Where's Waldo? Also: Strike!

Hey guys!

So at my job I work with a man named Waldo. He's middle aged and is really awesome. He likes to talk about politics and is always joking around with us. He is a huge Evo Morales supporter. He's the guy who I work with directly in the morning. He's really patient and I love working with him. He is also the best dressed Bolivian man I have met. He always wears dress slacks and rotates through a few beautifully made knit sweaters and a few different pairs of leather moccasins. I've never seen clothes made this well in Bolivia, so one day I asked him where he got all his sweaters and shoes. "Spain!" he said. Apparently he has a sister in Spain who sends him these things for Christmas. He gave me her card so that I have a contact when we're there in December. Last friday he told me to bring my laptop in to show him pictures of my family and pictures from my Chapare/ Villa Tunari trip. The entire week he'd been asking us when our last days at work were and asking us what we wanted him to get for food for our going away "parties."

Matt (the other volunteer) and I got to work on Monday (me with laptop in tow) and after 30 minutes with no Waldo, we asked where he was. Kati, the less patient but friendly lady in the office told us that he'd gone on his vacation and wouldn't be back for a month! Well, we said,...bye Waldo? It was really weird because we have a really strong relationship with him and he hadn't even said goodbye. Around 9 o'clock on Wednesday morning Waldo strolled into the clinic.

"Waldo!" I said. "I thought you were on vacation!?"

"I am!" he said. "I have something for you and Matteo!"

Waldo then pulled out a cloth placemat from his briefcase and handed it to me. It was really pretty but I was really confused and had to stifle giggles. Also, aren't you supposed to have 4 placemats? Maybe it isn't a placemat..I don't know. I'll bring it home and use it as a cloth to put a vase on or something cool. Then Waldo pulled something else out of his bag that he was about to give to Matt. He showed me what it was and it was a sort of small cylindrical purse with tassles. It looks like something you'd carry a glass of wine in because it doesn't shut. I told Waldo I thought it was very pretty and wished I was able to see Matt's reaction when he received it. If I didn't know what it was I was sure he wouldn't. After chatting to the doctor for a quarter of an hour, Waldo was out the door again. He assured us that he'd come back again before we left to say goodbye. I'm going to start bringing my camera every day so I can take a picture of him.

Let's switch gears.

So I've been reading this book called Dignity and Defiance that I borrowed from one of my airport friends. I think I am going to buy it when I get home because it is all about Bolivia's entrance and resistance to globalization. I'm still on the first chapter but already I feel like I've learned so much that I wish I knew all of this much earlier in my trip. Right now I'm reading about Cochabamba's water revolt in 2001. Apparently a U.S. mega-corporation Bechtel bought the rights to Cochabamba's water system in the late 1990's during a time when Cochabamba was having serious problems getting enough water from mountain run-off to serve its growing population. Bechtel raised prices by over 50% in most cases, even before they'd fixed the water problem. It's really interesting but in the end the citizens were able to chase Bechtel out of the country and cancel the contract. The way residents get their way in Cochabamba is to blockade all main roads and essentially shut down the city. Shop owners, taxi and trufi drivers, and many others simply stopped working and refused to pay their bills. They held off police who were armed with tear-gas cannons by using slingshots and other devices. This brings me to today.

So last night was fun, I made brownies and had some friends over and we watched Shutter Island and ordered Pizza. I didn't get to bed until a little after midnight. I got up at 6:30 to go with a friend at 7 am to the bus terminal to buy tickets for a bus to Sucre for tonight. (We tried to go Wednesday to get tickets but the bus companies told us they didn't plan that far ahead so we had to come back Friday morning). After buying tickets for our group, we went outside to catch taxis to our jobs. I was waiting for Trufi #131 and he was trying to catch a cab.

Definition: A trufi is a cab with a 3rd row of seats that has a set route and takes several people instead of just one person. You can stop anywhere along the route it follows.

After several minutes of waiting, a woman selling things on the street told us that the trufis and the micros were on strike; something about the feuding labor unions. At this point it was a bit after 8 am. I usually get to work at 8 and finish my job around 9:30. From the bus terminal it was going to take 30 minutes in traffic to get to my job, but the kicker was that I had no idea how to tell a cab where I work! If the trufis weren't running then a cab was my only option. At this point I decided it wasn't worth it, and if I couldn't get to work Matt wasn't going to be able to either. I didn't know the name of the road I worked on but I knew the trufi route by heart. So now I'm back in my room at 9:00 am writing this post.

This weekend I'm going to Sucre, "The White City." It's called this because all of the buildings in the city center are white (I think..). There are a lot of museums and I'm hoping to make it to the textile museum to buy a tapestry. Someone just told me that the textile museum is boring so we'll see what happens. She also said she was really ill when she visited it and wasn't in the mood to admire textiles.

Have a great weekend and I'll update again with details of my trip to Sucre early next week! I can't forget to wish a happy early birthday to Harry Potter! (Harry's birthday is the 31st of July- technically I believe he is 30 this year, but I'm going to pretend he's turning 21).

Love,

Hillary

The Sights and Sounds of Bolivia

Hey folks!

My time in Bolivia is nearing its end! I've been here for 7 weeks and have a few weeks left but I'm still seeing things that shock me. I'm going to share with you what I saw a couple days ago on the main road near my house as I walked home from the post office.

I was walking down the sidewalk in the sun without shades so I was kind of staring at the ground. Even though I wasn't looking much around me I still noticed a (homeless I assume) man sitting on a concrete block, asleep. I also noticed his skin was really ashen looking and he didn't have shoes; his feet were filthy. Instantly as I glanced over at him I noticed that there was something very large on his shin. At first I'm pretty sure my brain realized what I was looking at but something wasn't clicking, maybe I didn't want to truly see it after all because I thought he'd spilled jam on his leg or something. But no.

His entire shin was gone. His leg was still there but it didn't look like a leg. The best way I can describe it is that his leg was sort of, open. It was as if there was a special window that let me see inside his leg but something inside wasn't right. There was no bone where there should've been bone, and no muscle where I thought I'd see muscle. Inside his leg was orange/pinkish bits of what looked like jello except it wasn't transparent. His wound went so deep that I was really preoccupied by the fact that I couldn't see his bone. It was enormous and it took up the entire length of his shin. There was yellow pus oozing out of it onto where his skin began.

I saw all this in about 4.5 seconds as I walked past him. I stopped about a block down from him to turn around and see how other people were reacting to it. No one seemed to give it a second thought. It definitely wasn't a burn and it couldn't have been a puncture wound either. All I can guess is that he has some sort of infection in his leg from what may have began as a smaller wound. I have never in my entire life seen a wound that bad. I didn't really know if I should be crying or throwing up, because I felt like doing both. I also didn't want to stay nearby because I felt like just by looking at it I was going to catch something.

I know this post was a bit more somber than usual! I apologize for the graphic detail but I wanted to share with you all of my experiences here, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Much love,

Hillary

Living in Bolivia-Oddities

Hey guys!

I hope you enjoyed reading about the jungle! I know I just posted that so if you haven't read it you should do so now, and check out the video at the end!

I realized the other day that there was one quirk about living in Bolivia that I'd been meaning to tell you all about since I got here!

In Bolivia, when you go to the bathroom, you throw your used toilet paper into the bin next to the toilet instead of into the toilet. Every Bolivian bathroom I've been in has a small trash can for this purpose alone. It took me like a month to get used to it, and re-adjusting back at home may prove difficult too! No one has mentioned why this is a norm, but I guess it is because the plumbing isn't strong enough to take toilet paper without clogging.

