First Impressions
Where on earth do I start;
located four hours from Sucre by bus, I feel that my complete appreciation for Sucre only became fully
apparent after visiting something smaller and more rustic to put my perspectives in check. This is
not to say that there is a void of beauty and unique characteristics to Padilla
(it truly is a marvel on its own), this is simply stating that: the size
and level of development within any city must be held in complete relative terms;
the discomforts and unfamiliarity experienced in one place are always subject to subconscious comparison alongside another place that you either have or have not been to. Although a fairly brief visit, my experience of Padilla was an enriching one,
one that taught me many things: things not only about the rural areas and
municipalities that I am working with, but also about myself, and how
comfort-zones can be broken and reformed within relatively short time lapses.
My journey began at seemingly random bus station in Sucre
(not the main bus terminal). Small micro-bus companies are scattered around the
neighborhood and basically each have their own small 'office' where people come
and wait for the bus to arrive.
We left on time and the bus itself was not as full as I was
expecting it to be, I was lucky and had legroom. the road out of Sucre set the tone for the
following four hours, winding mountain highways, rising up above the
valleys, and then dipping down into the very same valleys with shadows
of the looming mountains overhead. Something I noticed almost immediately was
the constant glimpses I was catching of old train tracks along the way. They
were often half buried or overgrown with soil and plant life, yet still
remaining quite visible throughout the first half of the journey. (I was later told
by fellow passenger on my trip back to Sucre that the tracks were abandoned
approximately 20 years ago, when the government either ran dry of funding, or
simply lost interest on the project; a phenomenon that seems quite prevalent in
the country).
Upon my arrival I was greeted by my friend and co-worker,
Nicholas, and he proceeded to show me around the town, greeting and introducing me to every single
person we passed as if he had become friends with all of the supposed 2,000
inhabitants. Now I have read somewhere that there are 2,000 (approx.) within
the built-up area of Padilla, though for myself this was hard to believe. It is
always interesting to see how our minds perceive places and sizes, and my mind
perceived Padilla to be very small (although in comparison to other surrounding
towns, it is actually quite large). We passed by the houses of his friends,
other co-workers, and other acquaintances from who knows where, all greeting
him as the sole white person in town (this may not be entirely true, as there
is rumour of another white person in the midst of Padilla, a German woman;
however, I did not encounter her during my two days there, so I will wait to
hear back from Nicholas to see if she surfaces).
One particular co-worker of Nicholas that we encountered
was the official driver for the Municipality of Padilla, one who drives the
Mayor around and is in charge of moving the 'officials' to and from the town. It
was 6 pm on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and we approached him from the opposite
side of the vehicle he was attempting to enter, attempting to surprise him.
Nicholas sneaked up behind the SUV and began to rock the vehicle back and forth, to
evoke a reaction out of him. After a good 5-10 seconds of doing so (and
rocking the vehicle quite hard), we came around to see that he was extremely
inebriated, so much that he was unable to open the door to the SUV or notice the entire vehicle rocking back and forth (very noticeable for
a sober person). Once we presented ourselves in plain sight, we attempted to chat with him for a while with the attempt proving quite futile, as there was barely any coherent words escaping his mouth in this moment. We continued to explore a bit more of the town before grabbing some
dinner and heading back to Nicholas' house for the rest of the night.
-As substance abuse is seen all over the world, it was sad
to see someone in this state on a Sunday afternoon. And although not quite to
this extreme, Nicholas says that it is very common to find people in a similar
state, on all days of the week. It begs to ask the question as to why this
culture has become so engrained in Bolivia (along with other countries); is it
a sign of sheer boredom, lack of motivation stemming from little opportunity?
