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Two weeks flew by...

There was mucho trabajo aboard Pura Vida while she lay up at Costa Baja...

While I was waiting for the bus into to town, setting off on my first solo adventure- investigating the mercados- I was fortunate enough to hitch a ride with Captain Dan from Solance-a mega yacht at the dock here. Captain Dan was retired Navy, then he ran a lobster boat off of Newport R.I.( my hometown) before moving on to running pleasure boats in warmer climates. He's been in La Paz for about twenty years, spoke excellent Spanish and was a perfect guide to my first foray into town-he chauffered me around to the good stores and when I told him what we needed done on the boat, he introduced me to the best canvass guy in La Paz. Our job was relatively small and we sure didn't have the money that the big yachts spend on their stuff but because of Captain Dan's introduction, we managed to get the best guy in town for a good price and he made us some new shade covers, bug screens and dingy chaps. We also had the stainless work done at the same time and the guy who did that was excellent too- He was the foreman in charge of building the famous "bean" in Millenium Park in Chicago! This was especially cool for us, because when we were in Chicago a few years ago (Jon was shooting a pilot there) the kids and I had a great time taking goofy pictures under the sculpture. Small world.

We had a rental car for a few days, so mom and I and Hunter drove around filling grocery lists and restocking, while Kai and Jon worked on the boat, changing oil and doing engine tune-ups on Perkie and the outboard and installing two new solar panels. It was a busy week but everything got accomplished.

One day, while Jon and I were driving around looking for some impossible to find engine part, we got lost and ended up in a decidedly "gringo-free" section of La Paz. The roads aren't paved as soon as you're off the main drag and the vibe is 100% authentic Mexican; skinny dogs sleep in the middle of the street and barefoot children wander between crumbling cinderblock houses painted in vibrant colors and overgrown with glorious sprays of bougainvillea. I was self-concious as we drove through the rundown streets in our hideous shiny blue rental car, ipad in my lap, following a GPS, that doesn't work in Mexico anyway, looking for an address that doesn't exist- and of course there are no street names or house numbers. I started tweeking a little, getting nervous and Jon was shaking his head, reminding me that these are just people, living their lives here and as I looked out the window at smiling women carrying their laughing babies and dudes cleaning their tools or working on a broken-down truck, I realized how cut off we are from what most of the world is really like. At that moment we came over a hill and below us you could see that this neighborhood encircled  another, smaller, walled neighborhood. About 1000 tiny shacks were crammed together behind a white-washed wall, there were no roads in there. The houses were all brightly painted and it looked very clean from where we were. We have seen photos of the favalas in Brazil or India and this looked just like that- we figured this must be a slum. I would have loved to take a photo of it because with all the colors and the backdrop of the red dusty hills, it was actually really beautiful but of course I was too embarrassed to hold up my riduculously expensive ipad (my camera was just stolen) and snap a photo. I felt, at the time, like this would be rude and exploitative. I was the same way in Tibet, with the people there. I never wanted to take pictures of the pilgrims because they live always under the scrutiny of the oppressive Chinese government. 

I wanted to seperate myself from those that take advantage of them. 

This is impossible though, really. 

Despite the fact that I wear my white, western, raging-arm-chair-liberal beliefs on my sleeve, I am still guilty. I tour these countries to see the landscapes and the lives of the people who live in them and I want to do it with respect but I  do it while staying in my hotel with the clean bathroom or my fancy boat in the harbor, I am in effect, not much better than the oppressor.  I feel compassion for the situation but I will never be anything more than a tourist. This is the conflict I feel as I hold my camera, wishing I could record what I am seeing but the awareness of what I am and what I have prevents me from taking the picture. Just six blocks away from the beach club of Costa baja-you are forced to confront the bigger reality and your place in it.

The next day, Jon was talking to someone, asking them about the area we had seen in that neighborhood. We wanted to know what people call that part of the city. The local word for "favala". 

"what do you call that, here?"we asked.

The person was confused. 

Maybe it was the translation. "You know..." we tried to find the words in Spanish.

"the place where all the houses are next to each other, the place behind the wall?"

The person nodded and shrugged his shoulders.

"is just La Paz" he said.

Pulpo gathering-they ran away when we tried to take their picture.