Sorata Diary
I tend to steer away from a diary format with this blog, specifically because in my experience diaries read like a tedious chronicle of day to day banality that no one outside the author can relate to. But a while ago I fell down a little rabbit hole by the name of Sorata, and I knew that the details would be worth recording, even if only for myself. So here we go. 8 days in Sorata, Bolivia.
Day 1 - Arrival
My first evening in the village of Sorata I was standing on the edge of a dirt road, admiring the views of the valley towards the river. The town is pouched between the folds of the surrounding hillsides, terraced for agricultural use, giving them the appearance of a patched quilt:
The sun was just about to set. To my left was an open air cafe piping the barely audible sounds of Bob Marley. To my right was a wide-hipped Bolivian woman in traditional Aymara dress, settled on a dirt mound with a small monkey obediently sitting in her lap.
I think I’m going to stick around this town for a while.
I sat down on a park bench to linger a while before retiring to the hotel, a sprawling 18th century Victorian mansion built by a local rubber baron. Opposite my bench there was a pair of dogs, male and female. The male was painfully in heat. He persistently approached the female, sniffing around in all the appropriate places. She seemed not to notice his advances and trotted away with her head held high, and he would lap after her, tongue dragging behind him. After a bit of playful cat and mouse he tried to mount her. At this point she turned around and bit him in the face, then trotted off again, head up and tail wagging. I was shocked. It was like I was watching my love life play out in front of me by canine actors. I wanted to take the male dog out for a beer, try to cheer him up, but he probably only understood Spanish.
Day 2 - Your ham is free! / Meeting people is easy
I had the scare of my life today courtesy of a nervous pig hiding inside of a ravine in the road I was taking out of town. The sun had teeth today, even in the early morning, and the pig was probably trying to beat the heat inside the earth. Too busy admiring the scenery and getting bearings for my hike, I almost stepped right on its head. I jumped back just in time, startled, making a noise like an injured mutt, which in turn startled the pig and sent it bolting (insofar as pigs can bolt) out of its burrow, snorting and squealing like a rabid maniac. It charged down the road, quickly reaching the end of the rope that was tethered around its neck. After straining against it briefly, the pig pulled free and continued running. I shot in the other direction, back up the hill to the nearest brick and mud house where an old woman sat weaving in an open doorway, her wooden spindle or phushka dancing on the ground in front of her. I ran up to her waving my arms wildly in the air shouting, “Tu jamon es libre! Tu jamon es libre!” Your ham is free! Your ham is free!
Without missing a stitch the old woman leaned her head slightly back and shouted something. A boy of around 8 years of age appeared instantly in the doorway behind her. She spat some instructions and off the boy scampered. Then she gave me a patient smile. In less than a minute the wayward pork was corralled, led back to the same spot, and staked back into the ground. His wild snorting had calmed into the tranquil grunts of an idling engine. Pig in neutral, my heart still in 3rd, I set off back down the road. I passed the critter cautiously, giving it a wide berth. We eyeballed each other like two jittery gunslingers ready to draw. Keeping a careful watch for hidden hens, camouflaged cows and disguised donkeys, I made my way out of town.
For my day hike I decided to follow the bend of the Challa Suyu River west for a few hours, picking my way along the rocky banks and the grassy footpaths above it. In all that time I ran into only one other person, a local campesino leading his tiny flock of sheep to the river for a drink.
Two hours or so into my hike I saw this legless chair, hidden behind some brush down the slant of the river bank:
I tested it for sturdiness and ended up eating my lunch in surprising comfort with a spectacular view of the river. This had obviously been someone’s spot, long since abandoned. Along the far shore the river had been damned up to form a standing pool. A makeshift bridge in the shape of a log had been thrown down spanning the banks and the pool. Definitely man made. It was the perfect day for a dip in the water, but I decided against it because I didn’t have swim trunks, or a towel, or this guy handy should I get into trouble:
Here I was confronted with the oft-repeated wisdom you hear from other travellers.
Never hike alone.
For starters, being in a group helps to dissuade robberies, though I doubt there was some mustachioed bandit laying in wait behind the bushes of a seldom used sheep path, enduring the midday sun and legions of mosquitoes on the off chance that some over-fed tourist with an over-fattened money-belt walks by. The more likely scenario is that I could turn an ankle or crack my skull wide open on slippery river rocks or get lunch cramps and start to drown while dogie paddling around a small man-made lake. Paranoia suddenly set in. It’s a little too tranquil around there parts. You could fall down dead and they might not discover your bones before they turn to dust. I decided that solo hiking had its advantages, but it would be better to make a few hiking buddies upon my return to town . . . .
Incidentally, this was the view walking away from Sorata:
This was the view returning:
7:00 PM Return to hostel.
7:01 PM Bumped into a guy in lobby who was going on 3 day hike to the lagoons tomorrow.
