Buenos Aires Part Dos!

Back to BA with Nina for the week! No shower sandals necessary this time! Woo hoo! We've rented out an apartment in Palermo Chico.  It feels so nice to just walk around without shoes on, to sit around and watch tv, and it's great not to deal with random people who snore or are annoying. haha.

Our first day started with us getting stopped on the street (within 5 minutes of leaving the apt) by an old lady who was absolutely shocked with our clothing choices. While everyone in BA is dressed for the "fall", Nina and I were dressed like it was summer time (it was like 73 degrees and sunny).  Fitting in in BA on day 1: FAIL. We already stick out bc of our looks, but our clothing choices pretty much solidified our tourist status. lol.

We started every one of our mornings the same way: searching for a breakfast spot for at least 1 hour. For some reason Argentinians love drinking coffee and eating wack little pastries, but what about eggs and fruit and yogurt? I don't think I was ever fully satisfied after breakfast. =/   We explored Recoletta, San Telmo, Mancerat, and Palermo.  We also attempted to go shopping on a Saturday only to discover that it was Labor Day in Argentina, which meant that almost every shopping store, including the massive mall, was closed..on a SATURDAY.  What the shit? Why don't they just give people off on Monday!? The stupid holiday kept us from getting tickets to a soccer game, too. Really depressing.  Just like we spent hours searching for breakfast in the morning, we spent hours trying to figure out how to eat dinner at a decent time.  I didn't realize that restaurants close at 4:30pm and although they reopen at 8:30pm, no one is at the restaurants to actually eat dinner until 10:30 or 11pm. How do people wait that late to eat? Since I didn't eat out at all the first time I swung through BA (I was on an ice cream and guacamole diet), I had no idea this is what happened, and Nina and struggled to wait until late at night to eat dinner, especially since we spent at least 6 or 7 hours a day just walking after a crappy breakfast.

We spent one night at a tango show. WHAT A WASTE!! First we get charged a ridiculous amount to go to this thing (we heard it was good, so we figured why not?).  Second, we show up to this show and there are only TWO other people in the place. Right, so there are only four people at this show and it's Friday night.  We bought a bottle of wine thinking we would need it to get through the show since we were so tired.  The bottle of wine ended up being a mistake since it made us get stuck there when we wanted to walk out.  The Asian girl sitting next to me was falling asleep during the show! She was asleep during some of it, and the people who were working were laughing at her. Then, I got called up by one of the tango dancers to dance with him. Umm..no thanks? That didn't work, obviously.  So now, I'm stuck at a show that is SUPER LAME and BORING, and I'm being forced to dance tango and look like a retard while attempting in front of two strangers, and Nina who was recording the entire thing. Thanks sis. Wait until it's your turn. Sometime during that, one of the girls watching the show managed to escape by pretending she was going outside to smoke. SO LUCKY! We got stuck there until basically the end, but Nina did get pulled up to dance. Unfortunately, the camera battery ended up dying at that exact moment! Ugh! We tried to make a quiet exit after her dance since the Asian chick got pulled up to dance, but one of our shopping bags caught onto something, and Nina ended up knocking over the bottle of wine and our glasses making a massive mess on the floor and all over the white table cloth. So much for a quiet exit. haha.

Overall, BA the second time around was a nice chance to relax and rest up after the Machu Picchu trek. We did get to shop a bit, so I was definitely happy about that, and even though we had some wack food experiences and a ridiculous tango time, it was really nice to re-visit the city.  I realized that the city was not as amazing as I thought it was the first time I went. Not sure I'd want to go back again. lol. Still great to visit though, so you should go!

Next up, my final stop, Lima. :(

The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.

I've been trying to think about what to write about my 4 day trek to Machu Picchu, and I don't really know what to say about it, except that it was one of the most amazing things I've ever done, and definitely one of the highlights of my trip.

Twenty-nine miles over 4 days way past sea level--I figured it would be one of the hardest things I'd do physically on the trip, and I figured I would be lagging in the back of the group the whole way. Instead, I was basically in the front most of the time, and I was finishing the day and getting to the campsites before 98% of my group! SWEET! Talk about a self-esteem boost. haha.

