealthy methane accepted my vow of culinary chastity gratefully.


We arrived in La Paz at 530am in a state of abject dishevelment. I don’t think we’d had a more uncomfortable bus journey prior to this one (it was, thankfully unbeknownst to ourselves then, to get even more interesting on our marathon bus journey to Rio.) We were completely disoriented having been woken by the driver shouting at us to get off. We took refuge in a taxi which pulled straight into a traffic jam and a storm of horn blowing and men shouting abuse at each other. At 6am on a Sunday morning? Welcome to La Paz – the noisiest city in the world.

Estamos Embarazada

This just in.........For those of you who don't have Spanish (join the club - our grammar was corrected by people shouting at us in the street!) here's a little assistance......

La Paz, Bolivia, May 2007

The excitement was uncontainable.......

Excuses, Excuses - listed geographically

Laptop In A Coma

So it's finally happened. Le Laptop has decided to go into hyper spasm. Dust, travel, heat - it was bound to happen sooner or later. I know how to fix it but I need some software. Sourcing llama foetuses is not a problem - they sell them on the side of the street here for their PachaMama rituals. Locating an XP Recovery CD in English in crazy fragrant La Paz is going to be fun. So expect an update when you see one. From our Think Tank in La Paz. Out.