7:05 PM Met the girls going with him at the restaurant down the street.
7:10 PM Invited to come along and agreed to join the trek.
Days 3 - 5 - Your Girlfriend Is Perfect And All But . . . .
A lone day hike was fun, but I felt much better about this trek alongside 3 other people, a guide and a porter. We were going to climb the nearby mountains and see some lagoons.
My new traveling companions were all Israelis, and like most Israelis their names sounded like a something you cough up during a severe sinus infection. I gave them all nicknames to make things easy - Moses, Vineyard, and Dovey.
No need to go into detail about the 8 hours we trooped each day. Highlights of the trip include:
- 4 strangers sharing a single 2 man tent.
- One of the girls getting severe altitude sickness and turning into a quivering, crying mess 10 minutes from the glacial lagoon. Actual quote: “I almost died. The only reason I made it down was because I didn’t want my parents to have to pick their daughter up at the airport in a box.”
- Playing an Israeli game called Your Girlfriend Is Perfect And All But . . . .
Here’s how the game works. An Israeli woman will turn to you out of the clear blue and say the words Your Girlfriend Is Perfect And All, But . . . and then say something that is supposed to be so outrageous, it forces you to evaluate whether or not you could possibly remain in a relationship with this person. Yet instead of saying something like Your Girlfriend Is Perfect And All, But her penis is larger than yours, she will say something like Your Girlfriend Is Perfect And All, But she is a stripper.
Hmmm let me see. A perfect girlfriend who also has the body, the flexibility, and the outfits of a stripper. Yes, I would shun this woman immediately.
Gentlemen, if an Israeli woman tries to provoke you into playing this game, I advise you to decline. Even if they dress it up in a pretty little package of “we can learn about cultural differences”, all it will ever be is a pretense for male-bashing. Agreeing to participate with this lot was a particularly poor idea because the sexual conservatism of these girls was downright Puritanical. I felt like Larry Flint trapped in an episode of Leave It To Beaver.
The long and the short of it is that I ended up emphatically defending a man’s right to own pornography, attend strip clubs (tit shows, as they call them) and masturbate while in a relationship if his girlfriend is out of town. In the process I inevitably ended up defending the exact behavior they found most revolting in their own ex-boyfriends. The benefits of this wonderful cross-cultural exchange was a long night spent enduring unkindly-sounding Hebrew phrases slung at me across our narrow tent and camera flashes set off in my face while I tried to sleep.
As payback the next day I taught one of the girls outdated American slang, phrases which I felt were contemporary with her sexual morality. My favorite was That’s so square Daddy-O (emphasis on the “O” while making the square with the pointer fingers). I’m looking forward to that email after the first time she tries to impress other Americans by using it.
Yet it was all in good fun. After we returned to town we all had lunch together, exchanged info and promised to keep in touch. It’s always nice when an attractive 21 year old woman hugs you and tells you that you are an amazing man. Even better when you know that she has received weapons training and that if she actually didn’t like you she could have killed you on the mountainside with her lip balm.
They say a picture speaks a thousand words, so let’s cut this entry short by a few grand:
Day 6 - The internet is closed
Sorry, but the internet is closed until Sunday. No kidding. There are 3 stores in town that have internet connectivity and all of them are closed.
In other news a group of 4 itinerant nuns were hogging the bathrooms this morning and used up all the hot water in the hotel. A sermon in sharing was called for but I decided to turn the other cheek. Times like these I wish I had a few relevant Proverbs at my fingertips to fire indignantly around.
A big thank you my friend JLO and my parents for doing upkeep on my apartment and finding a new tenant for me. It would have been a tad inconvenient to fly back home to fix a leaky faucet and sign a rental agreement.
Day 7 - Call me Ishmael
The best of the short day hikes you can do from Sorata is the 2-3 hour walk to the San Pedro Cave.
While en route, I happened to spy a mirador (scenic lookout) on a bluff overlooking the valley. It was constructed as a little oasis of sorts for people trekking the road to San Pedro Cave and consisted of a tiki bar with 4 bar stools, 2 shaded benches and a makeshift painting easel facing the valley. It was a bit dilapidated, but melted wax on the tiki bar and cinders on the ground next to the benches were evidence of recent use.
These are the little discoveries that really make traveling fun. I ate lunch at the tiki bar, looking through the easel at the landscape, praying that a cute bartender wearing nothing but a grass skirt and coconuts would magically appear and start making mai-tais.
After a few hours of walking I reached the cave and paid 15 Bolivianos (roughly 2 US dollars) to cover the cost of admittance and a guide, who I was told was waiting inside.
Immediately after entering the cave the first thing you notice is the humidity, exceeding any bathhouse, and it only got hotter and wetter the lower you descended.