Nina was a rockstar during the entire trek too! I was worried when she told me she stopped running on the treadmill and went to bikram yoga classes instead and really improved her breathing. Seriously nina? You opted for bikram yoga instead of building your endurance?  But that bikram yoga is no joke (i know now that i've tried it.)  We became friends with an aussie couple, an irish guy and an english guy, and it worked out so that she had company and i had company any time we were separate from each other since I was like a mountain goat when it came to hills and stairs. I never thought I would be happy to compare myself to a mountain goat, but in this case, DEFINITELY PROUD to be a mountain goat.

Proudest moment on the trek: Finishing the dead woman's pass in less than an hour.
Happiest moment: Getting to the sun gate and seeing MP with Nina for the first time.
2nd happiest moment: eating a snicker's bar while at MP bc 1. we had saved it for days 2. i was REALLY hungry since our breakfast was at 4am, and we trekked for another 3 hours before even getting to MP 3. i knew my dad would appreciate the picture. :)

If you get a chance to go to MP, even if it's via the train, DO IT.  Doing a trek would be my first recommendation bc the views are absolutely stunning while getting there and because the feelings of accomplishment and happiness when you finally get there after days of hard hiking, camping, and being dirty are amazing, and you realize all of the sweating (blood and tears if it happens to you) was totally worth it. The Incas floor you with their craftsmanship, architecture and skill that is hard to imagine hundreds of years ago. And if you have the energy (or if you don't, find it) climb Waynapicchu (big green mountain in my blog picture). It is at least another 45 minutes (35 for me!) of sheer uphill climbing to the top that will really burn your thighs, but the views from the top are amazing and inspiring.

Cusco: Is your mama a llama?

I'm in Cusco, which means that my trip is rapidly nearing its end! boo. I feel like I need to see and do everything and anything to make sure that I maximize on my time down here! And at the same time, I want to do nothing more than lounge around on the sunny lawn at my hostel with all of the other sunbathers so I can get back some sort of tan to show people at home, or to just sit inside and catch up on emails, or take naps in my comfy Loki bed. The smarter decision would probably have been to run out and do a million things, but I chose to go down the lazy road.  I figure, Nina will be joining me in two days, I might as well just rest up before Machu Picchu. So that is basically what I did.  I spent my first day in Cusco sitting around, catching up on emails and getting acquainted with three south african guys who were in my room.  Ended up going out and having a great time with them, and happened to also run into some familiar faces from La Paz.

I spent my second day in Cusco doing something worthwhile.: I went to volunteer at a boy's home that was about 40 minutes outside of the city.  A group of us from the hostel took some taxis out to this random place, and after what felt like ages, we finally got dropped off and then walked another 15 minutes to the actual location.  Unfortunately, I didn't feel like it was a very fulfilling experience.  The intention was the spend the day laughing and playing with young children and helping with school work at an orphanage, but no one in the group knew that it was a boy's home, and that the ages ranged from 9-16. Now, I could be wrong, but my initial thoughts are that young boys only really feel like bonding with older guys.  They don't really see me and think, I want to spend time with her! Boys are way cooler for boys..does that make sense? What I'm trying to say is that is it's easier for young boys to connect with older guys, and our group of 10 only had 2 boys.  And there were actually only 9 or 10 kids, and since there were two other volunteers coming from somewhere else, the ratio of volunteers to kids was too high. Is that even a bad thing? I think it was considering the fact that only 4 of us had any spanish speaking skills and they were still crap in comparison to the spanish we were receiving from the kids. We had to wait almost 1.5 hours just to start interacting with the kids since they were at school when we got there and then had to eat lunch when they got back to the home.  Once all of that was said and done, and everyone realized how hard this was going to be time really slowed down.  I must sound like a horrible person for saying that I basically wanted to go back to the hostel as soon as we got to the home, but when I tell you that the sitting around doing nothing for the first 2.5 hrs was followed by being assigned garden work in the green house, I think you can agree with me.  The most worthwhile thing I did the entire day was weeding in the green house that they had, and let me tell you, I WORKED.  I had a pickax and even though I was in sandals and I had an infected cut on my foot, I was all up in the dirt making sure to get rid of those weeds so they could plant their veggies.  (I did accidentally kill a tomato plant, but don't judge me too harshly! I tried to put it back together again...and failed.)  After we finished the gardening, we all went inside to help the boys with their homework, and somehow I got put next to the boy whose homework was to read. How am I supposed to help someone with their reading homework if it's in spanish? And it was about how the digestive system works. What the shit? I mean, I can sound things out and stuff, but I'm pretty sure the kid didn't need any help from me considering he only had 3 pages to read.  So I ended up just sitting their and chatting with the two other volunteers who weren't with our group. We finally left and ended up spending the next 30 minutes walking into the town and waiting around trying to find a taxi to take us all the way back to Cusco.  Finally settled on taking a 45 min bus ride.  What a GREAT day. No, really, as much as I'm complaining about how unfulfilling the day was, I am happy I went.  After all the time I've spent down in South America and all of the different people I've seen, I needed a day to give back to a community. I think I'm a little addicted to community service anyway. haha.  Even though the most helpful thing I did was to pull out weeds, everyone I was with definitely commented on how much effort I put into it, so at least I can say that I helped provide some sort of food for these boys.