Another weird thing I wanted to mention is that last week all schools were canceled for the entire week. The reason? It was too cold. Last week when I'd go to work at 7:30 am I would wear jeans, a t-shirt, and a sweatshirt with a scarf. That was it. I'm not sure what the temperature was in the morning, the coldest part of the school day, but I'd guess 55 degrees. The mornings are a lot less worse now than they were for my first month here. All of the gringos I've talked to about this have felt either puzzled, amused, or outraged. The only plausible explanation I've heard (one person said a Bolivian said the streets weren't drivable at that temperature...), is that the buildings are too cold for the students since the buildings don't have heat. I agree that the buildings don't warm up with the sunrise like it does outside, but it is far from unmanageable. At work or in my house I keep a sweater on and that's more than enough.

All of the volunteers here that I've met say that wherever they work, all of the employees come in whenever they want. Sometimes they are an hour and a half late and there seem to be no penalties. I can say that every single person at my health clinic arrives late (no more than 20 minutes) every day. Some volunteers arrive an hour after they're supposed to just so they can arrive with all the other employees. I'm starting to wonder if it's things like canceling an entire week of school due to chilly mornings, and no late penalties, that Bolivia is still so far behind the rest of South America and much of the world.

These are just some quirks that stick out that I wanted to mention before I forgot again.

Word-

Hillary

Welcome to the Jungle! We got fun n' games!

Hey there lovely people!

This past weekend I spent 2 days in a place called Villa Tunari/ Chapare (I'm not sure which name means what but they refer to the same place). It was in the Amazon! I had a wonderful time and I took some pretty sweet pictures I want to share with you.

Saturday:

I met my airport friend Clara at 8:00 am midway between where we live. The plan was that we were going to meet up with some friends of hers and catch a bus to Villa Tunari. We'd get there around noon and from there we'd find a place to stay and see about booking a rafting excursion. What actually ended up happening was that Clara's friends were still asleep when we walked into their hostel. After they packed we grabbed breakfast and grabbed a cab to the intersection where people pick up buses to Villa Tunari. The breakfast was this fried dough with cheese on the inside and sugar on the outside. They gave us our warm drinks in a plastic bag- there was arroz con leche (rice milk), this drink called apí which is purple, made out of corn and in my opinion gross, and this other corn drink I forgot what it was called. I tried the green corn drink and stopped after a few sips. When we got to the intersection we could either go on a bus for 10 Bs or a van for 20 Bs. Both rides left when they were full of passengers, and that would take however long it took to fill the buses. I desperately wanted to take the van, which also would be an hour and a half faster. The weird thing about traveling with people is that everyone has their own definition of cheap. In my mind less than $3.00 for a 4 hour ride in a mini van was well worth it, but to others getting the best deal possible is what's the best option. I was with Clara and two other girls, one from Perth, Australia, and the other from Hampshire, England. The pound is even better than the dollar so for her it was even cheaper but she was the one who seemed to have the biggest problem with it. Eventually though we all decided to take the van, and we left almost right away.

As we got closer to the jungle it got warmer and more beautiful by the minute. Our 4 hour drive was the shortest of my travels so far and yet this direction (north east I think) saw the most drastic changes in scenery.

I'd made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies the previous night and brought some along to share with the girls. They were a hit! Once we got to Villa Tunari we grabbed lunch. In the jungle a fish called surubí is very popular and abundant. I ordered a plate to share with Clara and we all shared some fruit juice and sat in the sun. Our fish came with rice, plátano, and fried yuca which is kind of a poor man's potato. I quickly put on tons of sunscreen and bug repellant. The air was humid (a huge change) and it was about mid 80's. A big group of European tourists ambled over to our restaurant and ate there as well. Since we didn't finish eating until around 3 o'clock, we decided we'd buy rafting tickets for the next day. We didn't know where the rafting companies were but it was a ridiculously small town so we just walked the one main road and found this:

This was outside of the rafting office, it is a dirty chick wandering around looking for food:

No one was there and a woman outside selling mandarins told us we had to call the phone number painted on the wall. We moved on to find another company and a motorcycle drove up with a man and a woman on it. They stopped in front of us and asked if we were looking for rafting. After asking some questions we learned it would be 150 Bs for one hour of rafting. To drive to the spot and back it would take another 2 hours. While that's only $21.00 (and less in pounds), our group found it much too high, and the English girl began trying to bargain. Her spanish wasn't that great and to be honest she was beginning to look like the stereotypical American tourist: speaking loud and slow broken spanish, rude, and completely put off that he wouldn't lower the (fixed) price. I held my tongue because I know that everyone has different budgets and although this girl didn't appear poor, she very well could be working on a limited amount of money. I did agree though that one hour seemed somewhat short, but then again I didn't know how long normal rafting trips are. We found out the next day that in the rainy season the rafting trip is still one hour, but you go twice as fast so you cover more ground. Anyway, we ended up deciding to talk about it together later and we set out to find the hotel we'd read about in our Lonely Planet books. We walked up to a cab and asked how much it would be to take us to that hotel. He said it would be 20 Bs, or 5 Bs each. I'd like to point out that 5 Bs is less than $1.00. The English girl told us that it shouldn't be that much, so I asked him to lower it a bit. He said he wouldn't lower it and that any cab driver would tell us 20 Bs to go to that hotel. So, I said, how far is it? He told us it would take 15 minutes. I wanted to hop in but she wasn't having it so I kept my mouth shut and asked a second cab driver. As I was asking him how much it would be, the first cab driver got out and walked past us- telling the man I was talking to exactly what he'd told us. I don't know if he was going to tell us 20 Bs before the man interrupted, but now he definitely was going to, and that's exactly what he did.

So we started walking along the road in the direction of the hotel in the scorching sun. I agree that in Bolivia almost every vendor raises the price for foreigners. When you ask how much something is, you can see them thinking about it for a moment before they tell you a price. You can almost always haggle a bit and get them to lower the price easily. And also, Bolivians on average have much less money than any tourist, whether they are from Brazil or Chicago. So it makes sense that they would charge a Bolivian less money. I know in Cuba there are two prices on everything, the tourist price and the Cuban price. While raising the price for Gringos may be unfair and a tad presumptuous, it is something I can live with. Especially given that I can usually get them to lower it. This particular type of thing didn't seem like that sort of situation though. We were in a town about 4 blocks long where tons of tourists come through to stay at 1 of 2 hotels near the water, and everyone needs a cab to get there. I'm sure that the rate to the gringo hotels are quite fixed.

On our walk we ran into this bridge with no real footpath and we started talking about that scene in Stand By Me where they get stuck on railroad tracks and have to book it to the other side.

Anyway on our walk we stopped by the monkey park! We didn't go in but we walked up to the entrance and I met an Argentinean with pretty good english selling bracelets. I bought one from him and he tied it on my wrist and then asked if I wanted to be able to take it on and off. When I said no, he tied the ends in a knot and burned them closed. I like that I don't have strings hanging down now, but it'll be a sad day when I need to cut it when I have to take it off to dress up or something. Not that it was expensive by any means ($3.00), it's just cute. The English girl and the Aussie had a few questions for the volunteer coordinators, so we walked down to an office of sorts to talk to them. The English man we talked to was in his late 20's, had no shirt on, filthy dreadlocks and a matted beard, and had tied his shorts up with a string. From inside the office I could hear monkeys screeching! The park also cares for several large cats. We soon left the office and continued walking. After maybe 20 minutes, Clara and I decided together to hail a cab and that man also told us 20 Bs. We all got in and all paid 5 Bs once we'd reached our hotel.

