Fame and Pain (the latter, self-inflicted)

you would be hard-pressed to characterize la paz as a runner's city, mostly due to the altitude, poor air quality, and general lack of safety. when you infrequently do see runners, they come nearly exclusively in three types 1) hearty guys running down (rarely up) busy roads in the middle of the day, 2) the middle-age woman or two running around the plaza at 6 am in windbreaker suits, or 3) policemen doing their pre-dawn training run down the streets.

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so you can imagine my surprise when i saw an ad for a 13 k road race in the morning paper while having breakfast at a cafe. not only was it a road race, but a large one that claimed 20,000+ entrants the previous year, and the photo of throngs of bolivians at last year's mass start did not look photoshopped. i was stunned. i also had to do it. for all the reasons i'd previously avoided running outside, namely for not wanting to stand out as the silly gringa with her silly convictions about recreational exercise, here, i could just slip in as one of thousands, right?

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i hopped on down to the newspaper organizing the event to register, where i learned there was in fact no entry fee. and here i got stuck thinking about why on earth they passed up an opportunity to charge an entry fee of even 1 boliviano to 20,000 people, and then why on earth did i assume that they wanted to make money off the event and why can't i just enjoy the unabashed populism of a free sporting event. (such frustrated thought trains plagued me frequently.)

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i got up on the morning before the race to have my breakfast three hours before start time, being the dutiful former cross-country ski racer that i am. i put on what i deemed my least pretentious (i.e. non-gringo) athletic gear, my shoes still mud-logged from the hike a couple weekends prior, my hair in french braids, and i was off.

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and from seemingly nowhere, there really were over 23,000 runners there that day at the massive start. i wanted to ask each one of them where, if anywhere, they'd been this whole time.

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the sum of the race went like this: we went uphill, we went downhill, i got sideaches, we went up, i walked, we went down, i hobbled and creaked and, thanks to some absurd production of chemicals and blockage of others in my bloodstream, ultimately finished. but not without event, of course.

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on the long uphill, i kept alternately passing and being passed by a 70-year old man and another elderly one running while holding a small "yo amo a Bolivia" sign. i told myself i saved some face by beating both by about 100 and 1,000 yards, respectively. in the end, i finished with more of a "ultramarathon pace," but i have no need to be pursuing personal bests for 13k at nearly 13,000 ft, and contented myself to put it in the category of "races i ran just so that i can say i did and never have to do again."

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so now you're asking where the fame comes in. i'll tell you. you know how i really tried to just blend in among all those thousands of people? it didn't work. i was a spectacle of sorts, an endearing one, sure, but a spectacle nonetheless. everyone was dumbstruck that a gringa was running at this altitude, a fact which i had more than one competitor and spectator point out during the course. and the media outlets noticed this, too, with several snapping a few shots.
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it was awkward, to say the least. i wanted to tell them that i was just running in my dirty shoes, that i hadn't been training for this, that i wasn't running very well, i.e. i was nothing special. but sure enough, this photo of me literally puffing up the last few meters before the finish line, oddly juxtaposed with another photo of an old man (not the same one i'd been running with) heading in a slightly askance angle, made it on the cover of the sports section of the paper a couple days later. adding to this, our secretary at work, a lovely lady, saw the picture and got really excited, scanned it, and sent it to the whole office, with her caption typed in white.

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i'm also now realizing that the caption is, "for all and to the highest level," by which i'm thinking they wanted to imply, "see? even the wheezing gringa and the creaky old man made it!" it truly was populism of athletics at its finest.

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the running was done for the time, but the fame continued. a couple weeks later, i'm visiting my hatter who says, "oh, i saw you in your [wide-brimmed felt] hat on tv a few months ago. you were at the government building really late at night." that would be the land reform signing.

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then, another weekend i was coming home on the bus from visiting a friend, and the man next to me i've been small talking with says, "weren't you in the train station on friday? i recognize your hat." turns out i was probably right with the 86.3% estimate, although i couldn't tell you what the other 13.7% was.

