Whirlwind Northern Chile: San Pedro, Calama, Iquique, Santiago, Viña, Valpo (10/31-11/8)

It was already time for our third border crossing, and we felt relaxed and prepared. Well, kind of prepared; we only had about $10 worth of Bolivianos, and no Chilean pesos, but we felt confident we could withdraw money upon arrival to San Pedro de Atacama, the tiny tourist town where border passengers arrive. The bus driver made a humorous announcement about needing to consume any illicit substances from Bolivia before reaching the Chilean checkpoint, and suggested any contraband be shared with the driver. Scott and I laughed until the driver mentioned that coca leaves constituted just such contraband... With a jolt I realized I still had some leftover coca leaves that I had never given to the miners in Potosi!
I was suddenly terrified I´d be sent back to the Bolivian border, several hours from the nearest town, when the Chilean officials (inevitably) discovered my contraband when they searched my luggage. As we disembarked, I asked the bus driver frantically what I should do, but he simply looked at me with knowing concern and gave me no advice. Should I hide the coca leaves deep in my bag and hope the drug dogs and x-ray scanners didn´t find it? Should I declare it immediately and suffer the consequences? I was practically shaking when I decided to mark ¨yes¨ to the question, ¨Do you have anything to declare?¨
The border official asked me sternly what I was declaring, and I quickly revealed the leaves, offering them to him pleadingly and trying to explain I hadn´t meant to bring them across. To my utter surprise, he cut me off with a wave of his hand, and indicated I should keep moving. And that is how I accidentally and with full knowledge of the officials smuggled coca leaves into Chile. (As it turns out, you can buy coca leaves in Chile as well, though in smaller quantities and in more localized shops.)


San Pedro de Atacama
We changed my bolivianos to Chilean pesos upon arrival to this shockingly touristy town, grabbed some lunch (at 3,000 pesos each, we realized it would take us some time to adjust to the new exchange rate). Then we set off in search of an ATM. We soon found that there were three ATMs in town, and they were all out of money. In the midst of our mounting panic, we were informed that there would be no new influx of pesos into the town until Wednesday (it was Monday, and Halloween, incidentally), and there was only one hotel in town that would accept credit cards - rooms there cost $200 USD per night. We concluded that our only option was to get out of San Pedro, which - due to its tourist entry location - was constantly being depleted of its cash sources anyway. The nearest town (and the only one within our extremely limited budget) was Calama, about two hours away, so we spent our final pesos on two one-way tickets.


Calama
We arrived in Calama around 10pm, with no money, no lodging, and no information about the city. Fortunately, we knew salvation was in sight when we spotted an ATM (a Scotiabank, no less!). Card in, PIN entered, money requested, and - Invalid Transaction. The ATM appeared to be broken. Undeterred, we moved on to the next ATM, only a hundred feet futher down the main street. Again, no money. As we repeated this dance over and over again, it started to become apparent that something more sinister was at play (and I´m not talking about the few children dressed as ghouls and touring the streets). Finally, a woman took pity on us and informed us that, because of the Todos Santos holiday, which had started the preceding Friday, the money in all the ATMs was depleted, and would not be replenished until the holiday ended on Wednesday. Looking around, we were appalled to realize she was right - other people were roaming the streets, zombie-like, clutching ATM cards in their fists and migrating hopelessly towards the mesmerizing lights of the myriad empty banks.

Calama, the star of the Atacama desert

We were stuck, again. With no money available until Wednesday, we needed to try and find a hotel that would either accept credit cards, or which would let us stay on good faith until then. The woman helping us warned against pitching our tent anywhere in or near town, assuring us we´d be killed and relieved of all our belongings before the night was through. A consensus appeared to be building - Calama was not a safe town. The woman offered to let us sleep in our tent on her porch, but Scott was leery of such unprovoked charity. Finally, after wandering with us to several hotels, none of which would accept two peniless travelers, the woman was able to convince a hotel owner to let us pay on Wednesday. Exhausted from walking and from the strain of feeling as though we were about to be robbed, we collapsed into our beds and slept soundly.

Thrilled with his newfound purchasing power

The next day, there was little hope of rescue from our predicament. It was November 2nd, and we needed to meet our parents in Santiago on November 5th, so time was precious, but we had no ability to escape that day. We wandered aimlessly that morning, using our final peso cents to buy each a small piece of bread - what was sure to be all we ate that day. As we wandered, however, we noticed a line of people outside an ATM that had given us an ¨Invalid Transaction¨ notice the day before. What´s more, it was a Scotiabank. Nearly shaking in anticipation, we approached, entered, and tried our cards - SUCCESS! Receiving money that moment was like being given a chance to live, and we quickly bought more breads, then bought tickets out of Calama for the following day.
Scott wanted to try and surf on the Chilean coast before we descended to the nation´s capital, and had identified a town called Iquique for its renouned surf. In a true display of idiotic planning, about five minutes before boarding the bus to Iquique, we finally checked a map - and found that Iquique was not, as we´d assumed, in the direction of Santiago, but rather it was several hours north on the Chilean coast. We were backtracking, inconveniencing ourselves, and increasing our required bus time, but at this point we had no choice. Minutes later, we were on our way.


Iquique

Harrassing the geese in Iquique

It turned out to be a good move. We arrived early in Iquique after an overnight ride, and the bus driver let us sleep in the bus until daylight, when it was safer and easier to explore. We first bought our tickets to Santiago for the next day (we were facing a 24-hour bus ride, eek!), dropped our bags at the station, then headed for the beach. Scott spent the day surfing, I spent the day recovering from the exhaustingly inadequate night´s sleep, lying on the beach and getting my ankles (the only thing exposed) sunburned.
We made dinner at the hostel, watched a bit of Seinfeld, and fell asleep.
The next day Scott was up early surfing, I did something else, we reconvened, caught our bus, and began our 24-hour journey to Santiago, and our parents´ loving arms.

Nothing says ¨reunited¨ like giant sandwiches

There was a marked difference between the movies shown in the Andean countries (mostly fight movies) and those shown in Chile: we watched Haichi (Richard Gere´s dog loves him), The Chronicles of Narnia II (Jesus saves some children), Mr. Popper´s Penguins (Jim Carey realizes the value of family with some flippered friends), and Fast Five (they played this at 11pm, after the kids - us? - were reasonably asleep).


Santiago, Viña, y Valpo
We had no trouble rendezvous-ing with our parents; as we walked down the street towards their Bed & Breakfast, we spotted two familiar silhouettes coming towards us...Naturally, our reunion meant eating fish, drinking beer, slurping ice cream, and enjoying an impromptu concert in the park.

