20151213 Ice Cream Sundae #11 The Legend of Princess Anahí

Hi ,It was a pretty good week on the Ice Cream front, I’m getting a regular rhythm going on. I wrote about my experience of the Dragonmeet tabletop gaming convention I attended in London last week. I’ve also just published a new episode of the podcast, an interview with my friend Hugh Garry, who has great stories to tell from his travels, his time working for BBC Radio 1 and the work he does now at Storythings. New episodes of the podcast will be published every ten days or so, on the 10th, 20th and 30th of every month.  I’m back in the South of France now and I expect to be here until the end of the year. There are a few ideas tying this newsletter together, starting with my little niece. She turned six years old yesterday. My brother Morgan and his partner Virginie lived in Eastern Bolivia at the time, in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Of course that year I took advantage of this as an opportunity to negotiate some extra time off work around Christmas time, visit South America, meet my newborn niece and celebrate Christmas in the tropics for the first time ever. I also saw this video about how cocaine is made being shared around this week, and I’m connecting it because they say that the first ingredient the recipe calls for is chopping off a few acres of rainforest. I’ll get to that shortly. About six years ago to this day I’d travelled from Peru (I’ll keep that story for another time) and just crossed into Bolivia by the shores of Lake Titicaca. I stopped at the popular village of Copacabana, famous for Our Lady of Copacabana, patron saint of Bolivia. This particular Virgin Mary blesses motor vehicles too. It’s a pretty serious affair over there. The basilica itself is impressive, and even more so are the processions of Bolivians and Peruvians come from all around for priests to bless their new vehicles. The village is close to 4,000 metres high (over 12,000 feet for the metrically challenged). Let’s just say I’d have to pause and catch my breath a few times just to walk up a small slope, like the one leading to the lovely hotel I stayed at. The lush green garden was higher up, looked over the village’s bay, colourful fishing boats, sparkling deep blue waters of the lake, and the mountain caps in the distance. I had a grilled trout for lunch as is traditional around those parts, and then lounged in a hammock with a book, enjoying the view. The following day I went to visit the nearby Isla del Sol, a sacred island to the Incas. On the boat over I happened to cross paths with a couple of German guys I’d met in Peru just a few days before. While walking around the island with a few other people we met, I said I only had a few days to explore one more destination before going to meet my newborn niece. I’d planned to spend Christmas with them, and that I wasn’t sure what to do yet. I really wanted to visit the salt flats of Uyuni but I’d read that it would take 24 hours on a bus to get there from La Paz, a few days to visit and another 24 hours back: altogether a few more days than I had left before Christmas. They were looking at going to an Eco lodge in the rainforest North of La Paz. The Mapajo Ecolodge is in the Pilón Lajas Biosphere Reserve, a region of the upper Amazon basin known as one of the planet’s most biologically diverse and largest protected areas in the world. It was really what I had in mind as “the real jungleâ€. The idea was confirmed when we landed on a tiny grassy airfield in Rurrenabaque. That was followed by about three hours on a long boat up the Beni river first and then to the Quiquibey river. An indigenous community had built the lodge; I liked the idea of the cost of our stay going directly back to them. The simple and beautiful thatched huts were built on a cliff overlooking the river. It was technically already the beginning of the rainy season; we were the only guests there. After resting for a short while on hammocks, we went for a walk in the nearby forest with our guide. It’s the first time I walked in primary tropical rainforest, a term used to refer to pristine, mostly untouched, forest in its original condition. It’s humbling. Visibility beyond the tiny path was maybe three to five metres at best. Everything in sight is a patchwork of vivid greens, with a few touches of brown. I could hear all sorts of wildlife but see none beyond a few insects our guide told us to be wary of. I had the distinct feeling I would immediately get lost if I strayed from the path. I wasn’t sure I’d survive more than a night or two on my own. Everything I looked at had danger written all over it. Our guide warned us against the many dangerous insects and poisonous flora around us, and showed us the edible or medicinal plants they use as well. Spending time with this indigenous community was an amazing experience, and getting back to the starting point that’s the kind of rainforest and communities being destroyed to make cocaine – and fracking for oil and gas as well of course. We met families in the village and learned how to thatch roof sections with banana leaves in another nearby community. They showed us their future expansion projects; they were building an elevated wooden pathway in a part of the jungle known for being a parrot and toucan hangout. I got bitten all over my forearms by tiny mosquitoes in a swampy pond supposedly full of piranhas. Unfortunately it started heavily raining a couple of days later, given the river level was rising quickly I worried about being able to catch a plane and be at my brother’s in time for Christmas, so I cut my stay short and left. The airfield was already a giant puddle, no flights for the foreseeable future. I opted for a night bus instead, climbing back up the Yungas via the Death Road, so famous it’s become a major tourist attraction to cycle down. The bus goes from close to sea level up to 4,500 metres in altitude (12,000+ ft) and then back down to the Altiplano to La Paz. It was a pretty uncomfortable 12  hour-long bus ride. I managed to just catch my flight to Santa Cruz on time so it worked out well in the end. Santa Cruz is Bolivia’s most populated city and its economic centre. My brother and his wife were teachers in the local French school. They had a nice house and garden with a built-in brick BBQ setup. Barbeque is a way of life over there, cooking large chunks of beef on charcoal is a national sport when they’re not playing football (soccer). My little niece had been born for a week or so when I arrived, she was just a tiny little thing. They named her Anahí. Have you ever heard of Bolivianite? It’s a rare variety of quartz, mixing the qualities of amethyst and citrine, so the gems naturally blend purple with golden yellow colours. Conditions necessary to create these gems are special, requiring a gradient of differing temperatures along one crystal, leading to different stages of oxidation, in turn giving the crystal different colours. The only place it’s been found in the world so far is a mine in Eastern Bolivia not too far from Santa Cruz, close to the Brazilian and Paraguayan borders. The area is called the Gran Chaco, where the indigenous Ayoreo people are from, traditionally nomadic hunter-gatherers. Legend has it that a group of Spaniard Conquistadores exploring the region made contact with a peaceful Ayoreo tribe. The daughter of the tribe’s Chieftain fell in love with one of the soldiers, quite specifically named Don Felipe di Urriola y Goitia in an otherwise fairly vague story. Princess Anahí, for that was her name, asked her father permission to marry him. The father said yes, and gave the soldier a mine where these multi-coloured gems could be found. A while later, the Spaniard thought it was time to go back to Spain and give some of those sweet gems to his queen back home. The local tribe didn’t really like the idea of their princess going with him and conspired to assassinate him. Anahí heard of this, warned her husband and his men. There was a confrontation, and the tribesmen mistakenly injured the princess. In tragic fashion, dying of her wounds the princess gave her husband a beautiful Bolivianite gem as a token of her eternal love. Some say the purple and honey colours of the gem represent her torn heart between the love of her people and the love of her husband. The sole mine of Bolivianite (Ametrine for its more scientific name) is still called Anahí. Another legend tells the story of a Guaraní Princess also named Anahí. She was known for her amazing voice. She could sing beautifully, and imitate the complex songs of the Curruíra bird (wrens). One day the Spaniards army came to her village and she fought the Conquistadores along with her people. She was made prisoner, and the legend says that she was about to be burned on a pyre when she transformed in a red vermelha flower (or tree depending on the version). Her spirit lives on in every Vermelha flower and the name means “Flower of the skyâ€. The legend also became a traditional Paraguayan song. These are the stories that helped my brother and his wife choose a local name for their newborn daughter, and it’s how Anahí is a princess in more stories than one. I’ve been getting some great feedback from some of you which is very encouraging, I’m glad you are appreciating this newsletter. Please keep sharing with friends and If you have ideas of other things I could do to promote the newsletter to new people who haven’t heard from it yet and might enjoy reading as well, please keep in touch. I’d like for more people to read these stories and would love to hear suggestions that might help in that direction.  Until next week! CheersWillem 

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I'm a marketing & communication strategy consultant. If you're looking for new ideas for your business, marketing, strategy, branding, training, a speaker for an event, or have any questions, please get in touch: [email protected].