We walked in to ask how much it would be for a room for 4 people for one night. Jorge, the man at the front desk, said it would be 90 Bs per person (somewhere around $12.50). The price included breakfast and free access to las pozas, which are the natural pools in the river right below the hotel. As I'm sure you've guessed already, English girl was not pleased with the price and his unwillingness to haggle. We asked how much a room with 2 beds would be, hoping we could share. He showed us a 2 bed room and there were two twin beds that are smaller than our twin beds in the U.S. We'd only pay 10 Bs less per person, and we wouldn't get a free breakfast since he'd lowered the price from 90. We looked at a 4 person room and it looked lovely. 45 minutes later, after we'd looked at the menu to see if the food was decent (eye roll), and to see what the breakfast included, we agreed to stay. While we discussed whether or not we'd stay, Clara offered that maybe we could just stay at the hotel Sunday and check out the pools and not go rafting. It would save money. While we didn't decide on rafting at that point, I knew it was quickly being crossed out of our list of activities. It didn't bother me too much that we probably weren't rafting because I can always do that anywhere else, and the hotel grounds were so beautiful that I wouldn't mind spending Sunday afternoon there. Since it was a tad too early to eat again, we checked out the hotel pool and Clara and I relaxed in the hammock room above the main building. Cloth hammocks are infinitely better than most of the hammocks I've been in at home. The stiff ones that don't curve around you ain't got nothin' on these; I'm so glad I purchased one last weekend. We ate dinner (again I had surubí) and had bananas con chocolate for dessert. After dinner we played a card game called shithead which both the Brit and the Aussie knew, it was very fun and I hope I can remember once I get back. Maybe I'll write down the rules in my journal..hm. Oh, before we tucked in for the night, Jorge asked us if we wanted him to call the rafting company for us. He did, and a man representing the company drove out to our hotel to discuss it with us! Jorge had been sure that the time in the water was closer to 3 hours, but this man confirmed our first belief that it was only an hour. We thanked him for coming all the way to our hotel but apologized, saying we only had one more afternoon and a 3 hour trip where only 1 of that is in the water, just wasn't enough.

Oh I had left my camera in the hammock and a nice American woman found it and returned it. Other than us the only other people at the hotel were 3 Americans and a group of about 6 Bolivians around our age. The Bolivian group quickly became "the laughers" to us because all day and night all we could hear was their laughter.

Sleep was magnificent that first night, and for the first time in weeks I slept in shorts and a tank top.

Sunday:

The breakfast picture speaks for itself:

We spent the afternoon exploring and ventured down to the river to check out the pools. (Not rafting after all). The walk down there showed me how much I truly was in the Amazon:

The little green bits down there are pieces of leaves that are all being carried by ants. I know it's not in motion so it's hard to see exactly how many of them there really are, but I could barely step anywhere on our walk without stepping on a (HUGE) ant carrying a leaf in a line. They came from every direction all in a row. There is a video of the ants at the bottom of this post, enjoy- and maybe play Ants Marching by Dave Matthews if you have it at hand.

HUGE ORANGE BEETLE! There were tons of beetles up by the hotel that were ginormous. For some reason them being in their natural habitats combined with them being large enough to be a small rodent made them less scary. This was not the case with the spiders unfortunately.

The picture below is of a walking tree. A walking tree literally grows new "legs" that plant themselves into the soil and very slowly move along the forest floor. When we got closer we could see several new legs still a few feet from the ground. The limbs have little hooks on them, my only guess is that the hooks help them to plant themselves into the earth.

This is the little lagoon we walked in. I won't say swim because we didn't swim, the water was freezing but the air was so hot.

On the rocks in the water were HUGE spiders. I've never seen these types of spiders before. They were very large, black, and incredibly fast. Traversing the rocks was hard enough, let alone having to watch out for these spiders constantly. We sat on the rocks for awhile and eventually got in the water, which was teeming with tadpoles that seemed to have no fear of us at all. Eventually I decided it was time for me to eat again and Clara and I made our way back up to the hotel. Again I ate the surubí (this time with lemon sauce) and it was wonderful yet again. My total bill when we checked out was 224 Bs(~$32.00). (All of our meals were added onto the bill as a tab like a normal hotel). Not bad eh?!

I've been writing this post on and off all afternoon, I've just finished watching Coco Before Chanel, which I bought here today for less than a dollar. The guy told me it had english subtitles but in fact its options were either dutch or spanish, so I watched it with spanish subtitles and I actually understood most of it! Woohoo!!

Hasta mañana!

Hillary

The Ants Go Marching One by One, Hurrah! Hurrah!

I'm off to see the Wizard! The wonderful Wizard of Oz!

Hey!

It's 7:00 am and in 45 minutes I'm leaving for Chipari/Villa Tunari. It's a 4 hour drive and there it is warm (I'm only packing shorts!), there is a river I'm going rafting on (for the first time!), and there are monkeys (monkeys!). For some reason that fact reminded me of the Wizard of Oz- hence my post title. I'll be back Sunday night so expect an update on Monday! I plan on taking many a picture.

Much love,

Hillary

Lake Titicaca and Copacabana

Hey guys!

I'm trying to catch the blog up to real time, so I'm going to attempt to fit my long weekend in one post.

NOTE: This is a very long post so grab a snack and settle in.

To get to Lake Titicaca we first needed to catch a 7 hour bus to La Paz. Claire and I left with the intention of meeting up with a few of our SB friends once we got to either La Paz or the Lake. We took an overnight bus on friday, and we 'splurged' for a bus-cama (literally translates to bed bus). The seats on the bus-cama are super comfy and larger than normal. They recline extremely far back and there is a little thing you fold out for your feet to lay on that extends the seat all the way to the floor so that it feels like you are lying on a bed that is bent in the position of a recliner. A normal bus is 25 Bs and this was 90 Bs. We left at 11:00 am and by 7:15 am we were sitting in Alexander coffee ordering breakfast. This is the same coffee shop I went to in La Paz last time, where the Death Road bike tour meets. They were there again and just like last time the tour guide asked us if we were with the tour group, he wanted to be sure lest we be left behind. Our friend Elizabeth met us at 8:00 am, she had been hiking up an extremely tall mountain (so tall it involved wearing those ice pick things on your shoes). She had been hiking with an Italian couple from SB that we'd planned on meeting, but needed to escape from them after having a rotten time on the mountain (the Italian girl felt sick and went back to base camp with the guide, and soon after she felt ill too. She, however, was staked to the side of the mountain for an hour and a half because the Italian guy was pissed that she wasn't feeling well and he didn't want to go back down). Claire and I were exhausted from our bus ride and were also adjusting to the altitude, so we didn't leave until a little after 10:00 am. To get the bus to Copacabana we needed to make it to the cemetery. If you recall, last time I was in La Paz I climbed up to this cemetery to meet Maren's friends who weren't even there anymore, and I almost died. This time we were even lower and farther away than where I'd started before, so we took a cab.

Oh, also, it was raining when we got to La Paz. It rained the entire afternoon too. This was so weird. It hadn't rained the entire time I've been in Bolivia and for at least a month before that because Claire hadn't seen rain here either and she arrived here a month ahead of me. The rainy season here is between November and February. The rain turned out to determine the rest of our trip, so it was no trivial matter. Anyway, where was I..

We got a cab up to the cemetery and found a bus company that had a bus going to Copacabana in 20 minutes. Almost an hour later we boarded the bus with a new friend. He was 19, named Olivier, and half Brazilian and half French but grew up in Thailand and then Sri Lanka. His parents are now moving to Syria for the next few years. He spoke english extremely well. The afternoon had been somewhat miserable. We had to wait for an hour for a late bus in a cold and wet office and then board a bus that quickly became smelly while we were half hungry and half nauseous. While we were on the bus Claire, Elizabeth, and I talked about how cold we were and how all we really wanted was to curl up in a blanket with a hot drink next to a fireplace and watch a movie. I napped a bit and listened to my iPod, which I had just charged all night but after 7 songs the battery was down to half. A couple of hours later we all had to get off the bus and take a small boat to the other side of the harbor. Our bus would be following us on its own ferry across the water. It was still raining and pretty cold when we got off the bus so we grabbed a boat as soon as we could. We had to wait about half an hour on the other side for our bus to reach the shore, and then we were off for another hour to Copacabana.