Valparaiso

It was relaxing to finally have the planning process taken out of our hands, and I was eager to get to Patagonia, partly because I was sick of moving so quickly through Bolivia and northern Chile, partly because going to Patagonia meant fulfilling one of my life dreams. But first, we spent two nights in Viña del Mar, a wealthy coastal city about an hour from Santiago, and neighbor to Valparaiso, infamous for its funky personality and stunning street art. In Viña and Valpo (as the locals call them), we relaxed on the beach, wandered the streets, ate delicious seafood, and took in the wild graffiti (and dancing clown show?). Despite the weird, attention-starved proprietor of our B&B (where we were the only guests), we had a relaxing, lovely time on the coast, punctuated by much wine and catching up. Before we knew it, the downtime was over, and we were catching a plane, Patagonia-bound. If you ever fly LAN, know that beer is one of the complimentary drink options.

Potosi & Uyuni: we finally escape Bolivia (10/27-10/31)

We´d had enough of La Paz. We navigated ourselves to the city terminal, where we got completely lucky and bought our tickets for half price from a woman who´d accidentally bought tickets to the wrong city, and couldn´t get a refund (doesn´t make sense, exactly, but then - what does in Bolivia?). When they took role on the surprisingly cushy bus (our Rurre standards were apparently lower than the rest of the country´s transit), Scott and I responded to Noemi and Margarita, respectively. The bus took us overnight to the mining town of Potosi, renouned for its world production of silver, and the opportunity for tourists to interact with live dynamite.


Potosi

Some miners we met

We caught a cab from the Potosi bus terminal to the center of town for 10 bolivanos, and we took the second cab to quote us that price just to be sure it was a fair one. When we arrived in the center, however, the taxi driver looked pained when I handed him a 10 Bs. bill, and explained, as though to a child, that it was 10 bolivianos cada uno (each), and that I therefore still owed him 10. With practiced patience, I tried to explain to him that we knew it should only be 10 Bs. total since we´d talked with another taxi driver. He then tried to say that his pointing out a few important buildings on the 5 minute ride was worth us paying extra, but I knew I was right when, after only a moment or two, he got back in his cab with feigned exasperation. Score one for the gringa.
We were hungry. But, it being only 5:45am, we still had some time before anything (food, tours, etc) would open. We saw another backpack-clad tourist wandering dolefully around the main plaza, and joined forces (he turned out to be from Denver). Our game plan for the day was simple: we wanted to find a tour to take us exploring in the mines in the morning, then catch an evening bus to Uyuni, from where we would accomplish the last Bolivian task on our checklist - visiting the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Flats). At around 7:45am, the first tour agency opened, and we entered the doors of The Real Deal at the kind urging of one of the Bolivian proprietors. As it turned out, the company was only about a year old, and was working on establishing itself. Unlike the several other companies that offered mine tours, however, The Real Deal was opened by six former miners who were sick of tourism exploiting their lifestyle. The tour, therefore, was a bit more expensive than other operators, but we liked the idea of supporting a collective-style operation, and plus they offered us access to some of the less-explored mines (there are 10,000 miners in the mines throughout the city´s one mountain everyday).

Miners in the dark tunnels

Though we initially found his aggressive Spanglish and pitchy, drawn-out declaration of ¨my friiiiiiiiends¨ to be a bit abrasive, our guide, Ephraim, ended up making the tour truly unforgettable. Once we´d been outfitted in our mining outfits (the man tying my belt confirmed my fitness to enter the mines by poking me in the stomach and demanding, ¨no babies?¨), Ephraim reiterated the fact that he himself had been a miner by introducing us to several of his friends at the Miner´s Market. This, of course, was not unlike a regular market, except that its most valuable commodities were fruit juice, coca leaves (which the miners, who ate nothing during their 10-hour work days in order to keep the call of Mother Nature at bay, chewed ceaselessly), liter bottles of 96% alcohol (the miners asked the Pachamama - Mother Earth - for pure ore, therefore they must drink pure alcohol), and dynamite. At Ephra´s urging, we all purchased several gifts for the miners, which we then distributed throughout our tour to the grateful miners.
We then visited a refinery, where the raw material was crushed, then underwent chemical refinement, before it could be shipped off for industrial purposes. The majority of the ore extracted these days from the mountain is a mixture of zinc, copper, and silver, and the three are kept together for export. In addition, the mine functions as groups of independent operators; father-son-cousin teams work their own hours and reap their own profits from distinct regions of the mines.

60 vertical feet of wormhole ladders

Then it was time to enter the mines. Equipped with rather flimsy pants and jackets, to repel the dust in the mines; bandanas to keep the dust from our lungs; hard hats; head lamps; and normal rubber rainboots, we - with minimal fanfare - entered the mines. Though the passages varied in size, shape, and quantity of wastewater pooling in the recesses around our feet, most of the time we were bent at the waist, scrabbling along in the darkness, eyes trained upon the rear of the person in front of you. In certain passages, the dust stirred up by the mining operations burned your lungs and eyes, and it was hard not to imagine the microscopic particles moving deeply into the alveoli of your lungs, where they would cause permanent damage. We followed a main tunnel with a five-foot ceiling, passing adjoining tunnels on the left and right, which wound mysteriously upward, sideways, or down into blackness. Open mine shafts abounded, some with the unmistakeable sounds of men at work wafting up from who knows what depts. The miners we met along the way were cheerful, industrious, and seemed not at all bothered by this lone tour group, penetrating the deepest crevices of their lifeblood.
At one point, Ephra stopped and indicated a rock fall to our right. ¨My friiiiiiends,¨ he crooned, ¨we climb through there, one by one.¨ Our gazes followed his outstretched hand to the top of the rock slide, where an impossibly tiny nook revealed itself as more than just a recess. Scrambling up the debris pile, we took turns crawling, on our hands and knees, through about 15 feet of subterranean hell, before emerging in a much larger chamber on the far side. Panting, forgetting the dust and inhaling the stale air with gusto, we didn´t realize that the true surprise was yet to come...
Ephra led us a few hundred feet down the cavernous passage, then stopped and turned. We all stopped as well, and caught our breath. There, sitting with sinister poise on a rock ledge, and glaring fixedly into our souls with devil eyes, sat a horrifying figure made of wood and adorned with cigarettes, bottlecaps, and confetti.

