Travelogue – Page 2 – CraigBellamy.net(.au)

November 28, 2015December 11, 2021

Walking Valparaiso, Chile, the graffiti capital of the world! [46/50]

I recall an interview a few years ago with a well-known architect from the suburb of Fitzroy in Melbourne, Australia on a radio station in Venice, Italy from the Australian pavilion at the Venice Biennale (Fitzroy is where I started this journey, and soon it will end at Fitz Roy Mountain in Argentina). In certain circles, this particular architect isn’t held in high esteem and is often referred to as the ‘Butcher of Fitzroy’ because of his ugly, incongruous, modern apartment buildings (perhaps Melbourne should slap World Heritage status on its inner-city as many forward-thinking Bolivian, Peruvian, Chilean and Ecuadorian cities have done).

I was curious to hear what someone with the esteemious title of the Butcher of Fitzroy would have to say about Melbourne and Australia from Venice in Italy, one of the birthplaces of Modern Western civilisation. The Butcher was struggling with the questions from the interviewer and didn’t seem to understand the geographical context of the interview, namely Venice, a city perhaps a little too remote and strange to him to be worthy of referencing (and in need of a good renovation!). The Butcher somehow came to the subject of graffiti as Melbourne had an active graffiti scene about a decade ago which got hijacked by the City’s promoters and thus became part of narrow global-trash-narratives. Thus, the Butcher repeated the hackneyed statement that “Melbourne is the graffiti capital of the world!”.

This cringe-worthy statement grated out of my little radio in my room in Melbourne from Venice, perhaps the most elegant city in Europe (and ‘graffiti’ is an Italian word describing a practice invented in Italy, or, at least, ancient Rome). And graffiti isn’t a State so how can it have a capital? And it seems incongruous for graffiti, an autonomous and rebellious art form usually in opposition to the State to be conflated with political cities that are central to its institutional control. What a Bogan I thought to myself (a Bogan is an unsophisticated Australian prevent in all classes of society, not unique to Australia but common in many countries where economic development and cultural development are often at odds with one another such as Qatar, the Bogan capital of the world). Even if graffiti had a capital, how could it possibly be Melbourne, a comfortable and complacent city; a capital of Banality perhaps but certainly not graffiti.

In Valparaso I reflected upon the Butcher of Fitzroy whilst wandering the steep streets with walls and houses covered with spectacular, confronting and uplifting street-art. The Butcher had obviously never been here and even if he had, he possibly wouldn’t have noticed it (and Valparaso is protected by a UNESCO World Heritage overlay, so what some call progress isn’t so destructive).

I stayed in Valparaso for two weeks, walking, eating, drinking, reading and thinking. As a port city, it reminded me of Fassbinder’s Querelle, a noir vibe with dodgy bars with lonely seamen. It is surrounded by forty-two hills, each hill forming a neighbourhood with dozens of funiculars carting women with their shopping and backpackers with their peculiar perspectives to the top. The funiculars are old and rickety and each quite different to one another, with at least one going under the ground.

I am now in Santiago, a large, modern developed city that looks like any other large, modern developed city. In fact half the Chilean population lives here, but more on that next…

November 15, 2015May 29, 2016

The Chilean Atacama Desert, let a hundred flowers blossom [45/50]

The trip from Uyuni in Bolivia to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile was one of the more adventurous segments of the whole journey as the road was rough and unpaved, through remote Andean towns, past smoking volcanoes and over desolate, barren and lonely landscapes.

This would be the last ride on the moto as after five months, five countries and twelve thousand grueling Andean kilometers, riding over, around, and through one of the world’s great mountain ranges, it was time to move on to something different. Every day on a moto is a very special day; it is the love of life, not the love of fear.

The road from Uyuni, Bolivia to Avaroa on the border. After 12000 Kms this was the last ride in the moto!

San Pedro de Atacama was dull compared to Bolivia, modern, packaged, and processed full of sartorially challenged hedonists on vacation from some backwater of Modernity rather than dignified Andean ladies with short, waddling legs and in cool, timeless hats. The Bolivian desert is far more beautiful than the Chilean Atacama and Antofagasta regions, but if you haven’t been to Bolivia, you will never know the difference (and the desert doesn’t care).

Luna Valley, San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

From San Pedro de Atacama I went to Antofagasta, Caldera, and La Serena. Antofagasta is a down-beat mining town on the coast, Caldera is a dystopian-vacation-fantasy of shack-ridden emptiness. La Serena is somewhere in between, lubricated by Pisco Sour, a nice beach and vibrant public spaces (it is actually a large, sophisticated city).

