Oblivious in Bolivia - Santa Cruz

I departed Cleveland for Santa Cruz Bolivia at 5:30 Sunday morning with absolutely no sleep and a layer of dried sweat on my body from the last-minute hauling of most of my worldly possessions into storage at my dad's house. I was prepared to pity the person seated next to me on the plane, but luckily I never had anyone directly beside me.  In fact, after my layover in Panama, I had a luxurious row of three seats to lay across undisturbed by all but the most extreme turbulence.  Upon landing in Santa Cruz, I muddled my way through immigration with all the blank stares and awkward fumbling expected of smelly foreign hobo.  I was so relieved once I sped away at 120 kilometers per hour in a taxi bound for my hostel at 3:00am, conversing with the driver along the way in my broken Spanish aided by his broken English.  He was also 37 years old, but he had a wife and four children, and he made it clear, as only an exhausted airport cabbie in the middle of the night can, that he envied the single life.

Murals near the central plaza

The streets of Santa Cruz were absolutely empty and all the shops were shuttered.  It was hard for me to believe it when he said tomorrow traffic would be bumper to bumper.  I knocked on the hostel door with meek uncertainty, and he politely waited to make sure they let me in. A sleepy girl answered, rubbing her eyes and yawning.  I gave the driver a big smile and thumbs up, then she guided me through the darkness to a bunk bed where I briefly disturbed the slumber of a Frenchman, who quickly pulled a pillow over his face as the bare bulb above him bombarded his retinas.  The next morning I learned my roommate's name was Pierric, and he was a doctoral student of linguistics here to study the Chiquitano language.  He explained that the Chiquitano people are an indigenous ethnic group living mainly in Eastern Bolivia and parts of Brazil.  As we talked, somehow the conversation turned to "Obamacare," which I always find interesting because almost every European I have ever met simply cannot understand why this is such a contentious issue in the world's richest country.

Basilica Menor de San Lorenzo

I guess it needed to be said.  In the stairway of the bell tower.

Feeding pigeons in the plaza

The cabbie was right about traffic the next day as Santa Cruz sprung to life.  It was unusually cold and windy while I wandered through the city, marveling at the cars muscling their way through intersections, the right-of-way apparently given to drivers of superior boldness.  There are police, military, and security guards throughout the city, posted at every bank or government building.  I suppose it would have been a little disconcerting to walk by a man casually wielding a pistol-grip shotgun as I headed out for my morning coffee, but I became habituated to this kind of thing in Honduras and Guatemala.  The main difference here seems to be the lack of body searches before entering a bank.

I walked up to the Plaza 24 de Septiembre, a beautiful central park where pigeons outnumber humans by an unsettling margin.  The plaza is so named because it is the location and date of the province's first battle against Spanish rule in 1810.  On the south end of the plaza is the Basilica Menor de San Lorenzo, a large brick cathedral with beautiful wooden ceilings and an aura of holy reverence that kept me from nosing around too much.

Looking at the plaza from the Bell Tower

Behind the Cathedral

Political graffiti

Just outside the church in the plaza, I was surprised to see several tents and a sheet flapping in the wind bearing the name of the organization where I am going to volunteer.  I mustered my minimal Spanish skills and spoke at length with a pretty young woman at the table about what they were doing there.  After 30 minutes of furrowed brows, fumbling speech, confused smiles, and funny drawings, I finally understood that they were indigenous peoples protesting a highway that is to be build in their environmentally sensitive and protected area (Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Secure, TIPNIS).

Two blocks from my hostel.  Too perfect.

After I left her, I found a delicious vegetarian restaurant then later hung out at a cafe enjoying some excellent coffee and chocolate torta.  I found myself instantly enamored with Santa Cruz on just my first day, mainly because of the people I've met and the energy of the city.  Perhaps it is because of the season, but there is only a smattering of tourists, and almost all of them are French.  I am spending more time here than I anticipated because my bank froze my account after I withdrew some cash, even though I told them of my travel plans.  Luckily, a toll-free Skype call fixed everything, and I am slated to leave tomorrow morning for Parque Ambue Ari, although as I type this in my hostel hammock, I have no idea how I am going to get there.

