फोल्लोविंग थे विन्डिंग road

After Cochabamba we left for an overnight bus ride to Sucre. We ended up in a quaint little town with beautiful white washed buildings and a track record of safety. We stayed in a beautiful hostal complete with hot water and German orphanage volunteers. It was one of the cleanest hostals I have stayed in so far which made me nostalgic for all things American. Say what you want about our country but we certainly are one of the world leaders on hygienic conditions. Places may be dubbed ´gross´by our standards in the states but you can rest assured that you will have toilet paper, seat covers and a place to toss it all. Here in Bolivia it is a way of life to live in squalid conditions. Trash is thrown onto street corners to be picked up vagrants in the middle of the night. We have yet to find trash facilities or dumpsters readily available. In fact, at the beginning of our Bolivian adventure Noel tried to throw a piece of plastic into a vendor´s trash can where the vendor was absent. He was in for a rude awakening when the vendor came running from the street (not his store) to tell him to put that piece of plastic back in his pocket! All the same, whereever you put trash it is almost entirely in the hands of the person to discard of it. We have seen numerous trash fires spread out throughout the land and it really is a pity to see such waste. We sometimes forget, though, that the trash man, the recycle man and the yard waste man do not just magically show up every Monday here in Bolivia. Trash is your problem, not the communities. It definitely makes it hard to judge because people do not have the luxuries that we have at home.

Also, after having a hot shower this morning I am compelled to muse over other basic luxuries we take for granted. Every time we get a hot shower I am entirely impressed by the ability to produce hot water. It is a different process here. If you want hot water it is heated directly by your shower head instead of a water heater. That can mean that you have anywhere from one second to five minutes of luke warm to hot water. You have to choose your shower carefully as one shower may be frigidly cold and the other bearable. Life can still be good without hot showers. Life just is heaven when you finally do get nice warm water.

It is funny that I decide to write this as I am in one of the cleaner towns...Potosi...set in the central highlands of BO. Sucre was also clean and welcoming which lead me to recall that I´ve seen quite a lot of filth around. There is no such thing as clean tap water here in Bolivia so we have been relying heavily on our purifying water bottles and store bottled water. At home in the states I am a model of health drinking 8 -10 glass-of-water-a-day but here I fear I have let myself slip a bit due the absence of fresh water. We make up for our water intake by getting lots of fresh juice when we can... The batidos and jugos made in the mercados are a force to be reckoned with. Two types to try out of the endless varieties would be frutilla (strawberry), naranja (orange) y mango mezclado (mixed). One of my personal favorites is sandia (watermelon) y tuna (cactus fruit). Impresionante!

Life here in Bolivia is cheap and good. I am beyond thankful that my travel buddies talked me into this particular route. I would have missed out on so much culture, naturleza (nature) and architectura (architecture). I am excited about the next part of our journey. Tomorrow we leave for Salar de Uyuni which is the ¨thing to see in Bolivia¨. We will go on a 3-4 day trek through the salt flats, stopping at volcanoes and hanging out with flamingoes. When we arrive in Uyuni (a small pueblo) we will have no running water at our disposal. We will make sure to come prepared for cold nights and unbelievable days. I´m still not even sure what to expect. After our trek on bikes, horses, jeeps? we will either cross the border through Chile or Argentina and continue down to Buenos Aires. We have so many amazing things to see through Argentina but we have given ourselves a deadline of April 10th to get to Buenos Aires. As soon as we get there we´ll work on finding short-term work and apartments in the South American equivilant of Paris. We have met many Argentinos on the road south and they have been by far the most friendly and open people we have met so far. I can´t wait to meet the city face-to-face and see what´s in store next for this fearsome traveling foursome! Make sure to keep following the llama on its trek through new countries. You´ll be happy that you did!