A musing on the loss of the market...

At the heart of every self-respecting town or city in Latin America there lies a market of fresh produce, a place for transactions, somewhere to meet and to gossip, the centre for the dissemination of news and a place where revolutions are born... I have eagerly visited many in this southward journey of the Andes, but one of the most impressive has been that of the Mapuche trading town, Temuco, in the Lake District of Chile.

On a cold, misty, grey winter's day walking into the market was sensory bliss; what an extraordinary collection of colour, shape, smell and sound! Rows and rows of fruit and vegetables in their splendor... from huge round blue shelled pumpkins to small green avocados, the peculiar shaped artichoke and the inviting shine of aubergine... perfectly round oranges and leafy green silverbeet, stacks of marrows and sacks of lentils; mounds of spices with the most wonderful colour and smell; bunches of aromatic herbs from mint to chamomile and cilantro; huge, round cheeses reminiscent of Holland and small golden jars of wild honey; fish, fresh and smoked, hanging from wooden stands with their pungent seaside smell; small piles of oval eggs in the most beautiful grey and blue shaded shells... and everywhere the classic market vendor, in cap and scarf against the cold, calling his wares loudly as you pass by, inviting you to sample...

I watched two elderly men in their thick woolen coats and hats carefully selecting carrots from a large orange pile and wondered why we, in the "west", have so avidly chosen the sterility of supermarkets with their artificial lighting and excessively controlled temperatures over this... this most wonderful of social institutions and haven of sensory delights, the traditional market...

...Valpairaso...

I think that graffiti says a lot about a place... when all you see around you is "tag" (that awful hieroglyphic scrawl marking public walls in a macho branding reminiscent of dogs marking their territory) it is intimidating, ugly and defacing of the public spaces we share. But, when graffiti is combined with creativity, with wit, it becomes street art in the most inspiring, politically charged, humorous and anarchistic fashion. And here, in Valpairaso, a port city just north of Santiago in Chile, this sort of graffiti is abound... every wall is marked with the most talented murals, stencils, poetry, political slogans - they are a joy to see and I have spent many hours walking the streets in the search for the most creative, interesting and challenging of them.

Valpairso is a charming place - it consists of many hills which wind upwards from the central port, evoking memories of Wellington with its winding narrow streets and colourful tumbledown houses which cover the hills in a wild confusion of old and new, small and large, thin and wide. Artists, students, bohemians, poets and musicians flock here and the local craft shops are as numerous as the cosy welcoming cafes with stained glass windows and wooden chairs... it is a city that invites you to stay awhile and teases your conceptions of order, of art, of fashion, of politics. Viva Valpairaso!

Oh wild Pacific, how you smell like home...

I no longer care for cameloids; enough alpacas, llamas and vicunas! No more condors, foxes or barren landscapes of the altiplano; give me the sea!!! I want wild salty waves that crash against black rocks, whipping winds and white sea spray, I want sea animals with their round soft bodies and leathery skin, give me pelicans and albatrosses, crying sea gulls and hardened sands that crunch under foot. Give me trees, wild and green, their trunks warped by wild ocean winds, give me green mountains and skies peppered with clouds... arouse in me emotions of home as I walk this final road...

And on a dark winter's day in the Punta de Choros this is just what I found...

In a persistent but gentle rain our small dinghy pounded through Pacific surf, heading into the ocean toward Islas Damas and Choros - the waves crashing over the bow of the boat, dousing me with cold salty water. I huddled under a sheet of plastic tarpaulin to keep dry, the barrage of water from above, and from below, seeping in at every opportunity and running down the sleeves of my jacket as I held the tarpaulin above my head... as the boat heaved and crashed into the sea and my jeans clung against the skin of my legs in a cold wet embrace I felt my spirits drop... what am I doing out here in the ocean, in a tiny boat, in the middle of winter?! After a rough 40 minute journey our boat pulled into a calm bay in the Isla de Choros and, as if by some arrangement with God, the rain ceased and three seals surfaced by our boat, swimming out to sea, their bodies cresting and descending into the waves, and to the left, three swimming penguins, so small, only their heads visible above the water, but what a magical sight!