We arrived in Copacabana around 4:00 pm.

Geography/History lesson: Copacabana is the town on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca. The other side of the Lake is Peru. It is famous for it's trout and for it's really big basilica. It is considered a sacred city and has been since before the Spanish Conquest.

When we got off the bus we found a woman who explained that if we wanted to go to Isla del Sol that day, it was going cost a lot of money because that late in the day you have to take a private bus to a private boat and then a private car. Or something like that. Isla del Sol is where everyone had told us we had to spend the night at Lake Titicaca. Apparently it's beautiful during sunrise and sunset. We weren't willing to spend 300 Bs per person to reach the island, especially since there were no ATMs anywhere around and we could only use the cash we had on us for the next few days. Instead we, with Brazilian/French guy in tow, made our way to a hotel that the lady recommended. (Olivier was more than harmless and planned to stay just the one night and was going to leave extremely early the next day for Tarija, on the opposite side of Bolivia- don't worry I follow my instincts and this guy was like a puppy just glad to be with 3 pretty and talkative girls). We asked to see what a room looked like, and sat down in a room with 4 beds to pull out our Lonely Planet and see what our other options were. According to Lonely Planet there was a hotel named Hotel Cúpula nearby with a view of the lake that had heat, hot water, a common room, and a communal kitchen. We set out to check out that place and apologized to the man for sitting in his hotel room for 15 minutes. The altitude was almost 4,000 meters and it brought me back to my days at the Salar de Uyuni. We were out of breath once we walked the 15 minutes to the hotel, but we knew as soon as we saw it that we wanted to stay there. It was $10.00 (70 Bs) a night. We got a room of 4 and sat down to put on more layers before going off to walk around the town and catch dinner.

This is the gate to our hotel and the view in front of it:

The yellow boats on the lake are reed boats.

This is the basilica from the street:

This is it from inside the front walls:

We ate dinner at this place called La Orilla, it was wonderful. I had stuffed trout, Olivier had pizza that I tasted and it was delicious, and Claire and Elizabeth split stuffed trout and coconut curry trout. All the menus in Copacabana are in english and spanish. Some of them aren't even in spanish. It is very obviously a tourist town. Oh, and the person who brought out our food was 12- maybe.

When it came time to order dessert the waiter said "no hay" (there is none) as if I was bothering him. About 80% of the time I've eaten in Bolivia, the place is out of dessert. And they always act as if you should've known that they were out of every dessert item on their menu. I think thats why I seem to have gained a few pounds. When you eat a delicious dessert, you feel satisfied. All I have to work with however are candy bars and Chips Ahoy cookies. So I eat a ton of cookies and junk to try to satisfy my sweet tooth but it never works. A lot of the time they are also out of whatever it is you want to order for your meal. I've heard from other volunteers who travel to poor countries a lot that it's normal for a place to only have half of the stuff on their menu. After we ate we bought a bottle of wine and some cookies/chocolates from a street vendor and a tiny store. In the tiny store we met another American who was from somewhere in Wisconsin. Claire is from just outside of Milwaukee, so they bonded over that for a few minutes before Olivier got impatient and we walked back to the hotel.

Back at La Cúpula we stripped down to comfy clothes, grabbed the extra blankets the hotel had put in our room, and headed to the common room where there was a TV. The common room was already occupied by a Danish family playing cards, but they told us to please watch a movie if that's what we wanted, it wouldn't bother them. (I told them Oprah told everyone Denmark was the happiest country on Earth, and they seemed unimpressed, but they were very nice). The room had a big space heater so in no time we all had a glass of wine and were eating our sweets and watching Slumdog Millionaire under our blankets. It was wonderful, and it was almost exactly what we'd been dreaming of on the bus. We couldn't believe our luck. I got up and took a hot shower halfway through the movie because I knew my hair would dry fast in that room with the heater and I know better than to go to sleep with a wet head, especially since I already had a lingering cold.

After the movie Olivier got right into bed because he was going to leave at 6:30 am the next morning to catch a bus back to La Paz and then on to Tarija. Our room had a small heater and we had extremely comfortable beds. We all fell asleep as soon as we put our heads on our pillows. The next morning Olivier left right when he said he would, and he paid his share of the room on his way out. We'd planned to leave by 8:00 am and eat before finding a boat then bus to Isla del Sol for our last night before returning to La Paz. We ate breakfast at our hotel and left around 9:30 am. We walked into the tourism office to ask when the boats left for Isla del Sol. We were informed that because of the rain the previous day and the high winds, no boats had left for a day and a half. We sat down to figure out our next move, and realized that even if we did catch the next and last boat to Isla del Sol, and even if it did leave, we have no way of insuring that we'd return when we wanted to and wouldn't get stranded on Isla del Sol. We couldn't risk that because Claire had to be back in La Paz by Monday night for her flight early Tuesday morning to Ecuador. We decided to stay in Copacabana another night since we'd been enjoying our time there so far. Around 11:00 am we returned to our hotel and booked a room for 3. Our new room had a fireplace! Now ALL of our dreams had come true! After dropping off our things, we left to explore the town and grab some food before hiking a mountain/cliff/large hill thing. We sat down at a table in the sun around noon and ordered the lunch special which included Quinoa soup, trout with veggies and potatoes, and either a crepe with marmalade or bananas and chocolate for dessert ($16 Bs or ~$2.3 Dollars). The courtyard was filled with Gringos and there were several hammocks hung from trees. I spent 10 minutes before we got our food sitting in one of the multi-colored fabric hammocks and decided I needed to get one as soon as I could. While we ate lunch and chatted Claire excitedly burst out that she swore she just saw hipster walk past our restaurant. Remember hipster and wannabe hipster from our Salar trip? They're british and had brought a lot of booze with them and very little warm layers. Elizabeth hadn't been there but Claire and I sat there staring at each other with our eyes bugged out until Elizabeth suggested that someone run and see if it was them for sure. After a dramatic pause I leapt up and ran out of the restaurant to verify our sighting.

It was them! It was hipster, this time with pants on instead of leggings, and wannabe older hipster walking down the street! I ran back to declare the good news. It is such a small world.

We didn't leave our lunch spot until after 3:00 pm. I left hoping my sunscreen had lasted that long. We spent an hour or so shopping amongst the many stores that lined the street. When we were done we all had new sweaters. We got back to our hotel to put on more layers before climbing the steep cliff up to some Incan ruins near our hotel. Both Claire and I saw that our noses were definitely red. My constant blowing my nose only made it worse, but I was having such a nice time I didn't mind at all. My asthma had been acting up all day, and when we got back to the hotel I borrowed a puff of Claire's inhaler. We laid down on our beds to take a breather from climbing the short distance to our hotel from lunch. I knew that if I felt that out of breath from getting to my hotel, climbing the cliff was not going to be fun. I really didn't want to do it but was mentally preparing myself. Elizabeth and I were sharing a "cama matrimonial" (matrimony bed= queen bed), and Claire laid down on her twin bed. Elizabeth and I laid down perpendicular to sleeping direction, with our legs hanging off touching the floor. We all fell asleep within seconds. Halfway through our impromptu nap, Claire woke me up because she was seeing this out of our window:

I took pictures and laid right back down and fell right back asleep. Around 5:30 pm we all got up groggily and we all realized we were starving. "Well, I guess the hike isn't happening," said Claire and Elizabeth with not even a hint of remorse. I was ecstatic. We walked back with all intention of going to La Orilla again, I wanted Olivier's pizza from last night. When we got there around 6:15 pm it was closed! We went instead to a place across the street. I knew it wasn't going to be good when the man outside the store said "¡Chicas bonitas! Van a entrar?" (Beautiful girls! Are you going to come in?) I was right. Everything was overpriced. Bottled water is usually 4 or 5 Bs, but here it was 10! Cheese pizza was 45 Bs! That's almost $7.00. Claire's food came out first. She'd ordered pesto pasta. This is what she got:

Oh, and this was a sign in the restaurant. It says "Hi? No smoking please":

When the waiter brought it out I couldn't help it, I started to giggle but quickly suppressed it and tried to cover it up by saying "sorry.. I don't know why I'm laughing.." Halfway through eating her pasta, Claire said "I kind of want to go up to them and say; 'you know this isn't pesto right?'" We decided that what she was probably eating was pasta with creamed spinach or creamed broccoli. Our pizzas were no better. They were soft and the sauce tasted like pure tomato paste. A cute European couple sat down next to us and began discussing getting pizza (they weren't speaking spanish or english, but we clearly heard the word pizza, and the guy picked up the pizza menu). We decided to save them and quickly asked if they spoke english. They did, and we told them not to order anything to eat, least of all pasta or pizza. They looked alarmed and told the waiter they would just have tea. It was hilarious, they were so adorable. They told us they'd just been to Isla del Sol and it was amazing and beautiful but freezing, it even snowed there overnight. On their boat ride back they said there were 30 people on a boat meant for 15. It was so choppy that several people threw up but they were crammed inside and there was no way someone could escape to throw up over the side of the boat. It sounded awful. We felt lucky to have skipped that boat ride. They asked if we had any other suggestions and we mentioned La Orilla but apologized that they were closed. They said no worries, they were going to go anywhere but here to eat. After we ate we all felt unsatisfied and went back to our hotel. There we commandeered the common room and watched Ámelie. Claire and Elizabeth shared a bottle of wine and I had a couple cups of warm tea and lots of Chips Ahoy cookies. (P.S. Chips Ahoy cookies are easy to find here, but they are all in individual packs of 4 or packs of 6 individual packs, and they are all a tad too well done. All of them. I'm starting to think that the factory workers send all the ones that are a bit too well done to South America). The kids in the Danish family watched most of Ámelie with us. After that we watched Up. Claire and Elizabeth fell asleep towards the end, but me and this random girl who came in when we started the movie watched the whole thing. This girl was around our age but didn't say a single word the whole time. We did catch each other's eyes when I'd look over to find Elizabeth and Claire asleep, and we'd smile to each other. I don't know if she didn't speak english, but I would've assumed she'd say a greeting in spanish if she knew that being that we're in Bolivia. She also had to have understood english because she watched all of Up with us in english without subtitles. It's a mystery. We cleaned up and returned to our rooms where Elizabeth lit our fire place.

We also had the heater going. It was so warm in there it was lovely. I was way too excited at the fact that all I slept in was a tank top, leggings, and not even socks! I fell asleep listening to Elizabeth and Claire talking, which never happens. I must've been really tired and really comfortable.

The next morning we got breakfast at a Columbian style restaurant, which ended up being a bad move. For more money than we'd paid the previous morning, we got way less food. We left there and went to a bus company to buy tickets for an 11:30 bus back to La Paz. There we ran into to Danish guys in their mid 20's who asked for suggestions about where to stay. We ended up giving them advice about a lot of places in Bolivia. One of the guys will be in Chicago in a couple of weekends, so I told him to go to Millennium Park for a free concert or something, and Claire suggested Second City, which I quickly agreed would also be worth doing. When we left the office to wait outside for our bus, Claire and Elizabeth started gushing over how hot the two guys were. They were commenting on their great eye contact and their extreme interest in everything we were saying. Usually I pick up on that stuff quickly, but I had been completely not aware that that's why we were talking to these guys for so long. Somehow their attractiveness did not even register on my radar. I must've been so excited to give suggestions about Chicago that I didn't even think about it.

Our bus ride back went the same as before except that it was much less cold, not wet, and it wasn't cloudy so we could see how huge and beautiful the lake is. The view of the lake included the Andes.

Back in La Paz we headed to our hostel for the night: Adventure Brew. It is a micro brew and gives every guest one free beer a day. We shopped around La Paz, I bought a really cool hammock, and we headed over to Elizabeth's hostel where she'd kept one of her bags before we left La Paz on Saturday. We needed to carry all of her stuff and a very heavy bag from the Italian couple that they wanted her to bring back to Cochabamba (she was heading back via bus that night and not staying at Adventure Brew). We hauled all of this stuff through the streets of La Paz until we reached our dinner destination; the Star of India. Indian food! I was sooo excited. It is owned by British people so we knew it'd be more than decent. Once we sat down two American guys were getting up to pay and leave. One of them complained about the smell of Indian food; "F*ing Curry smell is filling up my nostrils!!" he said. I wanted to reply, "and when you got to Bolivia, were you upset that everyone spoke spanish?" The food was great and by the time we left the place was full of Gringos. I don't think many Bolivians eat Indian food.

After dinner we hiked back to our hostel to get our free beer and relax before an early bedtime. Claire and I would be going to the airport at 6:00 the following morning. She was leaving for 2 weeks in Ecuador and 2 weeks in Nicaragua, and I was just sick of buses and decided to catch a 30 min plane back to Cochabamba.

I want to explain something about La Paz. It is an extremely hilly city. You can't really walk anywhere without going downhill or uphill. Even if you try to trick it by walking left or right, it doesn't work because literally every street, whether north and south or east and west, is on a steep incline. The city is also extremely polluted. All we could smell while walking along the streets was gasoline, and I felt like I could feel it entering my nostrils and then my lungs. There are tons of people in La Paz, and all the traffic is trapped in the bowl that is the city. La Paz is surrounded on all four sides by mountains. All of these things combined to really start to bother my asthma. Claire was constantly using her inhaler, and I desperately needed one. Once we got back to the hotel I could breathe and we went upstairs to grab a beer and use the free wi-fi at the bar. The guy next to me was smoking, and after a few minutes I disintegrated into my asthmatic cough. After coughing on and off for the next half an hour, I escaped downstairs to get a towel from the front desk. First the guy told me that there weren't any and that I'd have to wait til 8:30 the next morning. Then, when I said we were leaving at 6 the next day, he magically found a bag full of clean towels up in the courtyard on the second floor.

After saying goodbye to Elizabeth, Claire and I took turns taking showers and went to bed around 11:00 pm. We got up at 5:20 am and packed up for the airport. I had considered buying a flight ahead of time, but someone had told me that I should wait until I get to the airport because the fares will be cheaper then. I got to the airport and ate breakfast with Claire after being put on a wait list for an 8:10 am flight. I didn't get on the flight and ended up buying tickets for a 2:30 pm flight. There was a man and his son doing the same thing I was, and they struck up a conversation, it turns out that the man is Bolivian but he lives in Evanston! He gave me his card which has a Dempster address. They left to go back into the city, a half hour cab ride, but I stayed and read my book and ate at a cafe all afternoon. I decided I'd rather be at the airport for 7 hours than on a bus for 7 hours. I also hate the bus terminals here. Imagine a big airplane hanger that smells like garbage and inside are 20 different bus companies, one filthy bathroom, several vendors selling snacks and crappy sandwiches, and 200 people yelling "A LA PAZ A LA PAZ A LA PAZ?!?!" in your left ear, and "A SANTA CRUZ A SANTA CRUZ A SANTA CRUZ?!?!?!?" in your right ear. There are also countless Bolivians just standing in the middle of where you're trying to go, and they make no effort to give you any room as you squeeze by them carrying a ton of stuff and hit them accidently with something you're carrying, and they yell something back at you. I hate the bus terminals.

On the plane I sat right across from that Evanston man and his son. The son leaned across and asked what I was reading and I showed him the cover. He smiled and told me he doesn't like to read. I didn't know what to say to that so I just went back to my book. (He goes to high school in Maryland and has a pretty thick accent which I assume is Bolivian).