Bottles of Pisco Sour, La Serena (Valle del Elqui)

And when it rains in the Atacama desert, “a hundred flowers blossom” bringing Maoists from all over the world to see the phenomenon. A good spot to see them is around La Serena, Caldera, Copiapo, or Vallenar in the southern Atacama.

I am now in ValparaÃso, a very special coastal city in the middle of Chile and quite close to Santiago (I will blog about ValparaÃso next). Mount Fitz Roy in Argentina, my final destination, is now only two thousand Andean kilometers away!

Mano del Desierto, 75 kms south of Antofagasta represents loneliness, vulnerability and helplessness

November 5, 2015May 29, 2016

The Bolivian South West, no country for young men [44/50]

The Bolivian South West is a expansive and rugged, resilient and optimistic synthesis of unique topologies, an amalgam of past eruptions and new dirt, of accumulated wisdom with new landscapes with few circumscribed references to the stuff of industrial Modernity. It is no country for young men (only Arthur Miller).

Weird looking rock in the Bolivian South West

After returning from the Uyuni Salt Lake, I tied the moto to a post, bought two litres of water and jumped into a jeep headed into the Bolivian South West. A jeep with four wheels is much better in the South West than a bike with two as I had encountered many experienced bikers coming from the region on high-powered and expensive motos looking rather shattered and distraught, thus it was no place for a girly-man moto.

The first day we crossed the Uyuni Salt Flats, and although I was happy to be back there again, it was much more fun on the bike. There were five other people in the jeep, who didn’t natter that much which was refreshing because some nubile travelers tend to see the world through layers and layers of generalised banality, but then again they possibly have a very long, enriching journey ahead of them, and one can forgive someone for being an idiot when they are young but to be old and an idiot it is a tragedy (and never argue with a fool as other travelers may not know the difference!).

The first night we stayed in a salt hotel, with salt walls, salt beds, salt tables, and a salt floor. For dinner we had a simple meal of soup, meat and rice, except ironically there was no salt shaker on the table. The beds were surprisingly comfortable and warm, and I slept well and was up at the crack of dawn ready to tackle the bumpy road ahead.

Indeed, we traveled on some very rugged and corrugated roads on this day, through multi-coloured deserts, past smoking volcanoes, ochre lakes, bizarre shaped rocks on desolate moonscapes (and not to forget hundreds of pink flamingos). The landscape was remote, inhospitable, barren, yet incredibly beautiful, one of the newest parts of the Earth as opposed to Australia, which is one of the oldest (been there, done that).

Pink Flamingos in pink lake (Lake Colorado, Bolivia South West)

On the second and last night , we left at 430 AM to see volcanic geysers at sunrise. The desert at this time of the morning was full of surprises with altering colours and long shadows bringing new depth to the visceral bareness. Steam violently shot out of the sand at many different places promising to upturn the jeep and strip us of another layer of banality.

The final and most beautiful of many lakes we visited was called Laguna Verde, one of the most stunning lakes I have seen. Set beneath a Christmas pudding volcano, it ranks high as one of the nicest bits of real-estate I have seen on this journey (and it takes a lot to impress us Tasmanians).

On the third and final day, the jeep drove us back the few hundred kilometers to Uyini where I rested ready to cross into Chile.

October 22, 2015May 29, 2016

Potosi, city of tarnished silver [42/50]

It was an easy 200 Km ride from Sucre (the capital of Bolivia) to Potosi along a lively, brisk paved road. Although there are 42,000 Kms of roads in Bolivia, only 2000 kms of them are paved. Plus petrol stations are few and far between and when you finally find one, there is no guarantee that they will sell gasoline to a gringo anyhow. So I am injecting myself into the main arteries of Bolivia and will hop into a 4WD jeep to travel further afield.

I crossed a milestone in reaching Potosi in that I have now ridden 12000 Kms from the Caribbean Coast of Colombia to Potosi in Southern Bolivia (and geographically emaciated Chile is next). And although this has been challenging as a solo traveler, one is never alone in the grand landscapes of Bolivia when one has Kafka, Tolstoy, Garcia-Marquez and Kapachinski as accompanying grand narratives. I often see Andeans, sitting alone on the side of the road, miles from anywhere, or walking solo in the desert, a small dot on a vast landscape. I wonder what grand narratives are carrying them?

Potosi, Bolivia with silver mine in the background

Potosi has a history too brutal and too core to human experience to do it justice here. The town sits at a respectable four thousand metres, overlooked by a five-hundred-year-old silver mine that is witness to some of the most extreme forms of exploration imaginable. In colonial times, Andean and African slaves worked the mine, bankrolling the Spanish empire, making Potosi one of the largest and most prosperous cities in the world for its time. There is no more silver left in the mine, only silver-zinc that is worked by miner-owned collectives, in conditions that are still far from perfect.