Tio

¨El Tio,¨ Ephra breathed.
The Uncle.
We arranged ourselves near this mystifying deity, and Ephra explained to us that the miners worshipped both the Pachamama, or Mother Earth, and the Tio, who he likened to a benevolent devil (?). Tio rules the underworld, or the world of the miners, and to ensure purity of ore and safety from accidents, the miners often surround this statue, shower it with cigarettes, 96% alcohol, and - once a year - the blood and heart of a llama, which they sacrifice in Tio´s honor. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I realized how deep underground we were and how insufficient my sense of direction would be to lead me out.
I asked everyone to put out their headlamps and hold still, and we all endured the most complete blackness possible on this planet.
When we finally exited the mines, after a good number of Moria references and a harrowing climb up a 60-foot vertical later between mine levels, we´d given away most of our presents and knew the tour was drawing to a close. However, we´d been adamant on one more aspect of the tour, which Ephra begrudgingly gave us. A dynamite show.
With the deft skill and affinity for nitroglycerin that earned him the nickname ¨Master of Disaster,¨ Ephra unpacked several sticks of dynamite and reassembled them in a plastic bag with one long fuse. He´d warned me there were only two minutes between the lighting of the fuse and the detonation, during which time he passed the bomb around to the more daring of the tour group for our photo-snapping pleasure. Then, with only something like 40 seconds to spare (I´d set my stopwatch), he dashed away with the explosive. He ran maybe 200 meters, then dropped to his knees and began packing the bomb into the dry earth. He seemed to be doing it with extreme care and attention, but with only 10 seconds left until detonation, I yelled to him to run. He did not hurry until he was satisfied with the job he´d done, and - thank goodness - it turned out the fuse was two and half minutes long.
The dynamite blast was formidable, to say the least, and knocked the breath out of more than one of us! It was hard to imagine these kinds of blasts happening within the mine, and easy to imagine the results of any miscalculations.

Not as cool as an elephant graveyard, but still...

Back in town, we had lunch of llama burgers (quite gamey), then Scott and I grabbed a bus to Uyuni, and to our last night in Bolivia.


Uyuni Tour
We arrived in Uyuni around midnight, quickly grabbed a hostel, and woke early to find a tour operator that would take us to the salt flats that very day. As is the case with all of Bolivia´s attractions, the Salar de Uyuni can only be reached by tour. Of course, this necessarily means there are hundreds of tour companies, all offering the exact same product at slightly varying prices. Having slowly learned this, we picked one of the first companies with whom we spoke (they assured us they took precautions to protect the wildlife and natural fragility of the ecosystems involved - who really knows), grabbed some breakfast, and set out. Like I said, the three-day, two night tour follows a well-established formula, which consisted of the following:

Our  room - floor, walls, beds made of salt

Day 1.
1) Visit to the Train Graveyard. Cool if you like trains, also cool if you don´t, the Train Graveyard is - surprise - the end of an old train line, and features slowly rusting locomotives. Our new, baffled French friend got exposed to the hilarious phenomenon of a giant group of schoolchildren asking if they can each take individual pictures with Scott and me, because of our strange yellow locks (blondes really DO have more fun).
2) Colchani: last stop to buy cheap Bolivian crafts and goods. I bought an alpaca sweater. Someone else bought socks.
3) Salt mountain viewing. The area where salt is piled into pyramids and left to dry by natural forces; this is  one step in the refining process of mining salt.
4) Visit to the salt hotel. The salt hotel is a structure made entirely of salt in the middle of the enormous salt flat. It´s unclear why you stop there, except to take cool pictures where you use the distorted perspective of the salt flats to make tiny versions of people appear to be standing on other people´s heads/palms/tongues.
5) Lunch, then hike to the peak of the Fish Island, or Incawasi. Upon climbing to the top of this small ¨island,¨ we could see the salt flat extend for miles (the salar is 12,000 sq meters)!

View of the infinite salar

6) Drive to salt hostel, dinner, sleep.


Day 2.
1) Visit to first altiplano lake. ...with FLAMINGOES!
2) Visit to second altiplano lake, lunch.
3) Volcano vista. We were allowed to walk around for approximately 22 minutes in a sloping canyonlands, from which we could see a huge volcano in the relative distance.
4) Visit Rock Tree. An amazing natural rock structure that roughly resembles a tree, yet most people used it as an opportunity to fight gravity and the roaring winds and climb the other assorted rock formations, under some of which we found snow (it´s that cold in the altiplano desert)!

Altiplano lake #1 - Scott in the distance

5) Visit Laguna Colorada. Red lake. No other way to describe it, but this huge and incredibly shallow lake has enormous mounds of white borax rising throughout, is dotted with flamingoes, and, because of chemical reactions that occur in certain microorganisms in response to the heavy winds, is bright red.
6) Hostel, dinner, sleep.


Day 3.

Laguna Colorada

1) Geyser viewing. We awoke at 4am to make it to the geysers for sunrise, and viewing of the extreme geothermal activity of the region. One tourist warned us that some Americans a year before had gotten too close to one of the innocuous-enough-looking mudpots, fallen in, and were burned to death.
2) Swimming in the hot springs. In the cold glare of about 7am, we joined maybe 50 other tourists in a large hotsprings pool, which was not only the closest thing we´d had to a shower in a few days, but also helped fight the morning chill. Our particular group spent so long at the springs that we didn´t have time to stop at Laguna Verde, which was just as well, considering the lack of winds meant it wasn´t green today.
3) Visit to Laguna Verde. See above.
4) Border crossing OR seven-hour return drive to Uyuni. Along with the Frenchman, we left our jeep and new friends, received our Bolivian exit stamps, and climbed into a bus for the hour-long ride to the Chilean border checkpoint.

Geothermal ¨activity¨

Overall, the whole thing seemed rather poorly planned, as the vast majority of the tour consisted of riding in the back of a bumpy jeep with strangers, occasionally leapfrogging other groups on the exact same itinerary. Our group, however, which was led by a hands-off, quiet guide who only told us the bare minimum about each location, consisted of a family of Argentinians and a Frenchman. Our common language being Spanish, we got lots of good practice, and I got to dust off my long-unused French, and slowly cleanse it of the strange Spanish accent it now bore.

Rurrenabaque (10/19-10/27)

After a few days of recovery (read: large amounts of internet and several cakes), it was on to the next bullet on our Bolivia checklist: the jungle. At the suggestion of about every traveler we´d met, in addition to the advice of one of my best friends back home, we decided to head to Rurrenabaque, a small jungle oasis located a few hundred kilometers roughly north of La Paz. While there were tours available to the town, we booked our own transportation - a 20-hour bus that supposedly left at 11am. In actuality, at 11am the packing of the bus was well underway, but nowhere near complete. We watched, fascinated, as several men continued to pack pieces of furniture, smaller vehicles, and enormous bags of potatoes, toys, and rice into, onto, and inside of the bus. It seemed impossible that the rickety auto would make it out of La Paz, much less to the jungle!

