Not long ago when returning to the country of my birth I decided to visit the lands where my grandparents’ properties were located: Cairoma and Araca, south of the city of La Paz (-67.538221 -16.902729 approximately from Google Maps).
The stories I heard as a child of long journeys my mother, her brothers and sisters undertook as small children, travelling on baskets either side of mules through mountains, fertile valleys, high altitude planes and multi coloured lakes, on narrow paths, through wind swept canyons so windy that often the pack mules would be pushed to the precipice below. 

As adults my father and uncles rode horses whenever visiting their lands. They journeyed from west to east, following the valley. My journey was from east to west.
These childhood images have stayed with me and I have travelled in my imaginations with the images in this collection.

The monochrome photograph shows my father to the left wearing riding boots next to his father, wearing a hat third from the left; my uncle Alberto (my mother’s brother), third from the right and his wife to the left of my grandfather Molina. This seems to be a marriage of two young locals.