I got back to my house at 3:30 pm and talked to Tom on gchat for awhile before going to the pharmacy to buy an inhaler, which cost me just over $4.00 and I didn't need a prescription.

That's it folks! I'll update again soon- if you're bored you should watch the Drunk History video I posted yesterday, it is definitely worth it and you are guaranteed to laugh.

Con amor,

Hillary

Coming soon!

Hi everyone!

I'm part way through writing my Lake Titicaca post, I'm going to finish writing it tomorrow. I know I said I'd post again today so I wanted to make sure everyone knew I was alive and that I haven't forgotten you!

While you wait, here is a hilarious Drunk History video. Enjoy! :-)

http://www.youtube.com/user/drunkhistory?blend=1&ob=4#p/u/5/bqzUI1ihfpk

Talk to you all soon!

Hillary

Condensed Past Week

Hi everyone!!

I'm leaving in a few hours for a night bus to La Paz. From there we're going to make our way up to Lake Titicaca for Saturday and Sunday nights. Monday night I'm staying in a La Paz hostel that has a micro brew! I'll be back on Tuesday so expect a "Lake Titicaca" post by Wednesday night! For now I thought I'd give you all the condensed version of my past week.

I changed rooms because one of the double rooms became empty. Now I have a full length mirror and no roommate! The light went out a few days after I moved in there but it was too high up for me to reach, even standing on a chair. I went the whole weekend circulating between charging my electronics in the daytime, and plugging in a lamp around 5pm when the sun goes down. Monday the repair guy came in to fix the bulb but all he did was take it out, he didn't put in a new one. Tuesday he came back and now I have light!

There is a new guy at work. He's only going to be here for a month and now he's got 2 weeks left. He's 23, mormon, and speaks very good portuguese because he did his mission thing in Brazil for 2 years. My first day back to work after the Solar was Día de los Trabajadores de Salud (health workers day), so the only people who came in were the two doctors and a few nursing students. That left me and New Guy to check in patients and answer questions all on our own, without Waldo! Waldo is the guy who works the front desk and tag teams with me while I check patients into the computer. The next day at work Waldo was back. The way we do it is Waldo talks to the people as they come in, he takes their insurance card, passes it to me, and then he goes to get their file while I check them into the database. Well, this day New Guy decides he's going to try to intercept our process and take my job. This is the only responsibility I really have at work. As Waldo goes to pass me an insurance card, New Guy stands up and takes it from him. Waldo took it back and told New Guy that I was the one he passed the cards to, and after I was done New Guy could take the card to the nurses room a few steps away. I felt so special! I also feel sort of bad because all New Guy does is walk 5 steps to the nurses room and put some paper on a desk. And he only does this like 5 times between 8:00 am and 9:00 am and then his job (as well as mine) is done. But whatever, I was there first!

I made Rachel cookies here! I had to add an egg, use less sugar, cook it at a higher temperature for longer time, and add more flour to adjust for the altitude in baking, but they turned out amazingly! We only have one cookie sheet.. that is actually a cake pan.. and a tiny oven, so it took a few hours to get it all done, but everyone loved them and it was worth having to go to 3 different stores to get all the ingredients I needed.

Last week I went to Super Haas, the German grocery store, and on the way I passed a disturbing sight. There are tons of homeless people in Cochabamba, and tons of women and children begging, but this was different for some reason. On the corner right outside of Super Haas was this lady sitting cross-legged, breast-feeding her baby, not trying to conceal her chest at all. Directly in front of her legs were two 3 or 4 year olds asleep on a heap of some kind of clothing or blankets. As I walked past her I looked at her face and she had the eyes of a teenager but her skin was tough looking and weathered. She was also filthy and seemed extremely small. Bolivian women on average are probably 5 foot 1, but she must have been closer to 4 foot 7, I could see that even though she was sitting down. She looked a little, well crazy for lack of a better word, and young and old at the same time. She held her hand out and pushed it in front of me so that I had to bump into her arm as I walked past. Normally I wouldn't have given it a second thought but something about that situation disturbed me. I felt sad definitely, but also sort of alarmed and disappointed. I don't really know exactly but I thought I'd mention it.

Oh, last week after work I also saw a Medicos Sin Fronteras van! (Doctors Without Borders). It was really cool. I also visited Palacio Portales, a mansion in Cochabamba that gives tours. Simon Patiño owned the house back in the early 20th century. He was Bolivian and got rich when he bought a mine that was later found to be a tin mine. He built this house and had everything imported from Europe to copy the French, Italian, and English styles. He never actually lived in the house but everything but the 3rd floor is used for cultural events. (The third floor is where his grandkids live when they visit once a year to look after his foundation). It was beautiful and didn't feel like Bolivia, which was odd. Everything was an imitation of famous design styles in Europe, so it felt sort of like an insincere mansion, design-wise at least.

Last Friday I went to a restaurant called Kabob that is mediterranean style. It smelled delicious but I'd already eaten dinner and I just went to tag along. I'm definitely going back though to try the chicken kabobs. (All they have are kabobs of various types of meat and one vegetarian option). I left dinner to meet Clara and Sarah for a drink at a nearby wine bar. Sarah's boyfriend Dave met us after a little while and we had a great time sitting around chatting. The wine bar was actually pretty impressive but very tiny. We also stopped by a bar called "Muela del Diablo" (Devil's Molar). We grabbed a table and talked for a little while more before calling it a night. It was a very relaxed alternative to what some of the SB volunteers spend their nights doing: club hopping and salsa dancing until 4:00 am. Which is, let's just say not for me..

The next night, Saturday, I went to the main house for a space-invader-themed despedida. There I met a dorky guy from Miami who goes to Princeton. He was trying to be friendly but came off as extremely arrogant. He loves NU's campus though! I got bored there quickly. After my eye candy left I went straight over to Sarah's apartment to hang out with Dave, Sarah, and Clara. I'd brought my mace with me to be on the safe side even though I was taking a cab. At Sarah and Dave's place Dave asked to try it out. He put his arm out to his side and sprayed it in the direction opposite of all of us. It came out in a very narrow stream, powerfully. He turned to us, I believe to relay his surprise that it came out so fast, when he started coughing uncontrollably and had to excuse himself from the room! After a few minutes all of us started to feel a weird tickling feeling in our throat. It was from the mace! That stuff is strong! But now I know it works! I also know that if I'm ever forced to use it I need to stop breathing for the few seconds when I'm around it. It's powerful stuff.

The next night I started to feel under the weather, and for the next few days I felt sick and stayed home from work until I returned Thursday. Today at work I went out with New Guy and the nursing students to survey the surrounding hills to see who under 5 has not yet had all of the suggested vaccinations. Lots of dogs decided to prove to us that they could bark louder than their neighboring dogs, and that got old fast. Through one house's gate I saw two of the biggest ducks I have ever seen in my life. I mean this one duck was probably as tall as my belly button. It was white with orange beak and orange feet and was beautiful. I have no idea what they were doing in the front yard of this run down house in the hills of Cochabamba, but there they were! I also saw a litter of puppies that were probably a couple of months old.

I got back from work today to watch our water turn off halfway through washing my hands. The water just stopped coming out of the faucet. I tried the shower, but that wasn't on either. I went to the kitchen where it came out of the faucet in little more than drips. After a minute the kitchen water stopped coming altogether as well. I used a half-full liter water bottle to put some water on the stove to boil for some kraft mac-and-cheese that mom sent me. Two of the burners wouldn't light, but I got a 3rd burner to light.

Sidenote: have I told you how I light my stove here? You have to use a match, turn on the gas, and then hold the match to the burner to wait for it to light. It's either very old school or very ghetto, or both. It takes a full minute or more to light the oven because you have to hold the gas on for 30 seconds, then drop a lit match into a hole in the bottom of the oven, and hope it lights. Most times it doesn't and you have to wait a little while longer before you trying to drop another match.