Man using power lines to steady himself

However, they eventually packed everything in to their satisfaction - which included pulling a giant tarp over everything stacked precariously on top of the bus, presumably to hold it all on - and we embarked. Unlike most (all?) of the buses in Ecuador and Peru, this bus had no TV. On a normal bus ride, this wouldn´t be a problem; Scott and I somehow always find things to talk about, we´re both expert bus sleepers, and there´s always Categories to play. On this bus, though, distraction was essential, but in short supply.

The average speed of the bus was probably 15 miles per hour.
The 15 mph average is not including the frequent, unexplained, 10-minute stops.
After the first two hours, the road turned to gravel, then to dust and small, inopportunely-placed pebbles.
It was hot.
And I had to pee.

We finally stopped after dark in a strange small town that appeared to be comprised entirely of restaurants advertising dinner menus for the bus passengers. We ate, got back on the bus, and continued on. The next day, after being thoroughly rocked by the rollicking bus all night and morning, we arrived in Rurrenabaque. Interestingly, in the days before we left La Paz, there had been large protests against a highway into the jungle, which the government was supposedly building for ¨development.¨ The last two or three hours before arriving in Rurrenabaque - or Rurre, as it is affectionately called by both its inhabitants and foreigners who can´t roll their R´s - we were fairly certain that our bus was traveling this very contentious road. Huge backhoes (or car smashers, as we like to call them) blocked our way as they cleared a 60-foot wide highway through the dry trees, stirring up dust so thick there was no way our driver could see through it (this didn´t stop him from ploughing ahead recklessly, though).
We arrived in Rurre eager to book a tour into the jungle, but it turned out we´d barely missed the tour departures that day, and we´d need to spend a night in town and leave the following day. We wasted several hours trying to find a cheap hostel (we finally found one along with a Swiss couple we´d been chatting with, but they only had one room available, so we ceded it to them), but finally succeeded with a centrally-located room, fully equipped with a TV and a patio full of hammocks. We then wasted the rest of the day visiting nearly all of the 30 or so tourist agencies in town, trying to decide if we wanted to take the pampas or the jungle tour. My vote was for pampas, a dry jungle where seeing wilk beasts was almost guaranteed, while Scott leaned towards the jungle, a more authentic camping-hiking experience, but with no guarantees about seeing any fauna. The tourist agencies offered essentially the exact same two trips, with slight variations in price and commitment to eco-tourism. We sat through ¨the pitch¨ so many times we could´ve recited it back to them verbatim, but each time I sneaked water from the ubiquitous coolers (it was hot!) and into my water bottle, so all was not for naught.

Intestine burrito...ugh

We also tried a local delicacy, thinking it looked awfully like a burrito. Instead, it was some kind of thick-walled, tubular body organ stuffed with rice and beef...not exactly appetizing, or sanitary.
We finally decided on a pampas tour with an ecologically-committed agency, and retired to our room with plans to pay in the morning. When morning came, however, and we asked locals where to find an ATM, they shook their heads sadly and informed us that, in this town where every new arrival is spending grandly to visit the jungle, there are no ATMs. Not a single one.
When we told this to the agent, she made some frantic phone calls, then told us she knew of a place we could do a cash advance. She then took us straight back to one of the agencies we´d spoken with the day before, where the cheery Dutch employee joked with us that we hadn´t picked her tour, then called us ¨motherfuckers¨ (I think she thought it was an endearing term, but we were quite shocked). Money in hand, some breads in our pockets, we were finally ready to go, and were loaded into a Jeep with two other tourists (a 55-year-old couple from Italy).

On the motorized canoe, heading into the jungle

What followed was the dustiest three hours of my life, on a bumpy, sweltering road to the pampas. We stopped for lunch and met the rest of our tour group - two French girls, a Polish couple, and the aforementioned Italians (who caused constant havoc because they were devout vegans). We also met our guide, Roberto, an affable Bolivian with an astounding knowledge of birds.
With no further ado, the group donned hats, poured on sunscreen, crowded into a motorized canoe, and we were off! We spent the majority of the tour in this canoe, snapping photos left and right of the plentiful wildlife, and letting our oohs! and ahhs! get slightly less enthusiastic after the hundredth caiman sighting.
Animals we saw throughout the three-day tour:

Capybara mudfest

-Caiman. We saw about 800 caiman overall, ranging from about 12 inches to 8 or 9 feet long, the most frightening of which was the Black Caiman, said to eat human babies, monkeys, and even other caiman (Roberto later contradicted himself by saying they were scavengers).
-Capybaras. My favorite of the animals we saw, these slow-moving mammals resemble pig-bears, and specialize in moving slowly, staring, and wallowing in mud. They also have a charming habit of sitting on their haunches and gazing into the distance - based on their commitment to meditation, there is no doubt in my mind that these are very spiritual beings.
-Monkeys: capuchin, squirrel, and howler. These lost their charm after a bit, largely because the boat erupted with squeals of delight whenever any of them appeared. Also, the Polish boy would inexplicably whistle obnoxiously at all wildlife, but the monkeys especially elicited this response from him.

Anaconda - for JP

-LOTS of birds, the coolest of which we deemed ¨The Bouncer¨ - a 3-foot-tall stork-like beast with hunched shoulders, knobby knees, and a no-nonsense, straight forward stance. I also had the luck to spot a pink egret, which no one else saw, but which was flamingo colored, enormous, and impossibly elegant.
-Cobra. We went on a seemingly ill-advised search for anacondas in the tall grass near the river, wearing faulty rubber boots as our only protection against anything that might be concealed beneath the four-foot-tall grasses. Roberto snagged a six or seven-foot long cobra, then held it while we all oohed and ahhed and our cameras clicked away. Then, without any warning, he released it, and we all stood, transfixed and terrified to breathe, as the snake slithered slowly away.
-Anaconda. After patiently waiting in the hot sun as Roberto and another guide scoured the grasses, their efforts were rewarded with the capture and ogling of a six-foot anaconda. The Polish kid put his face about six inches away from it in order to snap a truly impressive photo.

