Carnaval en Sucre

Today marks a whole week I've been in Sucre and it's been AWESOME. This weekend is Carnaval and all the people take to the streets with water guns and water balloons to soak each other. I am currently sitting soaking wet at the only open internet cafe in Sucre.

Sucre is a beautiful city, I had an excellent chance to see it from outside today as I went this morning with Coco (my spanish teacher) to learn to ride a motorbike with gears. He is a motorcross competitor when he isn't teaching and allowed me to practice on his bike. I am going to rent/borrow one on Monday and go with him for a tour all around the outside of the city.

I have been staying with a host family, Enrique is the owner of the house, his son, daughter, maid and her two daughters live there as well. They are INCREDIBLY hospitable people, Enrique speaks very clear and comprehensible spanish, and is always willing to help me with whatever I need including driving me to a guitar lesson last week (also in spanish). I took my guitar to a church jam session on Monday and felt humbled in front of all the other guitarists who were much better than me, I have been practicing just as much as ever though and I can see very slow but steady progress which is very encouraging. My command of the language is getting better every day as well and I intend to stay in Sucre at least another two weeks to take advantage of this excellent learning environment.

Conversational fluency is a nebulous goal. To fully master Spanish such that I could speak it as well as English would probably take a good few thousand hours of practice and multiple years in a Spanish speaking country, reading Spanish literature. However, to learn it well enough to have a conversation with someone is much easier. Thursday marked a milestone for me, I met a Bolivian girl out and about in the city and brought her back to my house, the first time I've picked up speaking only Spanish. Now of course it is possible to pick up without saying much at all IF you are a pickup god but this is a pretty good accomplishment for me and an excellent incentive for me to continue learning the language. I don't think it marks practical conversational fluency just yet but I can't be far off.

I met a very interesting fellow student from my spanish school the other day. He is a 38 year old American physics graduate who wants to set up a luxury resort in a snall Peruvian town. I spent about three hours in a bar with him discussing his beliefs and how he thinks he has achieved some of the best moments in his life. In the spirit of my recent venture into practical philosophy as an operating system for life, I tried to apply some of his beliefs into my existing framework. This has resulted in an interesting theory that I want to apply to my life and see if I can't use it to get some results:

I made some notes in my notebook after I spoke with him, they are roughly as follows:

A human is:
The universe come alive
An eddy current in the universal flow of entropy
An atom's way of looking at itself
The universe's attempt to save itself from entropy death
A tool for making thought real
A knot in time - the body in the past, emotions in the present and thought in the future
A meta-consciousness having a human experience


After I graduated in physics I thought I understood the world. This was so far from the truth as to be laughable. Truth is not physics, it is not black and white, it is what you apply to get results, nothing more and nothing less.

The world you experience is a reflected reality. It is NOT an absolute. What you experience is defined by a complex mixture of your sensory input, your beliefs about who you are, your beliefs about other people and your current emotional state. Your brain likes to maintain a congruent reality at all costs, such that if there is something that does not fit into your reality your brain will do whatever it can to make that reality congruent again, either by ignoring input or trying to output action to change the input into something closer to the ideal.

The upshot of this is that if you want to have something in your life, whatever it is, start acting as if you already have it. In fact, start believing that you already have it right now even (especially) if it doesn't seem to be true within your current reality framework (note the emphasis on current).

If you to continue to operate with the belief that you don't have this thing that you want, and it is hard to obtain, your brain will constantly look for references to support this in order to maintain a congruent reality.  I theorise that if you flick the switch and start believing that what you want is everywhere, easy to obtain, and you could always just take it if you wanted, your brain will start subconsciously leaning in a direction that takes you closer and closer to this new reality in many tiny ways.

Over time your mindset will adjust such that the reality is congruent again and you really do have whatever it is that you wanted. Although this approach could take years to really work especially with big things, I am certain it will work better than focussing on what you DON'T have, which will only entrench you further into your current reality.

One thing I have learned through learning guitar and continuously putting myself in unknown and unpredictable situations is that your brain is far more powerful than you think it is and you should trust it more.

Sucre, spanish classes and Buddhist philosophy

Samiapata was beautiful. Picture a sleepy mountain village surrounded by secluded waterfalls and you're halfway there. I stayed in a hippie camp for a few days and had a very relaxed time playing guitar and trying to climb waterfalls (it is on my bucket list to climb a waterfall and I STILL haven't done it! They were all too high and slippery. I almost managed one but the trees were too thick at the top). From Samaipata I took an overnight bus to Sucre, totally unprepared for the bone-smashing 14 hour marathon I was in for.