Nina came in super early on my day 3, and instead of letting the poor girl sleep and rest after her 24 hours of traveling, I made her shower and get revved up for a day of walking in the city.  We mostly just hung out in the main plaza in the city catching up since all we've talked about for the last 2.5 months is machhu pichu things, and then we checked out some artisan shops for llama and alpacha gear.  Some random guy took a picture of me while we were walking down the street...creepy.  He did said thanks, but I still think that was weird, and now there is a picture of me at some stranger's home..or on the internet somewhere. She crashed at around 6pm and was out for the rest of the night, and I figured it was my last night to do anything in Cusco, so I might as well go out and make the most of it! I ended up having a bit of a ladies night with two lovely girls I had become friends with in La Paz.  Basically got no sleep since Nina had plenty of energy, so after breakfast and some more time down at the Plaza de Armes, Nina and I spent our last day in Cusco getting ready for our trek to Machu Picchu which was going to start bright and early the next morning with a 5am pickup.

I'm really excited to do the Inca Trail with Nina.  There are some cool people at the hostel coming on our trek with us, so it should be a good time, and it will be interesting to see how hard this trek gets and how much I can handle. I'm a little weary considering my last trekking experience, but I figure since I have someone to carry everything for me except some spare rain gear, snacks, and water, I should be ok.  Hopefully the last few months of being with super in-shape people has whipped me into shape a bit. :)

Copacabana, Bolivia & Puno, Peru: Lake Titicaca is big.

Lake Titcaca is apparently one of the highest navigable lakes in the world, and it's the biggest in south america.  I am not surprised, since everything in Bolivia is the highest something in the world since we're so high past sea level (the lake is past 12,000ft, btw).  We grabbed a bus to Copacabana and were unfortunately seated next to a family of 3 that included a 30-something year old son (at least that's how old he looked) who basically tried to hit on me the entire 7 hour bus ride even though he was sitting right by his parents. Not cool.  I had to ask him a few times to stop saying he couldn't speak around me bc he got too flustered bc my eyes were so pretty (umm, they're just brown), and then I resorted to just putting my headphones in since my friends weren't doing much but laughing when they could get away with it.  You would think that the headphones would be a deterrent to the guy, but nope.  He pretty much tapped me to try to talk to me or "help" me with my spanish every 5 minutes, and despite the annoyed look I had on my face while I insisted that I didn't need his help, he still tapped me and tried to talk to me the entire bus ride. Torturous.

After arriving to Copacabana and escaping our new "friend", we checked into our hotel and decided to take a walk around the town.  After catching up with some people we ran into that we had traveled with on the Salt Flats, we decided to climb up a ridiculously steep mountain to watch the sunset over the lake.  The bad part about that decision was that Scotty and I had just wolfed down a pizza together in less than 10 minutes so we could see the sunset, and while we were climbing this vertical mountain face, my stomach did not appreciate the lack of rest and digest time. I stopped 3/4 of the way up and watched the sunset from my own rock, while the others went up another 200 or so meters.

Next day, we headed to Isla de Sol, birthplace of the Incas..at least that is what they believe.  We spent the day hiking from one end of the island to the other, and along the way, we met fake toll collector people who were trying to tell us we had to pay to walk down the section of the trail.  Umm where did we miss the park entree fee signs? Oh wait, there weren't any.  We had one woman go as far as running after us for at least 100m after we hopped the fence next to her gate and walked past her without paying, and she grabbed my arm to get me to stop walking...so not cool.  Basically after all was said and done, and none from my group paid, each of us would have had to pay an additional $50 bolivianos just to walk from one end of the island to the other.  I only brought $14 with me.