Pirhanas we swam with

-Piranhas. All the tours advertised fishing for piranhas, and most also said we´d be eating the piranhas as a pre-dinner snack. However, Roberto sat us all down in the evening, and gave us a very solemn and apologetic speech on how we would not be eating the piranhas, because the pink dolphins who lived in the river needed 500 pounds each per day of piranha to survive (mistranslation?), and therefore it was irresponsible to deplete their food source. No one had any problem with this logical and compassionate explanation, but Roberto´s unceasing apologies made me think more aggressive tourists might demand to partake in this unsustainable practice. I tried to reassure him, encouraging him to convince other guides to do the same, and he explained that he and some other guides would be opening their own agency soon, which would feature truly sustainable ecotourism. Naturally, I was elated at this.
-Pink dolphins. We swam in the murky waters with these elusive beasts, which really are quite rosy-colored. However, we also swam with piranhas and caiman, and I´m fairly certain a piranha bit me in the armpit, prompting me to retire to the banks.

Swimming with the pink dolphins...and pirhanas!

Upon return to the boat docking point (and in great anticipation for the dustiest-ever three-hour ride back to relative civilization), we had a very startling moment: as I disembarked from the boat, I glanced up, only to recognize the long dreadlocks and strikingly Tarzan-like features of one Dorf The Surfer, who initially told us about the dead man in Montañitas, Ecuador, and later cropped up striding along the Panamericana in Mancora, Peru. We had seen the same guy, completely randomly, in three separate countries - the Gringo Trail, it is my pleasure to report, is alive and well. Dorf, of course, not having realized how much he´d touched our lives, had no clue who we were, and smiled politely, nonchalantly dropped a few surfing terms, alluded to the parties in La Paz, and went on his merry way. We may yet see him again...

Dirtface

The Jeep trip back to Rurre was dustier than the initial trip had been. One of the French girls fell asleep with her face towards the open window, and when we finally got out, her face was caked in a layer of dust about a cm thick - except where her sunglasses had blocked the onslaught. She looked like she was a Claymation character.
Because our time in Bolivia was somewhat rushed (we had plans to meet our parents and go to Patagonia in early November), we booked tickets for a bus out of Rurre for that evening, at 10:30pm. First, though, we had to stop by the one bar in town and have a goodbye drink with our tour group, of whom we´d grown rather fond. Arriving back at the bus station at 10:10pm, the man who´d sold us our tickets informed us that the bus had already left, claiming he´d told us to be there at 10pm, and (in somewhat contradicting terms) that he´d held the bus for us for 25 minutes, and that it had only just pulled away. We were baffled, angry, and probably incoherent as we pointed out the departure time on our tickets, to which he shrugged and suggested we take a taxi to catch the bus at the next town. When we looked into this, however, the taxi driver looked us over once, then offered to take us for a price five times greater than what we´d paid for the bus in the first place. We were disgusted, and I was thoroughly sick of getting swindled.
I marched into the tiny bus office, and, in the oppressive jungle heat, informed him with the greatest authority I could muster that the ticket salesman would be giving us a full refund. He laughed caustically in my face. So, in a move I´d like to describe as resolute, but which is probably better described as childish, when he got up from the one seat in the office to make a transaction, I sat firmly down in his chair, and announced to the assorted baffled male employees that I would not be moving from that seat until they gave me my money back, and that I fully intended on sleeping in the plastic chair if my (entirely reasonable) demands were not met.
They gawked.
When this produced no results, and the salesman had even left the office, I was so frustrated and desperate to get back to La Paz that I turned beseechingly to a younger employee and simply asked him, ¨Que puedo hacer?¨ (¨What can I do?¨) Perhaps taking pity on me, and perhaps just wanting to get this volatile gringa out of his office (more likely), he refunded one of the two tickets, then suggested I might still be able to get on a bus headed to La Paz that night, as one of the other companies had a bus that was severely delayed.
30 minutes later, Scott and I were stashed at the back of a return bus watching lightning and trying not to feel the violent potholes transfering their vibrations directly to our buttocks. The road was so bumpy, in fact, that often we´d hit a pothole that would throw all 45 passengers out of their seats, which would´ve been comical had it not hurt so much...
The ride back was, if possible, worse than the ride out, and we slept almost not at all. the highlight was returning to the same city that featured only dinners a few nights before, and which featured only breakfasts now. Another highlight was an increasing chain of hundreds of cars and buses stopping for over an hour on the dusty, unpaved road, for absolutely no reason. Typical Bolivia.
We arrived back in La Paz exhausted, dusty, sweating, and starving. Wandering the streets back to our hostel (which featured toilets with no toilet paper and a receptionist who laughed mockingly when you requested some), we ran into the now-infamous Mole Kid Mike, the one who´d had his mole punched off in Cuenca, Ecuador. Unlike when we ran into him in Peru, he was delighted to see us. Just like in Peru, he was still cool, still had no mole, and had an attractive girl in tow. Oh, Gringo Trail.

Huayna Potosi: The Hardest Thing I´ve Ever Done (10/18-10/19)

I try not to overuse superlatives, as there´s always the possibility of going off the deep end into hyperbole, but sometimes they really are the absolute best expression of an activity. I am well aware I already characterized climbing Cotopaxi as ¨the hardest thing I´ve ever done,¨ and I don´t want readers to think that I throw that phrase around lightly, but - quite honestly - I found something that surpassed Cotopaxi in difficulty. Its name - quite innocent, actually - is Huayna Potosi (¨Young Mountain¨ in Quechua).

Huayna Potosi in full glory

Standing at 6,088 meters above sea level, this snow-capped peak can be climbed in two days, though three is recommended. Savoring the end of a 5 bolivano ($0.90) meal and leisurely drinking a beer at around 7pm one evening in La Paz, Scott and I considered the options. He really wanted to ¨bag¨* a 6,000-plus meter peak (*Lonely Planet Language), and I wasn´t about to be left behind in La Paz, although the idea absolutely terrified me. Maybe it was the half-beer, maybe it was the incredibly drunk Bolivian man who kept coming over to our table and yelling, ¨My name is...?¨ but I decided I´d go for it. Less than an hour later, we´d paid our Bs. 700, heard the spiel about what to bring (including chocolates, altitude pills, coca leaves), and committed to attempting this ridiculous feat.
The next morning, we arrived on time to the office, although it took quite some time for all of the equipment to be assembled. Only one other climber - an affable 36-year-old Danish man named Karsten - had opted for the two-day trek; most of the group was already at Base Camp. Two hours and one incredibly bumpy van ride later, we were eating lunch at Base Camp, listening to the warning of the group that had just returned.

