WOODSTOCK CLIMATICO IN COCHABAMBA

Sometimes reality doesn’t make a lot of sense. Like when Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, host of ‘the alternative to copenhagen’ climate change conference, says at the opening speech to 33,000 well-wishers from every continent on earth, ‘men shouldn’t eat chicken with hormones or they will become gay,’ and, ‘men shouldn’t eat GMO potatoes or they will lose their hair and given how many potatoes Bolivian men eat, we soon won’t need barbers,’ and ‘coca cola is best used for cleaning clogged drains’ (disclosure: I am both translating and paraphrasing, but this is directionally correct).


Somehow I ended up with a press pass, so I had good access to most of the key events. Because of the work I do with Blu Skye, I kept my profile low and slunk around in the back of the room wearing dark glasses (the dark glasses were only metaphorical as I lost my glasses kayaking on the Chacabuco River in Chile, but that’s another story). There were indigenous people from throughout Bolivia in the wildest local costumes, European activists running around with lamb head placards telling people not to eat meat, serious intellectual anti-globalists, mustached and loud pro-socialists, hippie journalists, and even two women from Soweto, South Africa who after traveling for three solid days were found lost and hungry at the registration desk, got saved by our hostess, Anna, and ended up running with our little ragtag entourage.


For all of this nuttiness, and the conference’s decidedly anti-capitalist, pro-socialist/communist agenda, the 3 day event had an amazing diversity of culture, language and orientation and produced some good principles and a few practical ideas for reducing the human-related gasses that contribute to our changing climate. In the end, the event itself was a gathering of climate concerned people with a vague yet passionate agenda, who participated in a packed agenda of working sessions, music, dance and singing. When the Coca Grower Union members started tossing bags of fresh coca leaves into the crowd during the music set just before the final document reading ceremony attended by Evo, Venezuela president Hugo Chavez and Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, I knew that this was indeed the Woodstock of ‘climate change’. A grand fiesta, love fest, party. A turning point indeed, but from where to what exactly no one is sure.

ESTANCIA RICON DEL SOCORRO

"If I had a farm in Africa...." But it is Argentina, so beautiful and full of life. Wildlife every where: grasses, flowers, bees, cayman alligators, capybaras, marsh deer, howler monkeys and tons of wild parrots. We rode horses through the wetlands, took a boat through Laguna Ibera, and we hopped on bikes to check out the landscape at sunset.

Rincón del Socorro is another conservation project of Doug and Kris Tompkins. The Estancia is a 12,000-hectare (29,700 acres) former cattle ranch on the edge of the Iberá wetlands in Northeastern Argentina that has been made into a nature reserve. It and other large properties are connected to the 13,000 square kilometer Ibera Natural Reserve, the second largest wetland in the world.

I realized when visiting this and other of Doug and Kris' projects that conservation and preservation of biodiversity is so important, but what struck me to my core is Beauty.

Beauty in wildness
Beauty in free animals
Beauty in restoration
Beauty in the sounds of nature
Beauty in architecture of place
Beauty in clean air and clean water

As I travel this crazy earth, beauty grounds me.

Marci

CRUSH WITH THE VAL'SEXY' FAMILY

pick and crush. tannat grapes to become a big, tasty red mix with malbec. cafayate, argentina. 2010. altitude 1600 meters. grape growing, river running family of 6 brothers and 3 sisters. biodynamic. fun.

VOLCANOES

MY STORY
We got into our friend, Doug’s, plane. The plane was a four-seater, the smallest plane I had ever been in. I was exited! We were going to Doug’s house which was only accessible by plane or boat! To get to his house we would have to fly over the Chaiten Volcano! This volcano had just gone off a short time ago, on May 2, 2007. We started up the little plane and took off down the runway and up, up into the air we went.

It was great to be in a little plane, up high looking down at the green mountains that surrounded us. It was different from the usual big planes that most people fly in. The plane would tip to one side as Doug flew the plane, navigating well through the mountains; it felt like the plane was falling in slow motion! Then again I have never felt that and I hope I never will!

We finally saw the volcano in sight. We were flying over a little town close by the volcano. The town had been very beaten up from the volcano a few years ago. A whole river of ash had gone through the town and had flooded everything in its path! I was told that when the volcano erupted there was sooo much ash that it clogged up the rivers. The ash acted like a dam but then the “dam” broke and the river came right through the town! Luckily the town had enough time to evacuate and no one was killed. The town still looked devastated from the volcano that had gone off.

Up ahead was the smoldering Chaiten Volcano. It was big and rocky and as we got closer it started to smell strongly of sulfur. We flew around it once then moved on. It was really cool to see a volcano that close! But all around the volcano, for miles around, there was burnt tree after burnt tree. The trees didn’t look like a fire went through them, though. It looked more like all the color had gone out of them completely and they were just the color of ash gray.


We started to descend and then we came down onto the ground with a VRRRRROOOOOOOOOMMMMMM. We were at Doug’s house!

INTRODUCTION
Why I chose to do my report on volcanoes is because I think they are one of the coolest parts of earth and because I had the great experience of flying over one!

VOLCANOES
Volcanoes are mountains that have an opening at the top that goes downward to a pool of molten lava below the surface of the earth. When the heat builds inside a volcano, eruption occurs. Fumes and rock shoot up through the opening in the top and spill over, or fill the air with ash. Volcanoes can also cause lateral blasts which is where it blows out of the side instead out the top; lava flows, hot ash flows, mudslides, avalanches, falling ash and floods.

Volcanoes are formed by two tectonic plates hitting one another or pulling apart. A tectonic plate (also called the crust of the earth) is like the shell around the earth. It is a thin layer of earth that is constantly moving around. When the plates are moving around they might hit each other or break apart, and both can make a volcano. But there is no place on earth that doesn’t have a plate. Imagine a mud flat that is dried up and cracked. Some are overlapping, some are making little ridges like upside down V’s. Then imagine wrapping that mud flat around the earth and there you have your world crust.

There are many different kinds of volcanoes. Most people usually think volcanoes are just lava spewing mountains. Some of the kinds are: ice volcanoes, mud volcanoes, volcanoes that spew lava, volcanoes that volcanic ash blows from the top (the Chaiten Volcano was the volcanic ash type), and lots more. No matter rock or ash, 80% of the earth’s surface is volcanic in origin.

Volcanoes are very dangerous and have caused many people to die. If you had to guess which volcanos are more dangerous, lava volcanoes or ash volcanoes, most of you would probably say the lava volcanoes. But actually the ash volcanoes are the most dangerous because they tend to unexpectedly explode like an atomic but a lot bigger!!! If you were to watch one explode it would probably look like a giant gray mushroom way up high in the sky! The blast is sooo powerful it is known to knock down entier forests! Eruptions can trigger tsunamis, flash floods, earth quakes, mud flows and rock falls. A long time ago when there wasn’t yet technology, people described the eruptions of volcanoes as many things. Some thought it was supernatural, others like the ancient Greeks thought it was all the doings of the gods. There were many explanations for why volcanoes erupted.

The same night we flew over the Chaiten volcano there was an earthquake and we thought maybe the volcano was going off!!! Unfortunately I wasn’t awake to feel the earthquake (I never am). But my parents said it felt like a boat rocking on a sea!

CONCLUSION
I use to think volcanoes were just mountains that lava poured out of, but when I decided to do my report on them and I started researching them I found out that they are very interesting forms and very complicated too.

I hope you all enjoyed my report on volcanoes! This was originally for my class because I send them letters from every place we go and some of the letters are reports about subjects that I chose to study. We are now in Bolivia and we are coming home sometime in June. Can’t wait!!!

Skye