A few days in Sorata (Soundtrack: the river)

After a sleepless night at sub-zero temperatures, we were glad to get into the tightly-packed mini bus and head back to La Paz. Once at the bus station, Colette took a coach back to Cochabamba to finish off her project whereas I'd decided to visit the small town of Sorata for a few days, as my project was pretty much wrapped up. I'd seen a photo of Sorata back in Tupiza, our first stop in Bolivia, and had wanted to visit ever since. It's a beautiful little town, nestled high in the Andes below the spectacular Illampu glacier.

The descent into the valley should have been a wonderful experience in itself, but the mini bus driver seemed to think he was some kind of ralley driver, tearing around the many blind bends along the winding road at a death-wish speed. He seemed intent on driving on the wrong side of the road around each bend which not only meant we couldn't see any oncoming traffic but we were also only inches away from plummeting down the sheer drop to our left. I seriously thought my time had come.

It was all made worth it when I checked into a gorgeous little place with a balcony over looking stunning views, where my bedroom window looked down into a lush valley (and a rustic sign pointing to the nearby reggae bar) from which came the steady sound of the river below.

I spent 3 days walking, reading and just kicking back enjoying the serenity of the place after so long in the city. In Sorata you can go on walks without having to pay or take a guide - a nice break from what I call the 'privatization of wandering'; where one can no longer just walk and enjoy the common land without having to organise it through a tour operator.

As I wondered along roads coated in orange dust I passed whole families up on the hillsides harvesting their corn. Here and there a teathered bull would lazily observe me as I passed and chickens and goats foraged at the roadside. Plumes of grey smoke could be seen rising from various points across the valley as farmers burnt the dry grass to make way for the new crop.

Here are some photos Sorata, a town where I would seriously consider retiring to one day.......

Summer Solstice 2009 - Aymara new year 5517

We'd decided to go and check out the summer solstice celebration on June 21st. Summer solstice here marks the new year for the Aymara people; a native ethnic group in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America which have been around for as long as 2000 years. Roughly 2 million live in Bolivia, Peru and Chile.
The celebration takes place in the ancient pre-Inca ruins of Tiwanaku, near the south-eastern shore of Lake Titicaca. It's quite a journey from Cochabamba, so we decided to make a weekend of it, with a stop in Bolivia's capital La Paz. The bus journey was a standard 10 hourer, which took us through the barren, arrid Altiplano ( high plain) region where the Andes are at their widest point. Leaving Cochabamba the road carves through valleys of red clay and rock, and as it ascends the views get better and the drop on the right-hand side gets concerning. In fact we'd heard just a few days earlier that a bus had gone over the edge a week earlier. Once the road reaches the zenith the Altiplano begins. For hours on end we passed through the various parched shades of beige, light brown and sand, with small settlements scattered here and there made up of various adobe buildings with corragated iron roofs held in place by large rocks. It seems such a harsh environment in which to eck out a living, although I imagine the scenery is transformed during the rainy season. Like in most pueblitos of Bolivia, the walls of houses and buildings had huge political slogans scrawled over them in big block capitals, either in support of the first indigenous president Evo Morales, or for or against the new constitution which the MAS (Movement Towards Socialism) government has been given the task to create. The villages and towns of the Altiplano being indigenous, the messages were all 'EVO SI' or 'CONSTITUCION NUEVO-SI'.

Eventually the isolated towns became more and more frequent and impressive snow-capped mountains emerged to our right. And then, as the guide book and any travel literature written about La Paz descibes the amazing view of the city was revealed, with its impossible sprawl of buildings spilling down into the valley surrounded by hills overlooked by the mighty, snow capped Mt Illimani which towers at 6402 metres.

After a wonder around in the evening we spent the night in a lovely freezing dive of a hotel, with the mandatory ice cold shower to get us started in the morning, before catching a minibus to Tiwanaku. The mini buses are basically the little Nissan people carriers that are ubiquitos in South America and carry you anywhere around the town or city for a set price of about 20p and stop anywhere you wave them down.

We arrived in the late afternoon, and it was soon apparent that Solstice was a big event. The little streets of the village, which is close to the ruins, were lined with makeshift stalls selling hot food and drinks, the usual selection of brightly coloured hats, gloves and ponchos, and the occasional llama feotus. We'd been told that it would get cold, but as the sun made it's farewell we were content in the knowledge that we'd come prepared with extra socks, trousers, jumpers, hats and gloves.

The main square had been transformed into a festival with a decent sized stage set up complete with lights speaker stacks. Unfortunately, the whole place was plastered with the advertisements of the corporations who had sponsered the event - apparently this was the first year that solstice had gone corporate, and there had been a big push to make this year's sacred ritual celebration into some kind of mini Glastonbury.

We had a good night though. The first few groups on stage were traditional Aymara music, with about 15 people on stage in traditional dress with a variety of drums, crazy horns and panpipes. It wasn't long before I joined in with the big group of Bolivians dancing in front of us, all holding hands in a circle walking round in one direction and then 'Oy!', and then walk around in the other direction! It was good fun, and they all seemed happy and amused to have a few gringos get in on the act.
As the night went on, the temperature dropped and one local guy who had befriended us for the evening told me it would get as low as -15 degrees! Our multiple layers soon seemed inadequate.