But back to the water situation. I hadn't showered since Wednesday afternoon, and I was really looking forward to showering before my trip to La Paz, especially since we might not get to shower until our micro-brew hostel on Monday. After waiting a few hours, and watching the toilet water put on a water fountain display, it became apparent that the water situation wasn't going to be fixed quickly. I packed some things in a bag and took a cab to Sarah's apartment to use their shower. It was heavenly.

Wednesday and Thursday of this week, the clinic was only taking emergencies. The government hasn't paid their salaries and so they're cutting back significantly until they get paid. As of today they still hadn't gotten paid but they took in the normal amount of appointments. I'll update as soon as I find out more about what's going on, but when I asked all anyone could tell me was "I don't know, the government ran out of money or something."

By the way, after 5 weeks in Bolivia, I'm starting to really miss certain foods. More than I think I realized. The other night I got into a mild argument about U.S. cereals with Sarah (my Luna Lovegood housemate not my airport friend with the lovely apartment that I've been talking about), who is Canadian. She was saying that all the U.S. cereals have the "bad sugar" and that Canadian bran cereal is healthier than U.S. bran cereal. Something inside me snapped and I felt like I had to stick up for our cereals. I argued that there are plenty of healthy cereals in the U.S., and a lot of them that even taste good too! Like Smart Start, or Cheerios. Sarah tried to tell me that Cheerios are bad for you too, and I blurted out "I don't even want to hear it!" It wasn't as tense as it sounds, but I was as upset as it sounds. And even writing it now, I'm upset again that someone tried to put down my Cheerios! I'm hoping my food cravings for Ben & Jerry's, Jamba Juice, Indian food, and Panera, will not get stronger but hopefully wane rapidly over the next month. Ooh and breakable cookies,..and Brownberry Oatnut sandwich bread,...and Yoplait custard style yogurt..salads.. You get the point.

Ok folks, I'm out! Hopefully when I get back I'll have some great pictures of Lake Titicaca and Copacabana! Oh and not to mention the micro brew hostel.

Cuídanse! Love,

Hillary

Salar Saga-Part 4

Hi everyone!

Here is the long awaited final chapter of my trip to Salar de Uyuni!

Sunday, July 4th:

We were originally going to get our wake up call at 7:00 am, but because we'd been slow the previous morning Carmelo told us he'd wake us up at 6:45 am instead.

Our first stop was the arbol de piedra (tree of rock). We were in the dessert and we pulled up to several huge rocks randomly chillin' in the sand. They had all been shaped by years of wind erosion and had odd forms. The arbol de piedra stands tall and is wider at the top than at the bottom. I'm fairly certain that these rocks, as with the rocks we'd seen in the Dalí Desert the previous day, are petrified lava.

If you can't read that sign below the tree rock from here, this is what it says:

"NO CLIMBINS MAI FALL" which I believe means "No climbing, may fall"

We spent the rest of the day visiting the 5 lagos pequeños (5 little lakes) which were more beautifully colored natural chemical lakes. This day we saw a higher number of tour jeeps at each of our stops than either of the previous two days on the tour. We stopped at the last lake to walk around and then eat lunch. If you recall, earlier on the tour we'd scared off the few flamingos we'd seen, but at this lake we were fortunate enough to see tons! Carmelo told us it is rare for so many flamingos to be at this last lake.

Oh, at some point during the day we took this awesome picture of Carmelo and Olga!

Most of the day on Sunday was spent driving. Although the weather outside was cold, the sun was so strong that during mid-day on this tour while we were in the car we were all burning up. I would strip down to a t-shirt and put sun screen on my arms because I could feel how strong the sun shone through the window. Needless to say we were very relieved when we arrived at the "Salt Hotel" around 4pm. The salt hotel had hot showers (8 min of hot water per person at 10 bolivianos). Since Carmelo loves getting everywhere before all of the other groups, we were able to get the first showers of the evening! The shower was amazing, and after we cleaned up we had some tea and crackers from Olga. Across from us sat the French men and we spent a while chatting with them as they waited for their tea and crackers. There were many more tour groups at the salt hotel than had been at either one of our previous abodes. I think this is because you can start at Uyuni (where our tour ended) to see just the salt flats, then go right back to Uyuni as a sort of one night trip. The Salt Hotel was a lot of fun and as fate would have it, there was a stuffed Flamingo fixed to the ceiling right above our table. After all, we were the flamingos! Flacas y fuertas.

These 2 pictures below are of the salt hotel. Everything in the salt hotel is made of salt. Our beds were on platforms of salt bricks, the walls were made of bricks of salt, and even the floors were salt gravel. The stuff between the bricks of salt on the wall keeping everything together is made of salt. The hanging things from the ceiling are also made of salt. The chairs to the tables made of salt are also made of salt. You get the idea.

Yes. That is a stuffed flamingo above my head.

We went to bed around 9:30 pm because we'd be getting up 5:30 am to leave to see the sunrise at the salt flats. Carmelo told us the salt hotel would be so warm that we wouldn't even need our sleeping bags. That was a ton of B.S. but it was definitely our most comfortable night on the tour because we were clean, we were at less than 4,000 meters, and we didn't need to sleep in hats.

Sunday:

At this point in the tour Nina was feeling pretty ill. The mood in the car at 6:00 am on the way to see the sunrise was what you would expect from 4 exhausted and chilled girls. At one point Carmelo turned off his lights and started zig-zagging across the salt. It was pitch black out, and while I saw that the mountains were far away, it still didn't seem like the best idea and we weren't really in the mood. Nina got him to turn his headlights back on, despite his argument that it was more "fantastico" with them off. We stopped to see bricks of salt being cut and Carmelo and Olga put about 5 very large bricks of salt into the back of the Land Cruiser. (Still don't know why). It was freezing and thus I wasn't too thrilled about seeing the salt bricks. A short while later we stopped and waited for the sunrise. Claire and Laura got out to wait for it, and I joined them as soon as I felt prepared to face the cold. The sunrise was beautiful, it was more than worth standing out in the cold. It's impossible to explain in words how amazing this sunrise was, so I'll try to use both words and pictures.

Imagine you're in a field of fresh snow that you can see for miles around you anywhere you look. On your right and left off into the distance are small mountain ranges. Also to your left and right are a few other jeeps with other Gringos standing in front of them waiting for the sun. These jeeps are so far away that the people look like ants, and in this way they don't ruin your view. In front of you might as well be the end of the earth because all you see is snow. Ok, now replace the snow with salt crystals and you've got it! Here are a few pictures. (If you have the Circle of Life Lion King song available for retrieval in your head, please play it from memory now).

After we saw the sunrise we got in the car and visited the Isla del Pescado (Island of Fish). It's called an island because it's an island of land in the middle of the salt. I don't know why the fish get to be included in the title. This island was covered with cacti and we were instructed to walk around it while Olga prepared breakfast. Now, let me back up. This was the only morning on the tour in which we weren't given any breakfast or food of any kind before we left for the day. I don't know how many of you have seen me when I haven't eaten soon after I've gotten up, but if you have, think of that time now. Basically, we'd been awake for a few hours at this point, and we were now being asked to hike up and around this steep island as the sun was getting higher in the sky, with no food in our stomachs. Nina was sick and I was...me with no food in my stomach.. and the other two girls were hungry as well, so we took a shortcut and hiked back down as fast as we could to get to breakfast. Olga obviously hadn't been expecting us back so soon, but she quickly finished setting up breakfast and we ate next to the French guys again. At this point we realized that the French guys' tour guide was playing match-maker and was strategically planning to bump into us as often as possible.