There is no real route from Santa Cruz to Sucre. Some Bolivian has driven a bulldozer through the jungle and the government labelled the subsequent swathe of destruction a "road". In wet season half of it is flooded, at one point we drove up what I can only describe as a river for an hour. The bus was full of diesel fumes, a screaming baby, people sleeping in the aisles and the seat behind me had at least five kids in it who would take it in turns to kick my chair despite repeated "no empuje mi silla, en serio"s. To top it all off I had food poisoning so I was hanging my head out of the window most of the night trying not to vomit and simultaneously not to projectile shit all over the seat. The constant shaking and jarring did nothing to help the situation.

Anyway I got here alive this morning and am now feeling much better after a sleep and a salad and several immodiums. I spoke to a Dutch girl in a bar here who pointed me at Fenix spanish school. They are a non-profit with a focus on giving back to the local Bolivian community, plus they organise charity work and home-stays so it looks like a good option. I am going to go take a look tomorrow and perhaps stay here for a month to really get my Spanish up to par. Seven weeks of speaking mostly English in the park has put my Spanish learning backwards a bit, with one-on-one lessons and daily study on top of total immersion I think I can finally approach conversational fluency by the end of the month. Looking forward to staying with a Bolivian family as well, seems like a great way to really learn something about the culture rather than just pass through as another tourist.

I have become more and more interested in Eastern philosophy recently, particularly the Buddhist concepts of "right thinking" and Dukkha. I believe that we should pick our beliefs carefully and choose ones that have the most positive impact on our life. It would be foolish and naiive (not to mention lazy) to take all of the beliefs from ONE religion or philosophy and just live by those while ignoring others. But I do think there are some truths in Buddhist thinking that can benefit all of us.

Firstly and most importantly is the truth that:
Life is Dukkha

Now wikipedia defines Dukkha as Pali; meaning "suffering", "anxiety", "stress", "unsatisfactoriness". Buddhism states that life contains a lot of this, it's a fact and the first step to enlightenment is acknowledging it. We must be very careful with translations here because different words carry different connotations and what the original Buddha said can be easily twisted.

I take from this that Dukkha is similar to pain, and freedom from Dukkha comes with a total detachment from the outcome of our actions. It is essentially, the gap between what you want and what you have. Everyone will experience emotional pain in their lives, it is unavoidable. Some people try to escape it with heavy drinking and drugs. Some try by burying themselves in work. Some just get very lazy and are still unhappy without really realising why. Some travel the world looking for answers. Putting aside for a moment my arrogance in imposing my own interpretation on this belief in this way, what can we take from this?

Everyone is in pain a lot of the time. But once we acknowledge that everyone suffers, we respond to other humans with far more compassion and humanity. And I think escape from Dukkha lies down this path, along with realising that while we will always have Dukkha, if we live in the right way we can learn to CHOOSE whether we suffer from it or simply acknowledge it as part of life. The "right way" is outlined in something called the eight-fold path of Buddhism and includes concepts such as compassion, integrity and a high degree of control over your own thoughts. It is somewhat cryptic but I think there is some value in it.

Eliminating distractions, choosing what to focus on, these are the things that will take us forward in life. I truly believe that we can accomplish whatever we can imagine if we would just truly put our minds to it and take consistent, massive action in this direction. Pursuit of perfection in this manner demands an extremely high degree of self-discipline, as the Buddha said:

"As the Fletcher whittles and makes straight his arrows, so the master directs his straying thoughts."

But sitting around thinking these thoughts will not give you any gain. We must LIVE these thoughts and that means applying them through our actions. Only through application of beliefs and study of the resulting reality can we hope to learn anything.

If this whole diatribe seems somewhat confused, that's because I am very confused about it myself. But I do know that my opinions are changing. I look back on my view of the villagers who I gave shoes to and realise that my interpretation of this event has changed. These people are not to be scorned simply because their STRATEGY towards escaping suffering is different from mine. They are merely a product of their environment and it is a more enlightening approach to understand that they suffer pain and desire escape from it in the same way as you or I. By viewing other people with this compassionate eye, our approach becomes clearer.

This is just my sketchy and poor interpretation of these ideas. I encourage anyone who is interested to research these concepts more thoroughly and experiment with APPLYING them to their lives, remember there can be no learning without APPLICATION.

Seven weeks in the jungle

I was in a turmoil of mixed emotions as I stepped off the bus into Santa Cruz at 5am this morning.

On the one hand, these past seven weeks of continuous rain, apocalyptic mosquito swarms, choking oppressive humidity, rat infestations, mouldy clothes and  long days spent tramping through porridge-like jungle mud up to my knees in water have left me completely shattered, and I'm glad to be back in the mosquito-free bliss of relative civilisation again. On the other hand, the sense of community and solidarity fostered by these hellish conditions is something unlike anything else I have ever encountered and I am very sad to be leaving.