Luckily, we had the power of the coca leaf to sustain us. The coca plant is an important part of indigenous culture in much of South America. The Aymara have grown and chewed coca leaves for centuries, and used its leaves in traditional medicine as well as in ritual offerings to the earth goddess Pachamamma and the sun god Inti. The leaves are very nourishing; rich in vitamins, protein and calcium and are used as a mild stimulant to overcome hunger, fatigue and thirst. Its also effective against the effects of altitude sickness. The active ingredient is the cocaine alkaloid, which of course is what is used to produce the drug cocaine. But the levels present in the leaves are insufficient to cause the effects and addiction associated with the drug cocaine. Various studies have shown that chewing or taking the leaf as a tea has only beneficial effects. The leaf here has the same place in Andean life as coffee in European life. It is used as a flavouring for Coca Cola, hence the name. Never the less, this leaf has been the source of much controversey since the US launched its 'war on drugs' back in the 80's. Mass US-backed erradication programmes have left thousands of Bolivia's poorest without work, and have played an important role in the rise in anti-American sentiment which eventually lead to the landslide election of Evo Morales in 2005 (he himself had been a 'cocalero' and an important leader of coca growing union which was part of a powerful movement of coca growers' unions, consisting of campesinos who are resisting the efforts of the erradication efforts). Despite the UN 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which lists the leaf alongside cocaine and heroin, and the ongoing demonisation of the plant and its growers, the US embassy promotes the consumption of coca tea to its citizens to minimize the impacts of altitude sickness!


At 5am, everyone gathered at the entrance to the ruins to que to enter. By this point we were pretty damn shattered and cold. We eventually got in, and gathered around the main part of the ruins - the gateway of the sun. Here, the Aymara shamens, wearing traditional multicoloured hats and garments performed various sacrifices to the pachamamma, including the burning of a gift of coca leaves, insense, copal and a llama pheotus. Apparantly, they also performed a 'wilacncha' or blood sacrifice where a llama was killed and it's blood (among the most important type of animal blood the Incas offered to the forces of the earth, mountain peaks and sky). Somehow, we seemed to miss this-probably due to the sheer volume of people between us and the alter. To our right thousands were gathered underneath a huge Wiphala flag - the colourful rainbow chequered flag that represents the indigenous people of the Andes.

As the sun began to rise above the horizon, the 40, 000 people present (made up mainly of Aymara and Quecha peoples, with a scattering of Europeans) lifted their palms to the sky to recieve the energy of the sun and welcome the new year and beginning of the new agricultural cycle.


It was a nice moment, although by that point it was tainted by the fact that we were so unbearably cold - we just wanted the sun high in the sky so we could be revived back to warm blooded mammal status. The whole night had been very interesting, but we both felt that it might have been a more authentic affair if we'd experienced it a few years ago, before the corporate tentacles had taken hold.

There were more rituals and dances planned throughout the day, but by this point we-d taken our fill, and were ready for the minibus back to the capital. Colette would take the bus back to Cochabamba, whereas I-d planned a little trip to a town called Soratafor a few days of walking, reading and relaxing in the hills.

Clandenstine shots from the streets of Bolivia (Soundtrack: Micheal Jackson, Micheal Jackson, Micheal Jackson)

For some time now I've wanted to take some pictures of the colourful people of Bolivia but the thing is, in general they don't take too kindly to haurds of gringos sticking cameras in their faces and snapping away everyday. So, we decided to do a little 'guerilla snapping' from our coach seats on a rewcent trip from Cochabamba to the capital La Paz. These shots are mainly from the streets of El Alto and La Paz.

The Camp for Climate Action 2009 - reclaim your future!

In the summer of 2006, shortly after my return to the UK after my first big trip away, I went on a little road-trip with my friends Sam and Yerma to the South West to visit Stone Henge and the lovely town of Glastonbury. Whilst in Glastonbury I noticed a poster advertising a camp that would take place later on that summer, near to the UK's single largest point-source of CO2 emissions: Drax power station near Selby. The camp would be a space where people could get together and talk and learn about climate change, and take peaceful action to challenge it's root causes, so the poster said.

2 months later, along with 600 others, I was pitching my tent in the shadow of the beast that is Drax, in a field in Yorkshire. Throughout the week I attended a wonderfully varied collection of workshops about all aspects of climate change, from how the national energy grid works, to the effect our diet has on global emissions, to the rise of biofuels and their role in deforestation and the media's protrayal of climate change. I also got involved with some practical skill shares; so many people with an amazing variety of practical skills left me feeling a little inadequate - in my mid 20's and my highest technical achievement to date was probably wiring up a lightbulb. How would I really fare if the world as we know began to disintegrate around us?




You could learn how to build a micro turbine or an efficient 'rocket' stove from a reused vegetable oil can, how to power a sound system from a 12 volt battery, or even how to build a compost toilet!! I was blown away. I needed to gain skills!