It could come from many things and this is as significant a problem as any when
it comes to development work -
As many bloggers may do, at some point or another
there needs to be some commentary on the cuisine or unique food experiences had. In the
case of Padilla, there is a very basic set lunch menu that will put you back
under two dollars for: a soup (broth, grains, a few vegetables, and either a
bone or some meat), along with a main plate consisting of some type of meat
with a mountain of rice and baked potatoes. As this comes at a good price and
gives the people the energy they need, there is definitely a lacking of
variation and nutritional value in terms of vitamins. My culinary highlight of
my stay when I was strolling over to one of the few stands in front of a someone's house, displaying a few assorted baked goods. I selected a small
slice of cake and an alfajore(tasty dulce de leche-filled cookie), both at one Boliviano each. (7 Bs to 1 USD). I
asked the lady what flavor the cake was, as it embodied a slight tinge of the colour orange. She responded: "Fanta"... The cake was Fanta cake, I suppose
this means they pour some refined carbonated soda product into a cake mix and
voila! Fanta cake.
Tourism Promotion for Padilla
The town of Padilla has some marvelous sights that are fairly nearby. The purpose of my visit was to meet with Nicholas and a few
other team members in Padilla to select which attractions we would choose to
promote and further develop, in an attempt to attract more external tourism dollars into
Padilla. There is already a very popular Carnaval event that happens once a
year, yet this is short-lived, and there needs to be a stronger promotion of
year-round activities for tourists. From a morning meeting with our new project
team, we arrived at the following two promotional themes: History (Incan ruins
and the nearby "El Corte"), and Nature (flora and fauna). Our first
field visit came the following morning and left me in awe of the beauty that
lied at mere 5 km from Padilla.
El Corte
We took a couple motorbikes for the 4 km dirt road that lead
to a barbed-wire fence. Here we parked the bikes and began our final one km walk in.
The trail descended past eroded mounds of dried out soils, leading down into troughs where
flash floods had passed. We entered a short segment of the trail that was tree
covered, and then almost immediately reappeared on the other side of the trees to serene
beauty that I had no idea existed so close to the town.
It is said that hundreds of years back, the valley in which
Padilla lies used to be a gigantic lagoon filled with water. The settlers of
the time (colonizers from Spain was my interpretation), decided to drain the
area to created highly fertile 'pampas' that would yield healthy and
plentiful crops. In order to do this they needed to carve out an area of rock
to allow the water to drain out of the lagoon. This is why they call this spot
"el corte" (literally, "the cut"). The ecosystem thriving
within el corte was just as beautiful as the location itself. In our short one
hour visit we spotted a baby coral snake, a beautiful little frog, and were told
that pumas roamed the areas as well, but were lucky to not see any that
morning...
Although the town of Padilla may have never came to be if
the rock had never been cut and the lagoon drained, there is a constant lack of
water now, with the rainy season the only time of year when one can somewhat
rely on running water in the town. In addition to this, the town experiences
frequent electricity cuts, with people losing power within their homes. As the
climate is host to neither extreme heat nor extreme cold, the electricity cuts
mostly affect people's refrigerators, along with the restaurants
need to keep their meat products from going bad as most everyone eats lunch at these local spots. As Nicholas mentioned to me
many times, there has been way too much of the town's money placed into
grandiose construction projects, when there has been a major lack of attention
on the basic needs: water, power, etc. Some food for thought. (but make sure that the meat in the food has been properly refrigerated, and the vegetables washed with clean water...)
Please leave comments and share any thoughts of
Padilla, I'm sure Nicholas (and I) will appreciate :)
Today there are several tours offered that take you inside the mines and teach you about the history and the refining process of silver. Our tour guide was quite the show, and he had a lot of enthusiasm to keep us on our toes as well. In addition to poking constant jokes and keeping us engaged the entire four hours of the tour, he went as far as passing real sticks of dynamite around for us to fondle, explaining how fuses and nitroglycerin work. He then lodged a dynamite stick in the German girls' shirt, holding the match to the fuse to show that it will only ignite in certain spots.... Aha!, I love tours in Bolivia - there's a reason why the souvenir shirt always reads: "I survived ____in ____, Bolivia"