As we pulled into the cove, we looked up and laying all over the rocks were sea lions, their bodies huge with leathery wet skin, the adult males bearing huge whiskers and emitting loud calls that seemed to come from the very depths of the earth and reverberate through the cold air. Pups and mothers lounged together on the rocks, not interested at the boat of visitors, their strong and swift bodies more than capable of defence or escape. Seals joined them, smaller and lighter, with sweet, gentle faces. To see these beautiful creatures, at home in this wild clime, made all the discomfort of the journey worthwhile and how my spirits soared! Our boat continued around the bays, greeted by families of Humboldt penguins, small and rotund, nesting in the rocks to protect their eggs and chicks, small and grey and fluffy. Their little bodies waddle as they walk around, heads bobbing as if in continual greetings, but in the water what grace they possess, what speed! Rubbing on rocks in the middle of the ocean we found sea otters, cats of the sea, with beautiful long whiskers, and bodies sleek and quick. They have faces with such expressions and groom themselves, rubbing against the rough rock, like cats on carpet in the sunshine - darting into the water and catching small fish with such agility! They are nervous of humans and allow us only a few minutes to observe them before retreating to the sea where they camouflage in the brown floating sea weeds.

Pelicans grace the skies - what amazing creatures! Their beaks huge and long, capable of carrying big fish from the sea. Albatrosses with their immense white bodies and smaller sea birds with red marking who nest in the cliffs, their droppings creating coloured patterns on the dark rocks. The smell of the salt air, the animals and the wind refreshed me, blowing all the sandy dust of the desert clean away and, after a hot shower, wearing pyjamas and big wooley socks, I felt renewed and prepared for the southwards journey down Chile's narrow coast... the final piece of this journey and the first piece of my journey home...

To the extremes of the earth...

Leaving the warmth and greenery of eastern Bolivia, my trail to Chile led back to the extremes of Bolivian altitude and the mining city of Potosi, breathlessly sitting at 4,060 metres, surrounded by a dry, barren landscape dotted with bare mountains rich in minerals... the city of Potosi was historically the main centre for silver mining in Bolivia, its earth producing tonnes of the precious metal for European markets under the Spanish colonisation and consuming many millions of human lives with its arduous extraction.

The mines of Potosi are still producing hundreds of years later, albeit at a much slower rate, with 15,000 Bolivian workers entering deep underground six days a week in the search for tin, iron, silver and zinc in conditions not much improved since the 1500s. The city of Potosi exists solely for the mining industry, but its historic importance was beautifully apparent with narrow cobbled streets, Spanish tiled architecture and imposing stone churches, unfortunately much of which is now solely a facade, the city seems to be crumbling from within. The first morning I awoke in my freezing cold concrete hostel room and peeped out of the window to see sheets of snow falling from the sky and gently blanketing the courtyard... the sight was beautiful, but in a city with no heating or insulation and precarious amounts of hot water it made for painfully numb feet and I rushed out to buy a big alpaca scarf for extra warmth! Heading underground to experience the town's major mine, Cerro Rico, seemed a better idea than staying in the cold city, but as we equipped ourselves in protective clothing, boots, helmets and lamps with scarves wrapped over our mouth and nose, I began to feel pangs of fear at the conditions we were to be entering.

The entrance to the mine is a squared tunnel in the side of a mountain, stretching as far as you can see into blackness with puddles of muddy water on the ground, evoking a very medieval feeling as we hunched over and headed into the enveloping blackness... the mines are now operated by "co-operatives" which sound very equitable, but in reality the co-operative members are very few and most of the miners work as "assistants" with no legal protection, or social security, in conditions that are truly horrific. The mines are full of extremely dangerous substances, the roof of the hollowed out tunnels coated with white crystallised arsenic and cyanide and the miners wear no protective clothing or masks - the average life span of a miner is a horrifyingly short 40 years: the main cause of death? Respiratory disease caused from the toxic substances they are breathing into the delicate tissue of their lungs for eight hours every day.