Scott on a scree slope below the snow line

¨This is the hardest thing you will ever do.¨
¨I only made it to 6,000 meters...the last 88 really kill.¨
And, audibly, as they were climbing into the van, ¨Hah. They have no idea what they´re in for.¨

We packed our bags: ice pick, crampons, helmet, boots, snow-protection for our ankles, pants, jackets, and neck gators - combined with our sleeping bags and extra warm layers, it was about 35 pounds of equipment. So laden, we began our climb to High Camp. About two hours later, exhausted by the packs and the beauty of the surrounding peaks, we stumbled into High Camp, where bright sunshine, loud French people, and comfortable bunk beds greeted us. We spent the afternoon pretending to be bravely contemplating that night´s venture, including reading - and scoffing at - the myriad graffitis inside the refugio´s walls, mostly suggesting we turn back immediately.

The route to the top

We ate dinner of soup and pasta at 5pm, and a helpful Australian doctor suggested I could safely take up to twice my prescribed dose of altitude pills, should I begin to feel ill. Although, he warned, I might get tingly fingers. In my head I thought about punching him in the nose; I´d take tingly fingers over headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, upset stomach, loss of concentration, and temporary dementia any day of the week.
Around 6pm, we were urged to bed, and everyone spent the next 6 hours trying not to think. I took the opportunity to visualize myself reaching the top, ice pick waving valiantly in hand.
The only time I got up was to use the restroom, and when I went outside, the moon had not yet risen. The stars were clustered thick and bright over the blanketed snow, and the clouds - below me - glimmered in their faint light. I breathed deep and thought, ¨I can do this.¨
We got up to pitch darkness around midnight, put on our gear, and slung our light packs (water, chocolates, sunglasses, camera, my avalanche-whistle) over our shoulders. Then, headlamps turned on, crampons attached, and ice picks in hand, we began the long, slow climb into Moria. I mean Huayna Potosi. Now, if you are unfamiliar with crampons, as I was, you should know that they are basically heavy, inch-long spikes of metal that are attached to the bottom of ski boots; not exactly idea climbing footwear. In addition, my boots were a bit too big, since the next smallest pair was made for babies (incidentally, one of the graffitis at High Camp said, in sprawling, uneven handwriting: ¨Llegue con 9 años¨ - a 9-year-old summited).

Sunset at 5,300 meters

The first hour felt surprisingly good; I got into a rhythm with my ice pick on the steeper parts, where it was necessary to walk sideways. Plant ice pick and cross right foot over left, step left foot, extend knee and rest. One, two, three. One, two, three.
I purposely didn´t check my watch, nor did I ask our guide, Silverio, how high we were, since I had decided fewer indications of our (lack of) progress were better. At around 3:15am (we´d started at 1:45), we paused, and were informed we´d reached 5,500 meters. Scott was elated; I was crushed. We weren´t anywhere near halfway. I´d like to credit the altitude, but I got snappy. The words ¨no puedo¨ (because I was inexplicably speaking to myself in Spanish throughout most of the hike) crept into my mind. I forced myself to think about ten positive thoughts to counteract that single negative one that had crept, unbidden, into my mind. But the seed of doubt had been planted.
 Before continuing on, we switched off our headlamps; the moon was plenty bright to guide us. Up ahead, inconceivably high on the dark wall of snow ahead, we could see the lights of little triplets of climbers, tied together by safety ropes...they looked like the lights of the Polar Express, winding up, zig-zagging back and forth in the impossibly steep cold.

All geared up and rarin´ to climb!

We switched our  lights back on when suddenly a hulking darkness blotted out the moon. It was the steepest part in the trail, where we´d be ice climbing. The switchbacks grew narrower and steeper as we ascended the face, and soon Silverio turned to us and, without speaking, indicated how we were to dig our picks into the ice face directly above us, readjust our footholds a few inches higher, then loosen the pick and re-attack the face. A few harrowing minutes later, we were perched upon the top of the wall, shaking with cold and the nearness of disaster. By this point, it had gotten hard for me to breathe, and I could barely swallow the water Scott offered me. It was impossible to stop for long, as I was also freezing in the snow, and Silverio pulled my hood up over my  helmet and zipped me deeper into my jacket. Unfortunately, it was almost impossible to continue without resting, so I slipped into a personal hell of cold fatigue. While we were moving, I did fine, wondering if llamas had to acclimatize at altitude, and mentally humming (for whatever reason) ¨Home on the Range¨ and the UCSB fight song, but changing the words to ¨Olay, olay olay olay, cum-bre, cum-bre¨ (cumbre means peak in Spanish). But when we stopped, however briefly, I had to fight down the panic that was rising within me, as I imagined the blood freezing in its arteries on the way to my brain. At one point, breathing hard, Silverio instructed Scott to feed me altitude pills to fend off the terrified feeling.

I swear, it´s steeper than it looks

Just before the sun rose was the hardest part. We´d been hiking for over three hours, my body was exhausted, my mind was reeling, I demanded rest at every flat spot, and putting one foot in front of the other required all the strength I felt was left in my body. It was then that Silverio paused, turned to me, and said simply, ¨el sol viene.¨ Behind me, just beyond his outstretched finger, beyond the clouds that blanketed the world below, beyond the edge of oblivion, I could see the faint glow of the sunrise.
The next half hour was made slightly less difficult by the knowledge that soon the world would be thawed, softened, and warmed by that life-source. And yet the doubt kept growing. It was before the sun was fully in the sky, sprawled painfully in the snow during a brief rest, that I finally gave voice to my doubts. I knew Scott would summit, and the travel agent had explained to us that if one person wanted to descend, they would do so with a guide, but that the other person could continue with another group. This was seeming more and more like an option. I felt so panicked by not being able to breathe that I was almost crying when I turned to Scott and told him, ¨I´m not sure if I can do this.¨ He was understanding, relaxed, unworried. Which actually endowed me with more motivation; maybe no one expected me to summit, which would make it all the more satisfying if I did.
But at the next break, I was in even worse shape. We´d reached a natural bridge over a crevasse, the sun was full in the early-morning sky, and another steep face rose above us, just to the right of a sheer rock face. I was lying in the snow, trying to summon whatever power was left in me, when Silverio pointed again. ¨Ves las rocas aca? Esta es la cumbre.¨ The summit was in sight. It was an hour and half of steep snow ridges from where we were sitting to the very highest point on the mountain. The despair in my chest turned to relief. I was half-crying, half-laughing, and because my cold lips and reeling mind had lost the ability to form words many hours before, Scott looked alarmed. But I stood up with renewed vigor, and - for the first time - I realized I might make it to the top. We were at 5,900 meters.