And, if all the debates and science became a little too much, there was always the evening entertainment, where one could learn how to salsa, engage in a bit of Thai Chi, or even get involved in some speed-dating! There was live music and a cinema space, which gave the whole camp a distinctly festival-type vibe. And to keep in contact with the outside world, there was a whole 'internet' tent run by Indymedia. All of the energy used was generated from the many micro turbines and solar panels that had popped up throughout the week, and the majority of construction materials had been collected from skips and waste bound for the landfill during the months in the run up to the camp. I found it amazing. A group of normal people, without leaders or hierrachy, had built a sustainable 'village', with all the facilities needed for over 1000 people, in the space of days, even with the police's attempts to prevent them.



As climate camp is a non-hierarchical organisation, all of the desicions are made by consensus. Sometimes the daily meetings would drag on as we tried to find a solution with which everyone was happy, but in the end, this point was always reached - it really worked, and everyone was happy with the desicions. I'd never experienced anything like this before and found it a fascinating experiment in real democracy.

I met many fascinating people throughout the week, of all ages and from all walks of life, and I made some good friends. Many of them were organising themselves into small 'affinity' groups and planning non-violent direct action (NVDA) for the highly publicised 'Day of Mass Action' which was to be held on the final day of the camp, when those who fancied it could have a bash at causing mass disruption to the operation of the power plant, to send a powerful message to the government that we need a low-carbon future and the sooner we make coal-power history the the closer we get to preventing a global meltdown. People were learning how to use bike locks to attach themselves to equipment and how to form human-blockades, all under the close scrutiny of the 1000 or so police that had been drafted in from forces all around the country and positioned around the camp. This was all new to me. Although I'd become aware of activist movements over the years, and seen various videos of protests and actions, this was the first time I'd been in a position where I was surrounded by people who had decided to take the bold step, in the age old tradition of 'civil disobedience', of breaking the law in order to push for social change. And, it was the first time that I'd experienced the police's response to this type of 'unacceptable behavior'.

After careful consideration I'd decided that I was not yet ready for direct action, but there was plenty of other important stuff to be getting on with in the running of the camp. Nobody made me feel like I was 'copping out' of the action, there's no pressure to climb a fence and lock onto a conveyor belt; peaceful direct action is only one of the 4 stated aims of the camp, the others being education, movement building and demonstartion of sustainable living.


The camp left an indelible impression on me. I'd learnt so much, met so many amazing people and become inspired to learn and act more. The next camp, at Heathrow in 2007 was bigger, better and it's level of organisation even more impressive. By the next camp, which took place at Heathrow airport in 2007, I felt that I was ready for the peaceful direct action bit too, after probing deep into the history of social movements that used non-violent direct action to make the world a better place. The civil rights movements of Ghandi and Martin Luther King, the Sufferagets, the anti-road movement of the 90's (which forced a huge cut in the Conservative's road expansion plans). In all of these examples the movements were attacked and demonised by the media and government of the day and anyone else who felt threatened by people who actually have the courage and conviction to risk their liberty and break the law in order to make social change. These same people are now looked back on as heroes and heroins who took personal risks and achieved positive change.


There's no doubt that the Heathrow camp was the most exciting, inspiring, amazing thing I've ever experienced! The only thing more exciting, inspiring and amazing was the 2008 camp at Kingsnorth power station in Kent!


I can't big up the climate camp enough, and am currently feeling rather upset about not being able to make this year's camp, which will take place between Aug 27th - 2nd Sep, near London. Excitingly, there will also be Welsh and Scottish camps this year, not to mention new camps in Holland and France. Despite not being in the UK for this year's camps (though I really have been tempted to get back to the UK in time) I've been rounding up people out here and have already inspired a handfull of people to attend this year's UK, Australian and German camps!


So, the purpose of this post is really to encourage all those who read it to get involved. I challenge anyone to go to the camp(s) this summer and not returned buzzing with inspiration and energy! Last year I managed to persuade about 6 new people to go - and it changed their lives; each of them will be going again this year! Here are 5 reasons why YOU should go to your local Camp for Climate Action this year:


1/. It's the most exciting thing you'll ever experience!


2/. You can learn how to make vegan cakes, group desicions and a wind turbine, watch a film in a solar cinema and take part in a céilidh dance with 200 people all in one day!

3/. You can meet an amazing bunch of people and make new friends.

4/. It's a free camping holiday with elements of a festival and science seminar all in one. And this year's weather will make for good camping.

5/. You can become a part of a vital movement that is trying to stop the world from frying. We are the last generation who will have the chance to prevent catastrophic global climate change that will render the planet unsuitable for life as we know it. We can't wait for governments and 'other people' to sort out this problem - we must be the drive of change now! It's now or never for the future of humanity and our amazing planet - get onboard!


Here's the website: http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/

Here are some great short films from last year's camp (filmed and edited onsite during the camp at Vision on's solar powered studio)
http://www.undercurrents.org/climatecamp/index.htm

Here's some articles about previous camps that will get you in the mood:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/inside-heathrows-protest-camp-a-battle-to-save-the-world-462080.html


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/aug/21/comment.transport

The streets of Cochabamba