Children are also working in these mines, some as young as 10 years old, they are paid 25 Bolivianos for an eight hour day (about $4) working six day weeks with no access to fresh air or sunlight. The psychological impact of this underground life must be immense; as we descended further into the mine through tiny tunnels the psychological effects greeted me; the lack of oxygen, the dust, the darkness and the tiny spaces bring an immense claustrophobia and I began to panic, feeling that I couldn't get enough oxygen into my lungs. "Calm down, breathe slowly and deeply" I told myself, trying not to let the panic overcome my logic, the fumes from the mining chemicals rising upwards toward us and the process of breathing through the cloth over my nose and mouth became even more difficult. How can these people work in these conditions, all day, every day of their artificially short lives?

The adult miners are paid 350 Bolivianos per week, apparently a very good salary for Bolivia, and above the national average. Combined with a lack of alternatives, the miners are forced to accept horrific conditions and an early death for immediate financial assistance for their families. The mine has no expert geologists or technicians, the tunnels are created by using dynamite and the same method is used in the search for mineral veins in the rock - no maps for the mine exist, and the miners use their experience to judge where is safe to create a new tunnel. Obviously this is extraordinarily dangerous and cave-ins are not uncommon; we had to sign a disclaimer before entering acknowledging our knowledge of this, and acknowledging that in the case of a cave-in we would be in as much danger as the miners... (this knowledge was not comforting as we crawled through tiny dark tunnels struggling with the heat, dust and fumes). Nearly 30 metres inside the mine my claustrophobic limit was at capacity and the panic rose in my chest as I thought of how far from the surface I was and how my lungs were struggling for oxygen. In a tunnel about 30cm high I turned to our assistant and said "por favor, quiero salir!!" - I was guided out, stumbling urgently toward the entrance in the immediacy of my brain's struggle for open spaces and air. I was not alone, nearly half our group met their mental capacity and had to be brought out and as we sat back in our bus, shaking with cold and watching the snow, I felt dumbstruck at the conditions of this place, akin to hell for me, and the knowledge that thousands of people, and children, every day enter these conditions to work for what would barely buy two cups of coffee at a tourist restaurant.

The minerals collected from the mines are transported to "refining" stations on the outskirts of the city where, through a process using numerous heavy chemicals, the minerals are separated from rock in ancient machines, rivers of waste chemicals running below in a strange orange tinted fluid, which are then dumped into the local river dubbed "Rio Negro" (black river) which then flows into larger rivers in Bolivia, and onto Brazil and Argentina. Environmental protection laws, and the enforcement of these laws, simply lack in Bolivia to prevent this abhorrent practice which will cause massive environmental contamination for hundreds of years to come. The perpetrators of these heinous environmental crimes? International companies like Rio Tinto who practice much higher standards of protection in other countries whose legislation controls their behaviour. Contemplating this makes me realise with even more clarity the necessity for international environmental legislation relating to the extraction of natural resources and the associated chemical use as this clearly shows how the impacts of contamination are an international issue and the companies involved in resource extraction simply will not regulate themselves if it will increase their profit line.