Sunrise, somewhere over the altitude where breathing´s possible

And so we pushed on. At the top of the next steep face, we ran into Karsten (we´d named him Captain Denmark for his nonchalant, but modest mentioning of the four Iron Man competitions he´d completed, along with Adventure Racing - a sport invented for those who think Iron Man leaves something to be desired, intensity-wise). He´d left before us, and made it to the summit before sunrise. He smiled and hailed us from afar, shouting questions and exclamations and taxing my ability to choke words out. He also said I looked better than Scott, a comment that Scott took very personally, and although I knew it to be far from the truth, I appreciated nonetheless.
But as he descended, and we´d had a moment to pause, the panic and inability to breathe came back with renewed force. I bent double over my ice pick, breathing shallowly and fighting tears. Again, I hope I can attribute this apparent loss of sanity to the altitude, but I felt truly terrible. Silverio turned to a descending guide and asked him to wait. Then he turned to me, and put his hand understandingly on my shoulder.

Summit: Lake Titicaca in the background

¨Si sientas bien, puedes subir. Pero si sientas mal, es mejor bajar, porque vas necesitar energia para bajar. Pero la decision es tuya.¨
- If you feel ok, you can summit. But if you don´t you should turn around, because you´re going to need energy for the hike down. The decision is yours.
I knew the answer, but it took me a few seconds to muster my voice. I breathed deeply a few times, calming the panic, looked him in the eyes, and gasped, somewhat savagely, I assume:
¨Voy a subir.¨
- I´m going to summit.

Silverio smiled, Scott probably grimaced, and I took another step forward. The final ascent was hard, maybe the hardest of the whole trek; it featured icy pinnacles, full jumps across 50-foot crevasses, and narrow shuffling over windy ridges.

Descent

The path upwards looked impossible, and there was one pause where we sat with a full thousand-meter vertical drop at our backs. But I could see the peak, and I was no longer worried; it might take three hours, but I was going to the top. I counted the steps in my head, and first I took 30 stops before pulling on the rope to indicate to Silverio, at the lead, that I needed to rest. The next time I took 40. The next time, I didn´t need to count, because we´d reached the summit.

There are no words in the English language to express what it felt like to reach the top. I don´t even think it´s worth it to try. I no longer felt like crying, but the simple, pure exhaustion that flooded my body was augmented by a small, cool pride, which grew as Scott and I rested at 6,088 meters, and Silverio took photos of us. It was 7:20am, 5h35 minutes after we´d begun.

Scott´s graffiti

We were at the top maybe ten or 15 minutes, and then we started back down. As it turned out, Silverio was right; you couldn´t just roll back down the mountain. Though the steps moving down were incomparably easier than those ascending, they still required a concerted effort.
Just after we descended from the rocky peak, too, a heavy cloud rolled in, bringing snow and silence with it. We´d hoped to see the startling vistas we´d missed at night, but the snowy clouds were too thick. They also made it impossible to measure progress, so I found myself lost in an impenetrable fog of timeless fatigue.

My graffiti (please excuse the effects of altitude)

We reached the refugio at around 9:30am, where we were fed soup (I had no appetite; the altitude also affects the digestive system) and allowed about 45 minutes to rest. Scott and I climbed into our bunks, laughing that we were expected to sleep while surrounded by a group of guffawing French 60-year-olds who hadn´t made it to the top, but who had apparently been guzzling booze all morning, then promptly fell asleep.
Silverio woke us what felt like minutes later. We packed our heavy bags, put our normal hiking shoes on, wrote our own graffitis, and spent an hour and half more descending to Base Camp. We deposited our equipment, climbed into a van, and rode back to La Paz, almost sleeping on the way, despite the violently potholed road.
Back in our hostel around 2:30pm, we fell into our beds. I awoke almost 18 hours later, exhausted and proud. I still can´t believe I did it.

Bolivian Lake Titicaca: Copacabana & Isla del Sol (10/13-10/18)

A quick disclaimer: the two towns mentioned in the title - Copacabana (like the Brazilian resort town) and Isla del Sol (literally ¨Island of Sun¨) would imply that we´d begun the tropical part of our trip. Sadly, this is not the case. At something like 3,800 meters, Lake Titicaca is frigid even on the sunniest of days.

Border Crossing: Characteristic poor planning

Looks innocuous enough....

As a citizen of the United States, it is obligatory to pay $135 for a Bolivian visa upon entry to the country. This relatively astronomical sum (a month in Peru costs about $600) had tortured both Scott and me for several weeks; we weighed the value of visiting the Amazon jungle and the mysterious Salar de Uyuni against our wallets, and in the end we´d decided (somewhat grudgingly) to make the intial investment in a country touted above all for its cheapness.

All ready for his border crossing! ...kind of.

Obtaining U.S. dollars to pay this sum, however, turned out to be a bit easier said than done. Our unwillingness to withdraw money from any bank but Scotiabank (Bank of America´s sister, no ATM charge), and Scotiabank´s policy not to dispense more than 100 USD per customer per day led us to embark on the border bus with only barely enough money to pay the crossing. I had $40 in reserve in addition to my $100 withdrawal, and Scott had his $100 plus about $30 worth of Peruvian soles...we were cutting it rather close. In addition, we lacked the 4x4 color photograph the U.S. State Department said we´d need, and Scott had lost both his immunization records and the copies of his immunization records somewhere back in Puerto Rico. Needless to say, we were a bit nervous upon arrival to the border crossing.
Fortunately, Scott was able to change his Soles for dollars (and my remaining Soles for dollars) on the Peruvian side of the border, and we happened to be carrying copies of our passports that the officials accepted as photos. As is becoming customary, the officials gave Scott trouble for having a water-stained passport, but eventually we got our visas, our entry stamps, and back on our bus. We had $5 USD and 3 Soles between us as we entered Bolivia.

Copacabana

Non-photoshopped image of the sunset from Copacabana

Arriving in Copacabana, in true fashion, we were informed that the city didn´t have any ATMs. Thankfully, this turned out to be faulty information, and - pockets full of bolivianos - we checked into our (unbelievably fancy) ho(s)tel (the State Dept also told us we´d need proof of hotel reservations in Bolivia in order to cross - they didn´t), then, along with a new friend, we headed to dinner. As we sat down, laughing, I joked that I was due to get sick soon, since several travelers had informed us Bolivian food was not exactly sanitary much of the time.



Isla del Sol: Sick Boy returns
This joke proved prophetic: on the boat to Isla del Sol the next morning, after boasting loudly that I never get seasick, I began to feel incredibly sick indeed. By the time we docked on the island, I was close to full stomach upheaval, and it was all I could do to stumble to a nearby patch of grass and fall to my knees. In a true homage to Sick Boy, I stayed in that exact spot for the next eight hours, belching noxious fumes and making speedy trips to the restroom.