I visited the mine for an uncomfortable, voyeuristic two hours, stooping through four-foot-tall mine shafts, hitting my head every few minutes, walking through mud and water in the dim, lantern-lit light while breathing Beijing air. I encountered some miners and gave one a bag of coca leaves that apparently is medicinal for altitude sickness as the shaft penetrated the mountain at an absurdly high four thousand four hundred metres. The miners work with picks, shovels and dynamite and labouriously fill trolleys that hold one tonne of silver-zinc which in the present climate, only fetches about one hundred Bolivianos (about fifteen USD).

A unique aspect of the mine is that it is a refuge from Catholicism, meaning when one enters the tunnel they enter the world of a devil-thing and leave Catholicism at the pit entrance. Accordingly, there is a menacing looking devil statue in the mine with an extraordinarily large penis that has an insatiable appetite for coca leaves, ninety percent proof alcohol and cigarettes. The miners worship this instead.

The devil likes coca, alcohol and cigarettes

I left the mine feeling shallow, wanting to explore it’s dark history some more and feeling that the next time I meet a complaining Australian, etc. with no real perspective on the world that I will be a little less generous in my opinion of them (down the hole buddy).

October 19, 2015May 29, 2016

Sucre, Capital de Bolivia [41/50]

The ride from La Paz to Sucre was too far to do in one day, so I rested in the desolate mining town of Oruru on the way. This ended up being a wise decision as it took forever to get out of car-chocked La Paz. La Paz is located in a broad, deep valley and the way into the valley is the same way out of the valley, which I couldn’t figure out because it defied my logic based on machine-learned experience from other cities in less challenging locations.

In Oruro, I met a young French/Chinese cyclist entering the ramshackle, adobe fringes of the beat-up town and stopped for a chat. He had a wild, rugged look in his eye and was deeply tanned, disheveled and driven by an infectious curiosity. We spent the evening talking about riding, about solitude and traveling the more interesting back roads of Bolivia. I enjoy meeting travelers like him that take things one step further and ride thousands of kilometers, often through extreme and exceptional conditions, to explore the world and its people at a stately pace (far beyond the two-minute-noodle dictates of the instrumentalist, poverty jet set). In the morning, he rode off into the desert along a dusty, gravel road towards the salt lakes and I felt a little mediocre as my transportation has something that resembles a motor.

Sucre is the Capital of Bolivia (and I know someone told you that La Paz is the capital which isn’t true so stop stop saying it right now). Sucre is a colonial city, set out on an orderly grid with a lively Plaza del Ames and numerous luminescent white churches and civic buildings protected by a UNESCO World Heritage overlay (which is good because South America has the world’s ugliest Modernity hotly contested by Canberra).

It has an excellent arts scene, numerous cafÃ©s and bars and the second oldest university in the Americas. It is a small city on a human scale, so it is possible to walk most places (and stop for cake and coffee on the way).

Universidad de San Francisco Xavier, 1621

Bolivia is one of the world’s great indigenous countries, and the majority of the population of ten million people originate from indigenous groups such as Amerindians and Mestizos. However, it is also one of the poorest and least developed countries in South America, making it inexpensive but challenging to travel within. For instance, petrol is subsidised for locals at less than half the international market price, but travelers must pay the international price. This isn’t an issue with a 125cc moto but there is a problem when eighty percent of petrol stations won’t sell petrol to foreigners (as I think that they don’t want to do the paperwork). I went to six petrol stations on the road from Oruro to Sucre, and none of them would sell gasoline to a gringo. At the last one, I finally lost my temper and said something disparaging about the Bolivian revolution of 1952 and used a hand gesture common in the United States in the 1970s to add emphasis. This Mad Max petrol system doesn’t fill me with confidence to travel further afield in Bolivia as it is prone to rorting and extortion (and running out of petrol in the desert doesn’t appeal). I wonder what Che would have done on that fuel guzzling, shit-box bike of his?

The hostel where I stayed in Sucre had a deal with Spanish lessons so I spent my week brushing-up on Spanish as I still have about three thousand kilometers, dozens of hotel rooms and two countries to ride through (hopefully, with petrol). Sucre has some excellent Spanish schools and just like Cuenca in Ecuador, has a reputation as one of the best places to learn Spanish in South America. Next I will ride the moto across the Uyuni salt flats in Southern Bolivia and then cross into the Atacama desert in Chile, one of the driest and most inhospitable places on the planet (hopefully with water).