Puno: Home to the floating islands

El Presidente

Puno is pretty much a dump. Okay, that was a little blunt, but the city doesn't have a whole lot going for it.  The main attraction there is heading out onto the lake to visit the floating reed islands that the Uro people have built and live on. They are made out of hollow reeds that grow on the lake and people literally make their houses, kitchens, beds, mattresses, and boats out of these reeds and then they live on the lake. Pretty amazing work putting the islands together. It's a weird sensation to walk on the islands...kinda like being on a waterbed except more stable than that although you know that there is at least 16 or 17 ft of water underneath you if for some reason you step somewhere where the reed would not hold you.  There are 60 floating islands, each with their own president. We took a boat to one of the islands and got a "tour" where we saw how the islands were actually made, we got tours of the homes (which only had one bed and some sitting space on the floor), and got a chance to help out the island dwellers by purchasing some of their handmade artisan crafts.  Pretty wild experience since I never expected anyone to be living on the water like this.  They even have boats that act like grocery stores that zip around to the different islands to sell stuff.

Puno was my last stop with Candace, Scotty, and Chris, so we spent our last night fulfilling a 1.5 month goal of finding a karaoke bar and singing the night away.  I actually only sang once..TLC waterfalls was the choice for me, but it was a lot harder than I thought since I forgot about the rapping part.  A good night overall though. We had the entire day to hang out before our respective buses (mine to Cusco, theirs to Arequipa) so we walked around, and Scott and I randomly found a lookout point right next to our hostel.  We also saw about 50 girls there practicing some sort of hula hoop and poms number for a school competition.  We ended up hanging out their and attempting to speak to 11 and 12 year old girls about what they were doing and where we were from for the next 2 hours while they practiced their dances.  Unfortunately Scotty and I are terrible at speaking spanish, but luckily those little girls were learning english so we could mostly figure out what the other person was saying.  The best part: the screams of surprise and shock and the giggles when we told them how old we were. I never used to feel old, but they made me feel it that day...haha. Lucky for me, Scott is older than me, so his age was an even bigger deal.

I said my goodbyes to my friends at the bus station that night.  A sad moment. I was traveling with them for over a month, and I don't think I even remember how to make friends anymore..haha.  No really, it was so nice to meet such wonderful people and to be able to travel with them and get to know them for so long was really great.  I didn't expect for something like that to happen, especially after the fallout with the idiot irish girl, so I'm really happy things worked out in my favor.  I really hope we can visit each other in the near future..two friends will be in London and that's only 6 hours from nyc. :)

Only two more days until Nina gets to South America. I'm pretty excited! It should be an interesting first vacation together!

Jungle Fever in the AMAZON!!

The Amazon. Omg. I think this was probably the number one place I wanted to visit on this entire trip!! And I am so happy I picked Bolivia as my place to see it! The amazon basin is massive there, and apparently the most bird species in the world are found here!

Chris and I planned to do the trip together because Scotty and Candace had already done it in other places, so we hopped onto a 9 row (total 19 seats) passenger plane that was so small that I was too tall to stand up straight in the plane, there was no door to the cockpit, and the plane was ancient enough that the pilots were using a real map and compass to track where we were. What the shit? lol.  I won't lie, I definitely did a praying session before the plane took off, and definitely before it landed because it was landing on a dirt runway.  There are only about 2000km of paved roads in Bolivia. I've already been on buses driving through these roads, I've biked down these roads, been in taxis on these roads, but doing a plane landing seems like a bit too much especially because Chris had some friends who almost died in this type of plane because the wheels wouldn't come out before landing. OMG. I was definitely nervous about this flight.

The flight was only 40 minutes long, and went without any troubles (thank God), and once we got to Rurrenebaque, we settled into finding a place to stay and grabbed some dinner since the next day we had to drive 3.5 hrs to get to point where we would start our 3 day Pampas tour, which is basically a tour that goes through the Amazon all on boats.  The car ride was pretty painful--we had 11 people in our jeep that should only fit 8 at a max.  Chris and I were sandwiched into the front seat, and since the windows wouldn't roll up, and it was too hot to want to roll them up since there was no AC, the car was constantly filled with dirt and dust.  My nose and lungs hate me right now because of all the work they've had to do to make sure I'm breathing semi-clean air. I became friends with our driver since everyone else in the car was from Korea and Chris went to sleep, so I had a nice conversation with him (well, I attempted a conversation), and he even pointed out plenty of animals for me to see!