View from my resting place, at sunset

By the end of the day, I was feeling somewhat better, and Scott and I finally rose, and were surprised to find that from a standing vantage point, it was possible to see that we were on a very thin isthmus, with an infinitely nicer, sandy beach on the other side. We crossed through the tiny town, plopped ourselves down on the beach, and leisurely set up our tent. It was about that time that I needed the restroom again, and was informed by every proprietor that the water had been shut off throughout the town...which made for an eventful night. Throughout the night, my stomach gurgled in harmony with the requisite guitar of the grungy Argentinian travelers camping nearby (Scott and I have begun to notice that traveling Argentinians, at least, are easily recognized by their dreadlocks, beaded accessories, barefootedness, musical instruments - the more homemade the better, and blankets spread across park benches with trinkets for sale. It will be interesting to see if Argentinians in their home country fall into our stereotype).

Incan creation site - do you see the puma head?

Scott and his holy water, next to the questionable source

The next day, feeling much better, we breakfasted, then embarked on a short hike to the Incan creation site before our early afternoon boat. After being ambushed by a man requiring a 10 boliviano checkpoint fee at a random spot along the trail, we caught up with a free tour, stopped at the entry ¨gate¨ (stone ruins), and listened in awe as the guide related how it used to be required to enter the site on your knees, and that non-believers who visited the site would sometimes be struck dead upon exiting through the holy gates. Which didn´t exactly make sense, considering the tour guide presumably has led this tour before, and probably wouldn´t be invited back if 90% of his tour group died each time. Interestingly, he claimed that tourists often found their watches or cameras stopped functioning upon entering the sacred site, but assured us they´d work again when we left (mine worked the whole time, but then again there is a certain power that comes with being Sick Boy). Upon entering, we were led to La Roca Sagrada - the Sacred Rock (not to be confused with La Piedra Sagrada - the Sacred Stone) - which was supposed to resemble a puma, one of the Incans´ sacred animals. I was thrilled at recognizing the profile of the lean form of a puma´s body spanning the linear stone, until the guide explained we should be able to see only the puma´s face, from a head-on view. According to legend, this rock is where humans began. It is also where the guide on the free tour tells you that the tour is not, in fact, free, and that there is a mandatory tip of 10 bolivianos. Tipping less, as did an Italian tourist who´d only just arrived, gets you a public shaming.
We then briefly visited a sacred springs, and the guide used Scott´s empty Quina Kola bottle to offer the springwater to the assemblage. Everyone drank from the spring for its purported healing qualities. My stomach had only just returned to semi-normal, so it seemed like a great idea to drink unfiltered water from some mossy-looking rocks in Bolivia. It was actually really delicious, and didn´t make me sicker (Sick Boy power, I´m telling you!).
On the boat back to Copacabana, Scott and I amused ourselves by betting about how many times the American tourist sitting across from us would say ¨uhh....SI!...¨ in response to the soft-speaking Bolivian boy attempting to chat with him in Spanish. We stopped counting at 45 times, after about ten minutes.
Our boat docked just in time for us to book a ticket to La Paz for that night, and we paid extra in order to be put on the ¨tourist bus,¨ which would drop us at the Terminal, rather than the sketchy neighborhood the locals landed in.

Hey! ...that doesn´t look like chicken...typical Bolivian fare

We grabbed some breads for dinner, then headed back to catch our bus. Upon arrival, the woman who had sold us the tickets frantically grabbed the tickets from my hand, replaced them with different tickets, and shepherded us away from the large, tourist-y bus, and towards a smaller bus of questionable road worthiness. I had the sneaking suspicion that this woman intended to put us on the cheaper, non-tourist bus, which would drop us at 11pm in the most dangerous part of La Paz, and thereby pocket the extra money we´d paid for the more expensive, safer bus (see, Mom? we at least try to be safe). I questioned her repeatedly to this effect, and she reassured me that she was putting us on the right bus. There was nothing more I could do, and - with deep misgivings - we got on the bus.
An hour or so into the bus ride, just as I was settling into one of my familiar bus-naps, the lights suddenly came on and we were all bidden to descend. Groggy, confused, and mistrustful, Scott and I were guided - along with the rest of the passengers - through the near-pitch darkness to a small dock at the edge of a large, dark lake. We watched, mystified, as our bus was loaded onto a barge, and we were loaded into a speedboat, and ferried across the narrow leg of what must have been Titicaca. This was one of the first of many incidents that would only happen in Bolivia.

Late-stage alpaca fetuses

Much to our surprise, when the lights of La Paz first appeared below us in a deep canyon, a group of girls on our bus burst suddenly into song - ¨Oh, linda La Paz!¨ (Oh, beautiful La Paz) - and startled everyone who had been sleeping. We began descending into the incredibly dirty, hectic city, nearly killing pedestrians at every corner. When we finally arrived, we immediately recognized we were at nothing so much as resembling a terminal - we´d literally stopped in a wide part of the street, and people were descending from the bus. At the prompting of a helpful girl who´d taken pity on us, I asked the driver to either take us to the terminal, or give us our money back. He responded sadly (and, I think, truthfully) that the woman who had sold us our tickets had only paid him the amount for the cheaper bus, and must´ve pocketed the rest. It was a rather small sum, but I was furious - we´d done everything in our power not to be swindled, only to find ourselves taken advantage of. This would be a common theme throughout our time in Bolivia.

La Paz
The woman who´d suggested I talk to the driver warned us that the area was, indeed, incredibly dangerous, and offered to let us ride in her colectivo to the town´s center. Along with two other bewildered tourists, we followed her as she led us to a hotel she deemed safe, then bartered a price for us. Of course, when she left it turned out she´d gotten a room for the four of us that only had three beds, so we wearily worked out our own deal.

The ¨trail¨ through Valle de la Luna

We spent a few days in La Paz, of which the highlights were:
-trying to watch the 49ers game in any of the backpackers´ hostels, only to find the game wasn´t broadcast in the city
-getting grossed out at the alpaca fetuses at the Witches Market - the fetuses are buried under new homes for good luck
-buying salteñas (tasty empanada-like snacks filled with potatoes, chicken, or meat), tucumanas (similar snacks that are fried, rather than baked), and rellenos (meat and potatoes packed inside a fried ball of potatoes, rice, or plantains) multiple times per day at a specific corner
-using the really fast internet!
-visiting Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) just outside of La Paz. The Valle is a rocky park featuring strange, moon-rock-like minnarets and pinnacles, deep crevices, and dizzying drops.



Then Scott got the brilliant idea to try climbing the giant mountain next to La Paz, and I wasn´t about to be left behind.