Friday, December 5, 2014

BOLIVIA (PART III), ARGENTINA, URUGUAY



Hello… I am writing this post from Montevideo, Uruguay where summer is about to start here (sorry to all you East coasters who will probably be digging your car out of the snow sometime in the next 24 hours)! It has been around a month since my last post and I wish I wouldn’t have waited so long before writing this post since I have forgotten a lot of things already!
I ended up staying a total of 6 weeks in Cochabamba, Bolivia where I was doing volunteer work. I was able to finish building the oven and write a manual on how to construct it for any of you out there interested in how I built it! Here is the link to the PDF: http://docdroid.net/mi18

I got to do a bit of testing and modifying of the oven to improve its functionality. I kind of ran out of time and got busy with other things besides volunteer work near the end of my stay.



Bolivian futbol


Foosball Fridays aka the local university sets up about a half dozen foosball tables on the sidewalks for students to play


A tattoo of one of the volunteers in Cochabamba. He explained that it is pretty much a compass for how he tries to live his life. Here is how he explained it: Love-North, Knowledge-East, Spirituality-South, Health-West
 


A swam made out of a bicycle tire....

I would say my overall stay in Cochabamba will be one of the highlights of my trip. I was able to get a pretty good idea of life in this South American city, the Bolivian people’s customs/traditions, get to really know some other travelers and local Bolivians, and hopefully make a lasting impact for the family that will be receiving that solar oven! 

A typical scene on a Bolivian mountain road. A truck carrying about 10 brand new cars flipped to its side on a corner....with all 10 cars rolling down the side of the mountain


Some Bolivians rubber necking like there is no tomorrow




Fruit market


Desayuno Americano (American breakfast) for around $4



I was then off to Buenos Aires where I would meet a Swiss friend I had met in Ecuador a few months back. Buenos Aires was a pretty big culture shock because it really was the most developed city I had been in around 5 months. It has a very European touch and it resembles any major cosmopolitan city in Europe, Asia, or North America with its big department stores, chain restaurants, etc…Apparently Argentina is having some major problems with its currency/economy at the moment, but there wasn’t any crazy protesting or rioting like in NYC during the Occupy Wall Street movement a few years back. Buenos Aires also has this boardwalk near the harbor that is really popular for runners/cyclists, along with tons of restaurants and bars.



The boardwalk along the Buenos Aires harbor



Besides these Christmas decorations I would have no idea that Christmas is around the corner


Argentina...the land of meat


View from the terrace of our hostel in Buenos Aires


The car hit a curb way too hard and flipped over

After a short stint in Buenos Aires, my friend and I were off to Uruguay to try to score some waves. We took a 3 hour ferry from BA to Montevideo (the capital of Uruguay). After that we took a bus to Punta del Este, which is kind of a ritzy vacation destination for the well off Argentines and Uruguayans. Our one week stay there consisted mostly of flat surf so we didn’t get the waves we expected, but it was still a fun beach town to hang out in for a few days. We got to see the famous statue of the hand called "Mano de Punta del Este" as well. 


The hand in Punta del Este

My friend made his way up to Brazil and I headed back to Montevideo to wrap up a few skype job interviews. Apparently the locals told me that Uruguay just got super fast internet, compared to Brazil which has slow internet, so I didn’t want to take a gamble with the internet for my skype interviews. I’ll be off to Brazil tomorrow and ready to tackle a new language…Portuguese!
 
As my trip comes to an end in around 2.5 weeks, I have had a bit of time recently to think back to the first few days of the trip. I had these expectations on all these different sights/environments that I would see or be a part of. Before leaving for this adventure, some people had told me to not plan the itinerary out too much because things are bound to change, and that’s the beauty of traveling. I guess they were right. The magnitude of how much this trip changed from Day 1 until now is pretty significant, but not necessarily in a bad way either. I am very pleased with all the places I was able to see with my own eyes; cities, towns, or sites that I would look at during internet searches or in books or magazines. There is also a lot that I was not able to see because South America is so big. By deciding to spend a lot of time in one place, I automatically gave myself less time in another place, but I am perfectly fine with that. Overall I don’t have any regrets about places I wish I had seen or spent more time in. I also noticed that at the end of the trip I got lazier with taking photos. It became less of a game of trying to “check off” places from the list and rather just being able to enjoy each place with my own eyes and not necessarily with photographic proof. In the last few weeks, being able to walk around in a new city and not take photos was kind of a relief and a breath of fresh air as opposed to always needing to walk around with my camera.  



Before this adventure started, I also had predictions on things I was hoping to learn or get from this trip. In anticipation of my travels, I had quit my job, sold my car, canceled my phone bill, sold all my furniture and most of my sports equipment, etc…  Thus, this trip was a pretty big deal for me and I had the perception, that since I had completely changed my lifestyle by going, this 1/2 a year journey should and would magically give me all the answers for every question or hesitation I had at that point in my life. This is where I went wrong. 


To be honest, yes I learned alot during this journet, and I’ll mention a few of them below. I’ll likely think of some more good ones in the next 2.5 weeks as my trip comes to an end.
  •  Really getting to know a few people and a few places is better than kind of knowing a ton of people and a ton of places.
  •  It did make me realize that experiences are most memorable when shared with others. You can be in the most beautiful place in the world and having somebody to share that moment with makes it all the better.
  • I realized how much we underestimate or take for granted our comforts and first world lifestyles back home.  
  • This trip gave me time to think about my post-trip plans (going back to the workforce vs. going to graduate school). 
  • I was able to recognize that I really like being busy and having a solid task list of things to do. Writing that task down on a task list, making time to do it, and then checking it off the list is a great feeling. But it is something that has to be done on a continual basis. As soon as all the tasks on the list get checked off, its time to replenish that. Kind of like replenishing your bank account, after traveling for half a year!  
  • Whenever you need to make a big decision, eat first! Making decisions when you are hungry is a horrible idea! Same goes with little sleep. Eat and sleep and then you’ll be ready to think more clearly!
  • If you read the last blog post, I wrote on the 5 pillars that I think are needed to balance out one’s life. I guess this trip was able to reinforce these pillars and make me realize how important they are.
  • Having events, friends/family to meet up with, or plans scheduled for the near future gives you something to look forward to when you start getting bored or a little down.
  • Traveling solo gives you more confidence than traveling with others because at the end of the day, you have nobody to rely on but yourself. 
  • At the end of the day, who you really are (personality-wise, hobbies, interests, etc) ends up following you no matter which country you are in. You won’t all of a sudden change just because you crossed a border and got a stamp on your passport.


On the other hand, this trip did not give me special powers to figure out all of life’s big questions. I realized that the things this trip did not give me answers for were the things that require more patience and more trial and error. In other words things in life that take time and are progressive, kind of like how a bottle of red wine or Cognac progressively gets better with time. For anybody thinking about doing some extended traveling and has high expectations going into it, I’ll give you a heads up now that it won’t magically tell you what all your passions are or what your dream job is. It probably won’t tell you what the meaning of life or what the key to eternal happiness is either. But what your travels will give you is the opportunity and time to think about these things a lot and hopefully enlighten you on changes you will make in your life post-trip to get closer to achieving those goals.