We got to the boat eventually and hopped on with another group of english speakers and set off for a 2 hour ride before we got to our lodge in the jungle.  It was pretty much amazing. haha. Different birds everywhere, lots of awesome trees, amazing weather, and we even got to stop and feed some monkeys!! After we got settled into the lodge, we went to watch the sunset, which basically means we went to the mosquito feeding grounds, and so began the endless cycle of getting bitten for me. The sunset was cool, but I was not a fan of the bites I got through my clothes even though I had 40% deet on me. At night we got back into the boat and went to find some caimens (alligators/crocs of the amazon) because in the dark, their eyes shine red in the light.  We actually saw a few, but most were babies.

Day 2:

Woke up this morning after a night of listening to a bat fly all around our room and I think mice scamper up and down the beams of the ceiling...ee! First thing to do was pick out waterproof boots that went almost up to my knees because the morning's activity was ANACONDA HUNTING!  Woah! So cool!! Well I thought it was until we got to where we were looking: a swampy field with grass basically as tall as me, with no visibility by my feet.  Umm..how am I supposed to see the anaconda exactly??  Most of the time I was afraid just to accidentally step on one, I wasn't even sure what I would do if I actually found one! It was so hot out that it become more of a journey just to trek to the other side of the field where there were trees and shade. We were supposed to look around for 3 hours, and most of us were at the trees by the end of the first hour.  haha. I saw no anacondas, but I got plenty of mosquito bites, got really tired walking through that grass, and got my pants permanently stained with mud and mosquito repellant.  I guess I did see a cool looking lizard, an owl, and I saw the maggot that lives inside the Brazilian nut that apparently tastes just like coconut---I did not try the maggot (but others, including our guide, did. ew.).

We got back to the lodge and everyone decided to go swimming in the river since it was so hot, but the crazy part about that is a certain caimen named Frederico.  Frederico sits on the bank of our lodge to get sun, and that afternoon he was in the water at the edge of the bank. Umm, you want me to go swimming while there is a caimen at the edge of the water?? Everyone else did it, so I did too! haha, peer pressure. And people standing near Frederico to make sure he was still on the edge before we jumped off the rope into the water.  It took me a while to jump into the water, but it was mostly me just being afraid of swinging off a rope, not the caimen.  I thought about the caimen once I was in the water trying really hard to swim back to the shore but struggling against the current. I did it once more, but that was enough for me.  Didn't want to take too many chances with Frederico, although we all figured since he got food scraps from the kitchen, trying to eat one of us was way more work and not worth it.

After our afternoon siesta we went PIRANAH FISHING!! COOL!! We didn't actually have real fishing poles--it was just a piece of wood with a long wire wrapped around it and then a small hook--but I guess I shouldn't have expected more.  I spent the first 30 or 40 minutes of this outing getting really excited because I thought I felt a pull, only to pull out twigs and sticks. So sad.  I was providing most of the entertainment for our boat because of this, but eventually I caught one!!!! It was so exciting! Although, I did cringe away from it, and I basically didn't touch it at all. haha. We put it back into the water because it wasn't super big. I also managed to lose my sunglasses in the river. Adios sunnies! Lo siento Madre de Monde!  For dinner later that night, the cook fried up the fish, and so I tried some piranha.  It wasn't bad..although it was hard to really taste anything since there is almost no meat on the fish anyway.

Day 3:

Woke up to watch the sunrise this morning.  TRANSLATION: got a lot more mosquito bites to add to the two nights worth from the sunsets. After some breakfast, we set out to go swimming with pink dolphins!  They are really hard to spot and pretty shy...I thought it would be like something out of Sea World. haha. Nope. We did find them, and we got into the water with them and whatever else was swimming in that river, but no one got to actually touch one.  It was still pretty cool though, and the water felt amazing, even though I've only swam in salt water and I forgot how hard it is to carry your own body weight in the water.  I got tired pretty quickly and hung off the side of the boat a few times. haha. I did get a little nervous because I accidentally swallowed some of that water..parasites, bacteria, omg, sickness! But I was fine. I think--knock on wood--my stomach is super immune now.

We re-did our two hour boat ride and then our 3.5 hour jeep ride back to Rurrenebaque, and Chris and I hopped back onto a plane to La Paz to meet up with Candace and Scott to enjoy a few more nights there before heading to Copacabana! Yes, I said Copacabana--it does exist in Bolivia, too.  I wonder if it will live up to the expectations normally associated to that place.