I was glad to leave the cold of Potosi, and the disturbing experience of the mines and left in high spirits bouncing over a rough dirt road for the seven hour journey to Uyuni, a tiny railway town that sits on the edge of the Salar de Uyuni, the great salt flats of Bolivia. The salt flats stretch a blindingly white 12,000 sq km distance, the salt lying seven metres deep in this millenia old lake high in the mountains linking Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. Uyuni is a dry, cold and barren town, the temperatures plummeting below 0 every night, leaving us with water pipes frozen shut in the morning and hovering over the gas stove in the hostel kitchen as our only source of warmth making bowls of porridge and cups of hot coca tea. We left Uyuni with a guide and 4WD to take us over the salt flats and through the desert to Chile, a three day journey through extreme climes and extreme landscapes - beautiful, but inhospitable, and very tough on the body as the mercury soared to 30 degrees in the day time and plunged to -20 at night with howling winds that have shape the desert rock into strange formations. We passed lagoons of beautiful colours and flocks of pink flamingos, framed with huge Dali-esqe mountains whose shadows make dark and warped patterns across the yellow sand. After three days in this environment reaching Chile felt wonderful and shortly past the border the broken, bumpy dirt path turned into a beautiful smooth tarseiled road winding its way 2,500 metres down into the Northern-Chilean desert and to hot showers, real coffee, muesli and yoghurt! I am now headed south towards Chile's famous lakes, forests, wild Pacific seas and the home of those most wonderful Chilean thinkers, Pablo Neruda and Salvador Allende...

Goodbye Bolivia, I won't forget your shocking contrasts, your wild diversity or your heartbreaking disparities.

A note on coca

"La sagrada hoja", the sacred leaf, this small green plant, the source of such controversy. The official nemeses of the United States and now even under attack from the United Nations... what enemies to have... but, the defence of this supplement is strong here in Bolivia, and increasingly in Peru, where it has been used as a health product and medicine for time immemorial. The leaf is used here mainly as a "mate" (like a herbal tea) or it is directly chewed in the mouth, comical to see men working with huge bulges of coca leaf in their cheeks, and is a wonderful medicine for the prevention of altitude sickness, for hunger and fatigue and as a nutritional supplement - coca, in its natural leaf form, has two to three times more calcium than milk, has more protein than walnuts, has large amounts of vitamin A and E, is rich in iron and potassium, helps to regulate glucose levels in the blood and can be made into a poultice for the alleviation of rheumatism and bone dislocation! A perfect product for the health supplement markets in the west, and wonderful for vegetarians, vegans, travellers and mountaineers. If only it could be viewed with a dose of perspective, and its attack from the United States could be reassessed.

The difference between coca, and cocaine, is as huge as the difference between sugar cane and vodka. The coca leaf is pressed to make a paste which is then processed using an enormous number of chemicals (including white gasoline) to produce the drug cocaine - the largest consumers of which reside in the United Kingdom and the United States and coincidentally, not in Latin America. Coca was mainly cultivated for its domestic use in the Andes for decades, the centre for cocaine production being in the equatorial climes of Colombia, until, ironically, in the 1980s young Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada began the application of US economist, Jeffrey Sachs' neoliberal shock treatments to the struggling Bolivian economy which included the privatisation of the nation's mines and the dismissal of some 45,000 mine workers and 35,000 factory workers who were forced to work through the "informal economy" to survive, mainly on coca farms, to supply the rising demand in Colombia for coca paste (which responded to the rising demand in the US for cocaine) - coca paste became the country's most profitable export in the 1980s (exceeding the total legal exports) and actually cushioned the falling economy which crashed following the application of the neoliberal economic policies.

The United States of America first declared its "war on drugs" under George H Bush, now being continued by George W Bush, with a horrifyingly myopic vision - the destruction of all coca in Latin America. This war has been fought with a very similar mentality to America's other international war, that on "terror" - with disproportionate use of violence and military might and very little analysis of the long term effects. Coca farms were systematically destroyed by US funded military attacks, including the murder of farmers defending their livelihoods, and the "alternative development" they have been offered is enough to make one laugh. The farmers are instructed to plant fruit in place of their coca crop, usually bananas, which then have no market, as the US refuses to buy them, and when the protesting farmers dump their rotting produce onto the roads to highlight the ineffectiveness of this "alternative" the military attacks them - leaving one Bolivian farmer legless after being shot for his protest.