October 14, 2015May 29, 2016

La Paz, not a city of angels [40/50]

The ride from Copacabana to La Paz was a short, pleasant one, passing crystalline lakes and broad vistas of snow-capped Andean mountains (and not to forget the herds of wild, fluffy Llamas). In the late morning, making good progress, I rode into a small, relaxed lakeside town, but unfortunately, the road had vanished. I have had innumerable problems with disappearing roads before, but usually, it has been high in the mountains or deep in the jungle, not on a major road to the largest city in Bolivia. I looked around for the wayward road and was about to naively ask a local, but then realised there was no road, only a bunch of rickety wooden barges to take vehicles the kilometre or two to the other side of the lake. I put the moto on the wooden barge, paid the wooden barge-man viente Bolivianos, then continued onto La Paz.

Don't pay the ferry man to he gets you to the other side

La Paz is a nasty, hard, Modernist city full of witches and slippery, Dickensian vermin who steal things. But aside from this, the actual location of this vice is pretty damn special, as the city is set within a deep high-altitude valley overlooked by an enormous wise, snow-peaked mountain.

The issue is that the city and the location are at odds with one another; there is just not enough room in the Valley for yet another, old-fashioned 20th Century, New World Modernist apocalypse. A city of two million feels like a city of ten million because there are too many polluting cars and buses crammed into a trashed grid system that doesn’t work because the streets are too narrow and in desperation, they have been made into an incomprehensible, Kafkaesque one-way system, thus rendering the city one dated Fritz Lang industrial nightmare. Small measures such as restricting car access to the valley, making pedestrian-only streets and getting otherwise handsome people on bicycles would make La Paz sparkle (and it is no wonder the Uros people reject this shit).

I only spent three days in La Paz, walking the streets, searching for something that resembled coffee, visiting the markets, San Pedro Prison (the outside), and at least one notorious party hostel (the inside), whilst trying to get a feel for the city and how its inhabitants engage with the world (and unfortunately I understand La Paz in this instance, through its aggressive, cancerous streets).

Travel is necessarily superficial, and my understandings of La Paz is likewise superficial but no one could ever accuse one of being superficial for visiting it (and perhaps it is the cracks within the Modern city that make them attractive and it’s the cracked ones that will possibly try something different)

Many places pose as cafÃ©s in South America but they only have nasty, instant, Modernist coffee (from an old-fashioned future )

October 8, 2015May 29, 2016

Lake Titicaca [39/50]

The last stop of my two-month Peruvian sojourn was Lake Titicaca, a colossal and very deep lake high-up on a never-ending Andean plateau (the Altiplano). The lake is split between Peru and Bolivia and in case you were wondering, it is where the Sun was born. Lake Titicaca is the spiritual home and birthplace of many Andean cultures (including the Incas), some who still live around or even on the lake perpetuating the traditional lifestyles of their ancestors. And once you see the lake you can understand why (and Modernity is over-rated, especially in the other New World one-trick ponies of Australia and New Zealand, etc. that don’t know anything else).

Puno is a relatively large but relaxed city on the Peruvian lake shore. From Puno, I visited the pre-Incan Uros people who live on floating islands made of reeds a couple of kilometers offshore. They have lived this way for a thousand years originally as a defence mechanism against hostile Incas and others, but now perhaps because it is a kind of cool lifestyle. But they don’t reject Modernity entirely as I saw solar panels, TVs and radios and boats with outboard motors.

The floating islands of the Uros people, Lake Titicaca

There are about two thousand Uros people who live on forty-two islands, each sitting on a living, floating reed island made of metres-thick roots with freshly laid reeds on top (and the islands are tied to the floor of the lake so that they don’t float away). And apparently when the lake gets choppy, the islands bob up and down just like a boat. The reeds on the top of the isles get replaced regularly, but the underlying roots rot away so the whole island needs to be rebuilt every thirty years.

This reminded me of the Japanese movie by Hiroshi Teshigahata, Woman of the Dunes (1964). A salary man tired of the monotony of Japanese industrialisation escapes to the beach and while running along it, falls into a big hole. At the bottom of the hole lives a lady who puts him to work filling a sand bucket that must be lifted out of the hole regularly by the local villagers or the hole will cave in on itself. Perhaps the Uros people are more Modern than they think.

From Puno, I crossed the hellish and inefficient border of Peru into Bolivia to the other side of Lake Titicaca. I stayed in a friendly but claustrophobic, family-run hotel in Copacabana, a raffish tourist town on the lake edge. From here I visited Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun), a quiet island about two hours by boat from Copacabana. The island was pretty damn special and reminded me a lot of the peninsulas in my very own Southern Tasmania. And having a moto I was able to visit easily many of the local villages on the mainland close to Copacabana although to call them quite is an understatement. Even the Llamas looked like they were in a coma.

I am now in La Paz, which I was trying to avoid as it is too damn large, but even on a moto you have to follow the pre-defined roads (and all roads lead to La Paz).

Matt, Copacabana, Bolivia (imagining he is in Rio)