This was outside a kindergarten

"Nature is not a commodity"

Poetic graffiti

I will miss the friendly people at Residencial Bolivar.  Apart from Simon the toucan who likes to sit on your shoulder, Celia and I practiced our language skills together for a couple hours and had a really fun time saying ridiculous things to each other.  She plays the piano and is going to college for music.  She also was shocked to learn that I was not 25 years old; it must be my youthful looks or perhaps my obvious immaturity.

Simon lives at Residencial Bolivar

Simon and me

Leaving Home

I had a yoga teacher once describe the practice of breathing deeper into a posture as "becoming comfortable with discomfort." I suppose the same could be said about putting yourself in a number of awkward positions, such as traveling alone in strange, faraway lands. There is an obvious and undeniable comfort in simply staying home, whether that means a physical place, a cultural niche, or a frame of mind. Traveling uproots you from home in every sense, allowing (or sometimes forcing) you to see your life and its broader context in different ways. You gain new appreciations of nature and humanity, of the people in your life, of the little things that you've always have taken for granted without much of a passing thought. At the same time, you also begin to viscerally understand points of view that you previously only comprehended abstractly, putting meat on the bones of rickety sentences floating around in textbooks and cerebral cortices. As an outsider, you discover new, beautiful, and sometimes jarring things about the world, your home, and yourself. Just as in yoga, there is a great deal of personal enrichment to be found when embracing such discomfort, all the while remembering to breathe.

 As the time gets closer to my departure date, my excitement begins to subside into anxiety and apprehension. Part of this is due to my friends and co-workers frequently describing my loose itinerary of solo traveling in South America for three and half months as "crazy" or sometimes even "brave," often pairing the "better you than me" head shaking with jokes about my abduction into white slavery, my soon-to-be-burgeoning collection of tropical skin diseases, or my all too eager indoctrination into a Marxist rebel group. After so many comments, I started to think maybe they were right, that my travels were ill-conceived and reckless. I've had a few moments of self-doubt where I was given pause to wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life. Maybe I am being foolhardy and irresponsible, more careless than carefree. I am starting off in Bolivia after all, South America's poorest country with 60% of the population below the national poverty line, an average household income of around $900US, and a nation perpetually beset with protests, demonstrations, and complex political turmoil. I fully understand why such a place might not whet the appetite of the average First World vacationer, but honestly, that is not what really bothers me about leaving.

What bothers me is who I am leaving behind: my sister and brother-in-law who had graciously opened their home to me for the last year; my brand new nephew, Evan, who will be twice as big and four times as smart by the time I return; my co-workers who threw a "Ben Voyage" party for me on my last day; my bosses who fought hard to make sure that I have a job when I come back; my yoga instructor who believed in me enough to offer me a teaching position when I return; my friends and family who have always been there for me whenever I needed them, and for whom I desperately want to reciprocate; and finally, some wonderful new friendships that are just barely sprouting before I skip the country. Oddly enough, I have never felt more "at home" than I have these last few months in Cleveland (my lack of permanent residence not withstanding), and it is very hard for me to leave.

Whereas I focused for the last six months on the grand experiences that I would have in South America, now I am also eagerly anticipating the exciting next phase of my life that will begin when I return -- essentially homeless and broke -- but with some amazing fresh prospects. In the meantime, though, I am going to be absorbing new cultures, making new friends, learning new skills, butchering the Spanish language, and hopefully having some kind of small but positive impact on the places that I visit. My plan is to volunteer with wildlife in Bolivia, complete an intensive yoga teacher training program in Peru, and maybe even help with a coral reef restoration project in Colombia.

Along the way I am going to visit old friends, see the sights, and have as many adventures as I can manage. Everything in my life right now is uncertain, challenging, and new... and I am oddly comfortable with that.