Discovery: Knocking on the low hanging stalactites (are they technically stalactites if they are not pointed?) created a sound like hollow metal. The sound was contingent on the size and shape of the deposit. The larger ones produced deep brass notes while the smaller, thinner ones sounded like sharp tin tones. An unsuccessful attempt to play Row, Row, Row Your Boat had me questioning the lasting benefits of high school band class.
I heard footsteps running behind me, taking the slippery steps of the cave at an alarming speed. From out of some dim recess a 13 year old kid in sandals and shorts came to a skidding halt alongside me. My guide had arrived.
It’s common for these kids to congregate around popular tourist attractions. They latch onto you and feed you information you never asked for in exchange for a small propina or tip. Usually you can shoo the little buggers away with No tengo propina para ti (I have no tip for you) but this kid was informative (the lake is fed by a water source originating all the way in Cusco, Peru) and I technically already paid for him, so I let him stick around.
The main feature of the cave is a giant freshwater lake. Two paddleboats were docked nearby, attended by a man that turned out to be the kid’s uncle. For another 10 Bolivianos you could rent a boat and paddle around for as long as you like. I decided to go for it. How often am I going to have the opportunity to use a paddleboat inside of an underground cave? I launched from the dock, which was just a series of stones, old tires and other non-submersibles jutting out into the lake. Before I could take my seat or object my guide jumped in on the steering wheel side and started peddling us away from shore.
Paddleboat for two, 13 year old boy, no other adults in sight. Sounds like a typical night at The Neverland Ranch. The kid fired off all the usual questions at me: What’s your name? Where are you from? How long in Bolivia? I returned the inquiries in kind.
Como te llama? I asked.
What’s you name?
Llama me Ishmael. He responded.
Call me Ishmael.
This took me by complete surprise. Either there was a literary savant hanging around inside of a cave in the Bolivian altiplano or this kid just happened to stumble upon one of the most famous opening lines in English literature. I confirmed that Ishmael really was his name. It was. I then tried to explain the significance of the sentence to him, and that we were in a boat when he said it. Dicing for a big propina, he laughed and nodded eagerly along with everything I said, understanding none of it.
Ishmael told me to keep my eyes peeled for bats. I craned my head upwards but this was an absurd suggestion. Visibility was so poor in the dimly lit cavern that realistically the only wildlife we could have spotted would have been a giant white whale.
Yet we had a good time paddling around the murky lake. I would turn to Ishmael and shout, Di lo! (Say it!) and he would in turn shout, Llama me Ishmael!
I was captaining a paddleboat, hunting for bats in the dark alongside an illiterate Bolivian child who shouted Call me Ishmael! at my command. The inside of the San Pedro Cave had somehow morphed into a French symbolist play.
Together we paddled furiously and managed to get the craft up to a breakneck 2 mph. We were steaming demonically along when I had an amazing idea. The other paddleboat had just launched and was cruising in our direction with a family of five on board. Let’s ram them, I said to Ismael in English, and demonstrated the concept with my fist against my open palm.
The 13 year old’s maturity level far exceeded my own. He only shook his head NO without bothering to explain to me why my idea was so obviously wrong. The paddleboats approached each other and I had the sudden urge to grab the wheel and turn it hard right into the other boat, then emphatically blame the kid. Certainly if I had a starboard battery I would have opened fire. Instead we peacefully glided wide of one another and exchanged pleasantries.
I tipped Ishmael 2 Bolivianos for his time and he followed me a quarter mile on his bicycle back down the road to Sorata before getting bored and going back to work. Along the way I picked up two other travel companions:
They were residents of the Altari Oasis, a campsite in Sorata, and I learned later that they enjoy walking the trail to San Pedro Cave with the tourists. They would run ahead, blazing the path in a sense, then sit in the shade and wait for me to catch up.
Returning to Sorata after a long day of hiking was a relief. I arrived back in town the way travelers did before the advent of automobiles and rapid transportation, in many ways the manner a traveler is supposed to: foot-weary and tired, a little dirty, a little hungry, a little grateful, and in the company of hounds. On foot you are required to approach a place by increments. The town begins as a distant idea, still indistinct and unformed. As you step forward it takes shape and grows. By the time you arrive it has risen up to greet you and once you pass inside you can almost feel its embrace:
My two new friends looked back over their shoulders to see if I was coming with them to Altari, then disappeared down the hill.
I had dinner with a Canadian couple I met that morning. They bought a counterfeit 10,000 AD DVD. We watched it in the hostel and wished we hadn’t.
Day 8 – Follow Your Inner Vagabond
Feet up, day of leisure.
Had the sudden urge to do the Trans-Apolobamba trek, so I quickly packed my things and grabbed the next bus out of town back to La Paz. As quickly as that, Sorata was a distant memory, but one that I will cherish.