It Was a Miserable Beauty

the plan was to hike the incan takesi trail on easter weekend. the actual trip was in part a series of unfortunate events that included grossly misplanned food, catching the tail end of rainy season, hiking for about 12 hours one day, the one smoker in the group insisting on regular breaks, hiking the last half hour in the dark, and inadvertently ending up on the road of death again.

on the bright side, we had one excellent meal of burritos under the 1-foot eave of a building we were not allowed to enter while it rained, got to soak up easter in the town of yanacachi, were more than fine on "the road," and gorged ourselves on the scenery.

our inadvertent trailhead along the base of illimani. about 5 km from the actual one, our bus driver let us off, saying the road was washed out up ahead.

(very typical) rural bolivia

the group, L to R: wency, me, mariel, eduardo, elmer

(elmer took most of these photos, save this one and a few others.)

small church and cemetery

the real trailhead and our poolside lunch spot.

here we contracted a couple local boys and their burrows, above, to carry our packs to the summit. at first, the idea of such treatment struck sacrilege, but i quickly (and happily, i might add), resigned myself because 1) the summit was at three miles high altitude, 2) it supported the local economy for only 3) $1.25/pack.

going up

and coming down
(don't ask me why i look happy; it was quite cold and wet.)

hopping from rock to rock as we cross the newly formed streams

playing around incan ruins

because any body of water in bolivia is a big deal, so you take a picture.

(don't we look every bit the happy campers.)

later on, my rain jacket completely soaked, i borrowed a green tarp from wency and wrapped it around my torso and pack, making me look, as i hopped through the cascading streams, like some strange green turtle with spindly black legs and her forearms pulled inside her shell because her gloves were soaked after having been left uncovered in the chilled drizzle.

the first of elmer's many pictures of flora

the golden rainbow at the end of the day

eduardo on the trail the next morning, as we got to the lower subtropic altitudes.

the yungas

you never seemed to know if the water was going over the trail or you were walking through the stream.

(note the trail snaking around the hillside)

inca stonework

(we suppose its authenticity, if for nothing else, because it was inconceivable that anyone would bother to haul stones up to such a remote locale.)

fellow hikers

there was a distinct lack of any type of specialized hiking less gear among those on the trail this weekend, most of whom were probably from the middle-upper classes of la paz. they wore tennis shoes, a few flip flops. they carried their food in plastic bags, 2-liter bottles of coca-cola in their hands, and other gear in jansport backpacks. among other things, it made r.e.i. seem woefully irrelevant.

(my friend and i were the only gringas, or gringos for that matter, on the trail that weekend, per the log we signed at the end.)

an andean arbor

here, mariel bought us a snack of coca-cola and bañuelos, a version of elephant ears.

a quaker church. go figure.

the sign reads,

"takesi prehispanic trail

loma anasani

aymaran word that means, 'low and prolonged altitude where there is an abundance of dark soil,' optimal for farming.

distance covered: 18.55 km

altitude: 2,950 m"

one of the mines we passed near the end of the day. we creaked into town very late and very tired, reduced to the singular mechanical pursuit of going to bed.

after a profound sleep on a 3'x5' straw pile mattresses, we woke up to find ourselves here:
in yanacachi, perched on a ridge between two gaping yungas valleys, on easter morning.

plaza

easter service

spreading out coca leaves to dry

see this house ...

... it's in the middle of this hillside. there's a faint trail that goes out to the left of the picture. this trail went on as far as i could see (a few kilometers at least), and i never did see anything else, neither another road nor structure, it met up with.

going home along the road of deaththis time round, our hostess set us up with tickets on the bus of a very good, capable bus driver whom she knew. in any case, we made it back without incident.

these are pictures i took from the bus window.

yanacachi is right at the dip in the ridge on the right

(elmer altered the colors of some of these pictures a bit.)

i will likely go back to bolivia one day for the express purpose of staying in this hotel.

note the nip of road in the bottom left.

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in the end, i say the scenery was worth any relative danger
and, i will concede, the corporeal pain. it was an incan trail, after all.