After we ate we went to the bathroom and ran into our "yale" friends (the two Americans, the British girl, and the Belgian guy in the jeep with a yale sticker). They told us they were able to get ahold of one firework and had lit it the previous night at their salt hotel (different from ours, Carmelo told us our salt hotel was the best) to celebrate the 4th of July. We had tried to celebrate but at our hotel we were the only Americans. We soon left the island and spent the next half an hour taking those awesome pictures you've all seen on my facebook. Those are optical illusion pictures that are only possible because there is no point of reference in the middle of the salt flats, only even ground for as far as the eye can see.

At lunch time we arrived at our last stop. This stop was a very small town just outside the salt that seemed to function only to sell artesenia objects for tourists. This was the most crowded place on the entire tour. I don't know where all these tour groups came from but it was quite funny to see. As we ate lunch we asked a group of nice looking americans about tipping our driver and our cook, and they told us they were splitting a 10% tip between their guide and cook. We were glad we'd asked because that was way more than what we'd been planning to give them. We weren't even sure if we should tip at all because we didn't know if it was customary.

These are all the Land Cruisers parked along this road lined with artesenia objects that basically made up this town.

After eating lunch and then being dropped off at a cheap hotel across from the train station in Uyuni, we said goodbye to Carmelo and Olga, and they drove back south to Tupiza, which in a straight shot only takes 6 hours. As we walked towards the hotel a group of Israeli travelers stopped us to ask if we had just finished a Salar tour. We said yes, and a man in his 20's asked us how much it cost to see the flamingos. We looked at each other and told him the flamingos aren't paid for but you do have to pay to get into the nature park. He then asked how many flamingos we saw. At this point I felt it my duty to explain to him that we saw a few flamingos, yes, but if that's all he wanted to see then he really shouldn't go on a 4 day tour. We quickly explained what the other 98% of our trip included and they looked alarmed and sighed and thanked us.

Our train didn't leave until 1:30 am, so we booked a room for four at that hotel so we could have a place to put our bags and nap (25 Bs a person per night!). Outside of our room's door there was a very large second floor hallway that functioned as a balcony since the hotel was roofless. Inside our room was freezing, so we decided to relocate to this balcony to rest. In a matter of minutes, our "yale" friends showed up and dropped their things off in the two rooms next to ours! A half an hour later, one of the men from the American group who gave us tipping advice showed up, having had rented a room for the night, and joined our circle. After a couple hours of chatting and trading advice/suggestions for traveling around South America, we split up to go find somewhere to eat. We ended up at this Pizza place "Minutemen Pizza" recommended by the Lonely Planet book. It's owned by an American who lives in Boston. Of all places to open a pizza place, I'm not sure what possessed this man (who still lives in Boston) to choose Uyuni, Bolivia. However, I'm glad he did because this was by far the best meal I'd had in Bolivia thus far. The cheese in Bolivia is sub-par at best, but this restaurant actually imports cheeses from abroad. Not long after we ordered our pizza the French guys came into the restaurant and took the table next to us. They'd seen the recommendation in the Lonely Planet book as well! By the way, this restaurant was so green they didn't allow you to take glass or plastic bottles out of the restaurant because they use them to serve lemonade and other drinks in. It surpassed any "green" restaurant I've seen in the states, and is, up til now, the only attempt at being green I've seen in Bolivia. After we ate our pizza we ordered some tea. At this point the American who gave us tipping advice and is staying in our hotel walked in and got a table. Not long after that the "yale" group walked in and ordered food. Do you remember the hipster and wannabe british hipsters we'd seen along our tour? They both showed up too! Apparently everyone reads Lonely Planet Bolivia, and they all follow it. The French guys told us they were off to Lake Titicaca in a couple of weeks, and as a matter of fact, Claire and I are planning to go this weekend! We told them we might see them there, and one of them said; "just follow the book and you'll be sure to find us! Live by the book!"

Monday:

We took a nap at 9:00 pm and set our alarms for 12:45 am. When we got up Claire was feeling feverish and awful, and Nina was still under the weather. We helped Claire carry her things, and we got everyone onto the train to Oruro with the tickets that the tour company had helped us to get a few days previously. We spent the next several hours sleeping and got off the train (after watching more Just for Laughs skits as we had on the way up) at 8:50 am. At this point we were all ready to be home so we grabbed the very first bus to Cochabamba.

When we got on the bus at 9:40 am (scheduled to depart at 10:00 am), a man walked down the aisle and told Laura that she needed to put her bag (which was sitting on her seat at this point) up above her head in the space provided, not below her seat. Now, I'm not saying much for Bolivian uniforms, but this guy did not look like he worked on this bus, or any bus. He looked filthy and I could see that his eyes were bloodshot. He walked back towards the front of the bus and we all decided to ignore him and do with our bags what we wanted. Especially because we'd all been on Bolivian buses before and at no point has anyone told us we couldn't put something below our seat. A couple of minutes later, as we debated going back into the terminal to use the bathroom, the man returned. He was carrying a can of coins and he deliberately bumped into Laura (who was standing in between her seat and the seat in front of her while her bag rested on her seat). As he bumped into her he dropped his coins and asked Laura to pick them up for him. She, being an intelligent girl, declined, and this guy and his buddy started haphazardly bumping into her, picking up her change, all the while trying to thrust their hands into her backpack. Claire (sitting next to her) reached over and put her hand on the backpack, and Laura stood her ground. The two men finally left after picking up all of their change, without successfully taking anything from her bag. The whole act was really shoddily put together and it was entirely obvious what they were doing, but it still outraged us that A) this happened and no one around us did anything, B) they targeted us, the whitest people on the bus and no one else, and C) that he put his hands on her side to try to fluster her into letting go of her bag. I mean, stuff like this happens in Bolivia and everywhere in the world, and I realize we were lucky that we still had enough wits about us to shake these losers off. I just can't help being disappointed and frustrated. Laura and I left to run to the bathroom while Claire and Nina hugged all of our possessions with steel grips. As we got off the bus I recognized the bloodshot-eye guy standing by the drivers seat about to get off the bus, so I gave him an extra hard shove as I squeezed past (it was a crowded aisle and everyone was shoving to get to their seats so it wasn't completely out of nowhere). He and his buddy weren't on the bus when we left the terminal. They were just lucky that I didn't grab the mace that was in my duffel bag under my seat.

Are you wondering what movie we watched on the bus? If you've been reading my blog you should assume that it involved lots of car crashes or bus accidents. You're right! We watched the Book of Eli which included several car crashes and car bombs. On our ride back to Cocha we saw a semi overturned on the side of the road.

4 and a half hours later I was walking back into my house in Cochabamba. I was tired, sweaty, and ready for a nap. As I walked through our living room, I noticed that Steph (my housemate) was sitting next to a guy.

That guy was none other than: the Idiot. From the La Paz trip. Remember him? This is the Brazilian med student who professed his love to me and then forgot my name. I walked right past him, turned around to be sure of what I'd just seen, and went straight to my room. Apparently he'd been here for a few days already, living in another volunteer house in an empty bed, trying to sort out some visa stuff in Cochabamba. Steph was visibly unhappy to be sitting in the same room as him, which I was surprised to see because she wasn't in La Paz with us to witness his idiocy. I asked her what was up and she said that Idiot was refusing to speak Spanish, only Portuguese. They were watching a world cup game and he would make frequent comments, only in Portuguese. Idiot showed up at my house for a few hours every day to watch the world cup or for various other reasons every day until this past Sunday, when he left for good. Or so I thought. Somebody rang the bell here late last night, and I swear it was him talking to Sarah at the front door. So- I'm still not sure if he's really back in La Paz. I will happily report that for his week here, he seemed less and less interested in me. He did start to refer to me as Hillary Clinton which is a surprisingly common occurrence here.

I'll update soon with a condensed version of what I've been up to for the past week!

Love always,

Hillary