It is very difficult to describe what the park really is. Ostensibly it is a wildlife reserve, with the purpose of housing rejected and abused animals, principally big cats. However, in my mind it is so much more than that. It exists for me as a complex and colourful whirlwind of rain, running through the green jungle slapping past patuhu leaves, a powerful puma on the end of a rope, laughing faces lit by candlelight. It is waking up and taking a cold shower before pulling on damp smelly clothes, it is climbing vines in the jungle, it is a jumble of screeches and squawks from the jungle around. It is reading damp books on eastern philosophy as the roof drips and the rats run riot, it is losing rock-paper-scissors over dinner and having to wash all the dishes and climbing a hill in the hot sun, sweat dripping from my nose. It is sitting at the peak of a radio tower, basking in the cool breeze with people who are truly alive. I consider my time spent there as one of the most formative and incredible experiences of my life.

I was extremely privileged to be able to work with both quarantine animals and two big cats during my time at the park. For the first two weeks I helped out in qurantine with a tapir, squirrel monkeys, assorted birds, an otter called Beatrix (Beatrix Otter, geddit?) and a tejone. After that I was moved onto Tupac and Ru, a puma and jagur respectively. Tupac is featured in the photo heading this post.

Most mornings I would wake up at 6:30, take a cold shower, get dressed and head down to quarantine to feed Tony, a baby tapir. Then I'd head back up and squeeze in a bit of guitar practice before a breakfast of two eggs and dry bread. Then followed a trek to Tupac's cage, with my partner Andy we would clip on the two ropes and throw open the door, immediately without time to think we'd be racing down a jungle path, half running, half dragged by an energetic puma. A few hours of that, then back for lunch of rice and vegetables. Squeeze in some guitar after lunch then a half hour stroll to Ru's cage where Leigh and I would let him out on his runner to swim in the river. Perhaps get some digging done for his new runner system while he was out, then feed him and get back to camp for dinner, after which I'd get a bit more guitar in and chill out before bed at around 9:30.

I managed to get in about three hours of practice every day and it's started to pay off. Had a couple of INCREDIBLY fun jam sessions with other guitarists in the camp. The best one of these was just a few days ago. When I play with other musicians I feel... godlike. I can feel a tidal force of music building up and trying to explode through my fingers and out of the guitar, if only my clumsy fingers would just get more nimble and accurate! Practice of course is the only way this can happen. Every jam session fuels the fire and commits me even more fiercely to mastering this instrument.

Being away from internet, electricity and all the other distractions of life has had  wonderfully focussing effect on my mind. What's most important to me in life right now is to conquer my fears and keep progressing with my guitar playing. Turns out that walking with a potentially lethal giant cat every day turns down the volume on everything else that might scare you. A few weeks ago I climbed a radio tower with some friends at the camp. We trekked about an hour through the jungle up a hill to get there and then had to ascend 90m of vertical ladder to reach the top. I am not going to lie, I was very scared and almost bottled out. But I did it. Every single rung on the way up was a test of mental strength, I knew that all that stood between me and a bloody mess on the ground was hanging onto those rungs and just focussing on the next, and the next, and the next, and not looking down. When I arrived at the top I was shaking and pale.

The top of the tower blew my mind. It was an island of peaceful tranquility in the centre of endless jungle heat and damp. Everywhere I looked I saw an explosion of green bursting out towards the horizon. We basked in its peaceful serenity for hours, watching rain showers move around over the jungle below us. We only descended when rain threatened to drench us, but then something incredible happened. On the way down, I realised something - my fear of heights was... gone. Honestly, I literally had no fear of it any more. Hanging from a rung by one hand I looked down to see a certainly fatal drop below me and felt nothing beyond mild excitement. The next day I climbed a 15m jungle vine just to prove that I could, something I'd never have dared to do before. Nothing, no twist in the gut, no ball-dropping fear of heights like I was used to. Just fun and hard climbing work.

Turns out facing your fears destroys them. Who'da thunk? Once you've handled a terrified puma leaping for your face in a torrential downpour and been saved only by the quick thinking of your rope partner, then had to coax the majestic kitty back to his cage through two feet of water and mud... well there can't be all that much that phases you after that.

I could tell ten more stories like this and about the incredible people I have met and worked with but I think this post is long enough already. For now anyway I think chilling in Santa Cruz for a few days, swimming a little and recuperating is a fine idea. A fellow musician from the park, Stijn, will be joining me on Monday and we will probably explore the Bolivian salt flats together. I look forward to exploring new horizons and strumming guitar while he coaxes sweet tones from his Ukele.

I have started a spreadsheet to log practice time. This will hold me accountable, both to myself and to everyone else. It is viewable here.

Until the next adventure!