Perhaps a better "war on drugs" is fought by firstly examining the ever escalating demand for cocaine in our societies? The $30 billion spent so far in this "war on peasant farmers" could have funded some genuine analytical research into the rising demand for hard drugs, and into drug prevention and rehabilitation programmes, in the USA and UK. For, as anyone with a basic understanding of the law of markets is aware, whenever a demand exists, a supply will always follow, especially when that demand is for a very high value product. What are we lacking in our societies that drives us to need to consume drugs in such a relentless manner? Perhaps a little meaning anyone?

Coca, the sacred leaf, is not the enemy. Coca could be a wonderful export commodity for its health properties, it could act as a high value export product for Bolivia, the poorest nation in Latin America, and at the same time benefit western consumers. If only our governments and international institutions could take a good dose of perspective. Meanwhile, I will continue to enjoy my daily cup of coca tea until I reach the border!

The sound of a purring puma...

The dry heights of the Bolivian altiplano slowly morph into an increasingly dense shade of green, the bus winds its way down a mountainside and the first sight of trees bring an indescribable joy to my heart as we enter rolling cloud forest and after a few hours more, descend into the lowlands - the mercury rising, humidity hitting your face like a warm soup, and palm trees beginning to dot the landscape... the Eastern-Bolivian jungle region... reminiscent of equatorial Africa, and home to a mind-boggling diversity of animal species, from jaguars to anacondas to sloths - an incredible wealth of biodiversity increasingly threatened by the encroachment of humanity from soy and sugar cane plantations, farm settlements, and hunting.

I find it very hard to fathom the arrogance of a person who desires a jaguar for a household pet, but they exist, and in huge numbers in Latin America. Pumas, ocelots and jaguars are hunted for the black market sale as fur, as pets, or to circuses and zoos, as are various species of monkeys and small animals who are also sold to medical laboratories for use as test animals - these small beings are sacrificed in the cruelest ways, not for the development of ground-breaking cancer or HIV treatments, but rather to test the potency of our household cleaners, cosmetics and toiletries.

I had arrived in the small village of Villa Tunari to visit the animal refuge of Inti Wara Yassi, sitting at the border of the jungle zones, and home to 1,200 animals brought here by owners who could no longer manage their jungle pet, rescued from cruel zoos, circuses or laboratories, or found abandoned. The refuge acts to rehabilitate as many animals as possible and release them back into the wild - usually a long and detailed process requiring a lot of time and resources - and acts completely without governmental support, run entirely from international donations and international volunteers, with a skeleton staff of four paid Bolivian vets and one manager. The conditions are basic and the work is carried out with a lot of creativity and compromise on a relatively small piece of land, largely owned by the local council. The local council's permission of land use comes with heavy strings attached - the refuge must be partially open to tourism, with the entrance fee charged being payable back to the local council. Very little support for the concept of wilderness exists here, and no enforced legislation for the protection of animals who are seen as another commodity with a surprisingly low monetary value (less than $20 for an ocelot?).

A care programme is designed for each animal that arrives at the refuge - some are very psychologically damaged from years of abuse and cruelty, others are malnutritioned from poor diets, or physically damaged from beatings given by human owners. On arrival, each animal is held under the supervision of the vets for 10 days to observe the behaviour, identify any psychological or physical problems and develop a plan for care, rehabilitation or enrichment. The monkeys are held in a quarantine area for a 60 day period to ensure that they carry no parasites that would infect the other animals and the refuge has very strict regulations for the prevention of spreading disease. As I walked around with onsite vet, Luis, taxi to a small spider monkey who had clambered onto my shoulders for a ride, he explained to me the slow and careful process of animal rehabilitation - beginning from rescue or delivery and, hopefully, ending with the careful release into wilderness (one of the country's national parks, or jungle area controlled by the organisation).

