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