Lauren's Bolivian Adventures: To Tocoli!

I woke up at 4:30 to leave the hotel in La Paz. We had to leave extra early because two journalists were killed in El Alto, which would somehow lead to more traffic (?). (Update: They found one of the people who killed the journalists. I read about it in the newspaper on Thursday March 8.)

After being on the bus for an undetermined amount of time (I was snoozing), we stopped on top of a mountain. We met Calixto, who organized our stay with the villagers of Tocoli. Calixto talked to us for a bit about the ethnotourism they hope to have. The village is dying out because people have to move to the city to survive. They are hoping to have cultural exchanges, where tourists can come learn about their culture, without having a huge hotel or anything really commercialized. Calixto told us that when they first started doing the exchanges (I think about 3 years ago) all the people were worried they would have to buy French fries and Coke to please the tourists. They felt like their food wasn’t good enough. Even on a mountain in Bolivia, there are still ideas of modern/traditional and white/mestizo/indigenous, and ideas about which have more value. Then Calixto went to help the villagers get ready for a ceremony. Our group hiked around on the mountain, which was beautiful, and saw some llamas and a dog!

We crossed the road for the ceremony. Our group stood in a line, and all the people of Tocoli shook our hands (first the men and then the women). Then they stood in a line and we greeted them each individually. Then they tied awayus with flowers on our backs, and we all joined hands and DANCED! Most of the men played flutes or drums, but some of the men and all the women danced with us. After the dancing we took some pictures with the villagers. Then we danced some more, all the way down the road. It was actually really hard to breathe with the altitude. The whole ceremony was called Rito de Acogida.

Then we hiked down the mountain toward Lake Titicaca. I took a shortcut with some of the villagers, which still took a longggg time. (Everyone else walked along the road, which zig-zagged down the mountain.) We had an Apthapi (op-TOP-ee) near the elementary school. An Apthapi is when food (mostly potatoes, but also little bitty fish from the lake) is spread out on blankets in a long line, and the whole community shares it. We also ate some yummy soup!

After lunch I got to go out on the lake in a rowboat. Then my friend Sophie and I talked to two boys from the village, Valdo and Gabriel. They were 14 and 12 years old, and went to the middle school an hour’s walk from the village. There are almost 20 kids in their class (or school, not sure), and the school in Tocoli has 8 kids. They told us about the community, and said that a lot of people leave to find work in La Paz. They told us they knew how to play the traditional instruments, and that most of the boys learn (not girls though). Then we had a flower fight and threw purple petals at each other.

Finally, we met our families. My friend Eliana and I were together, with an older man and woman. They didn’t speak a lot of Spanish, mostly Aymara. I was feeling pretty woozy at this point, but our house was up the mountain….so maybe 20 minutes later we arrived. Eliana and I had our own room, and our host mom told us to rest there. Later she brought us some potato and rice soup, and we were in bed by 8:30.