Three species of monkey live at the refuge - the small, shy and colourful Squirrel Monkey; the large, curious, and very "human" Spider Monkey and the rambunctious little Capuchin. Most of the monkeys were taken young from their mother and kept solitary for their confined lives (very unnatural for these social group-orientated beings), fed "human" food and, often, subject to horrible abuses. The rehabilitation process is begun from their period in quarantine where they are introduced to natural foods, to the jungle on daily walks and to contact with other monkeys. For some, this is a very frightening process and they cling to their human carers in terror - they are kept on leashes and the contact with the monkey groups is slowly increased until the monkey is accepted into, and accepts, the monkey group. The monkeys live together and are monitored until a natural group forms, with an alpha male and female, and the group is then weaned from human contact through a series of increasingly remote jungle areas, the last being restricted of all human sound and very minimal human exposure, until the correct governmental permissions are obtained for their release into the wild. Some monkeys have such severe psychological damage from human abuses that their behaviour is a danger to the other monkeys and these are kept in the quarantine area under a programme of enrichment where they are fed, walked and cared for by the volunteers and they can never be released, or even live free in the refuge's forests. This realisation, the severity of human induced harm to these small beings whose mannerisms and expressions are so wonderfully similar to our own was particularly painful for me - it is akin to abusing a child.

Sadly, the refuge's jaguars, ocelots and pumas are permanent residents - the method used for hunting them is to kill the parent and take the cubs - they therefore learn no hunting skills and would die in the wild. The cats are on a programme of "enrichment" where their lives are made as comfortable and "wild" as possible - they are walked for eight hours a day by two volunteers through the jungle on paths that are diversified as much as the small land space allows, they are kept solitary and on solitary paths and are fed fresh and raw meat, similar to their natural diet. The volunteers who work with the cats are generally long term volunteers, the human contact with the cats is kept to a minimum, and their night time cages are filled with bamboo, tree branches and items from the jungle for the cats to live in an environment as suitable to their nature as possible. With the assistance of a large donation from the English organisation, Quest, a second plot of land has been purchased in a more remote area of jungle near to Santa Cruz and Inti Wara Yassi plans to move all 27 cats to this new home in the next few years.

Birds and small animals have a much better chance of rehabilitation and release; unlike cats and monkeys they do not build as dependant relationships on humans and the rehabilitation time is only limited to their physicality, most of whom arrive at the refuge very malnutritioned. Bolivian jungles are home to the world's most beautiful species of birds - huge red, green and blue parrots and paraquets, toucans and macaws, and many others - they are usually hunted for sale as house pets, their wings are clipped, sometimes the bone is also cut, and they require nourishment and time to regrow, sometimes also requiring to be taught how to fly again. Birds caught from jungles are treated like cargo, transported in boxes without air, water or food - usually 80-100 birds per box, and 80 - 90% die during transport. This represents 20 birds killed for every bird bought on the market. Some birds have psychological problems meaning that they can't form groups and are cared for at the refuge, others cannot regrow their broken bones and are also cared for permanently here, under the enrichment programme. I was introduced to a pair of two beautiful red parrots, a couple, who remain at the refuge permanently because while the male partner can fly and, technically, is able to be released, his female partner is unable to fly and therefore he stays at the refuge with her - calling her loudly every time they are separated, even as they are just being brought out of their aviary for their daily walk along the tree branches. Perhaps the most beautiful love story?

The refuge was a heartwarming example of dedication to wilderness and to the rights of animals. It was also an example of the limitations of a country like Bolivia which lacks the resources, will, and interest in preserving wilderness. The rehabilitation process could be much improved if only the refuge had increased resources and its own plot of land where it could carry out its programmes without the impositions of the local council's desire for tourist dollars. Perhaps we need to reevaluate our own economic value system? It is only when we recognise the inherent value of wilderness, for wildernesses sake, and the value of biodiversity, that the monetary worth of an animal is higher in its natural jungle home than as decoration for the homes of the wealthy, or as entertainment in our zoos and circuses. The largest goal of Inti Wara Yassi is to no longer need to exist - through the education of Bolivians about the necessity of preserving wilderness and the place of animals in that. A goal that the world should also aspire to.