La Paz, La Paz, La Paz!

La Paz! Wow, this city is insane! Not a whole lot of sights to see, but a fantastic array of restaurants for almost no money, and an awesome night life!

I spent a few days in the city just relaxing during the day by spending my time walking through the Witch's Market, which had llama and alpacha EVERYTHING for sale!  I bought hats, mittens, socks, leg warmers, and jumpers all for $2 or $3 each. What a bargain!! Yes, I will be wearing items of clothing that have llamas on them.  You all better still walk down the street with me. haha.

I had Indian food for the first time in ages at a restaurant that claims to have the spiciest vindaloo in La Paz.  I had it twice bc it was pretty good, and both times, my entire meal was less than $10. So amazingly cheap! I loved it!  I thought that I was cool enough to try this spiciest vindaloo, but I heard from some guys that the portion is huge and that it is extremely spicy! I opted for chiken tikka masala again instead of the vindaloo, and I am so happy I did!! There was a group of 18 yr old english boys at the table next to us, and a few of them thought they could handle the heat, but they definitely couldn't!  They were red in the face, crying, and basically in pain within the first 2 bites, and the entire time they tried to eat, it didn't look like their plates were getting any emptier.  We had the waiter bring us out a small sample so we could see what it was like, and I basically felt like my mouth was on fire for a good 5 minutes after washing the food down, and I barely had a teaspoon.  All you could see were chili seeds in the vindaloo though, so I am not surprised that it was so hot!

I also attempted to get some thai because I have been craving pad thai, but the first thai restaurant I checked out had a questionable looking picture of pad thai on the their menu, and the second restaurant didn't even have it on the menu! What the shit!? How can you not have the most famous dish of a country on the menu?  We opted to eat at an international cuisine house, and that was much better.

Met some really fun people at my hostel, too, that hopefully I can meet up with later on in my trip. And randomly, I ended up seeing someone I hung out with in every single city I went to in Brazil except one!  I guess once everyone gets through Argentina, they have to head north again sometime.

I also biked down the ¨World's Most Dangerous Road¨ which is basically 64km of downhill biking (you descend 3000m in altitude) on a road that has claimed more lives than any other in the world, not just cars and buses, but also bikers.  An isreali girl actually died doing the road 2 days before I did it because she lost control of her bike and fell down a 250m cliff.  Craziness! I was pretty much praying right at the start of the bike ride, but it was all on concrete so I relaxed quite a bit and just went really fast.  Once we got to the actual Road, which is all dirt and gravel and rocks with no edge and 200-300m cliffs, I started to pray a lot and I thought about that israeli girl a lot.  She had a really bad day for weather where there was no visibility, so I can understand how she lost control going to fast if she tried to take a turn.  I went as fast as I felt comfortable, which was pretty fast, and managed to stay on my bike the whole time, although twice during our stops, the guides kept eyeing my bike and touching my brakes! I was like umm...is my bike ok?  And one guide didn't think so and thought I should change it, while the other was like, ´´eh, how do you feel on it?´´  Turns out my left brake (the most important brake) was not tight enough, and after going down 40km of the road, including the most dangerous part, they tightened my brake. Thanks a lot guys. Haha. I´m just glad I got down to the bottom without any problems. :)

Overall, La Paz was a great time because I got to do some fun things, plus I got to go out for the first time in over a month!

Heading to the amazon via La Paz, and I am SO EXCITED!!! It's going to be sweeeeet!!!

Sucre is the capital? Really?

After finishing a long 4 days in the jeep for the salt flats, Candace and I decided to split off from the boys a bit to head to Sucre, which is apprently the capital of Bolivia.  I thought it was La Paz, but apprently not.  La Paz basically usurped the title from Sucre, but the supreme court still convenes there, so I guess that counts for something, and plus, it is still listed as the capital in the constitution, so cool beans..or frijoles frio..haha. My amazing spanish skills coming into use.

Sucre was a beautiful city--it is called the white city--and it was full of students and professionals so it didn´t really feel like Bolivia at all.  The streets were clean, the buildings were a blinding white because apprantly it is a law to white wash them every year, and although there were a fair amount of beggars on the street, for the most part, it seemed like most of the people in the city were quite well off.

Side rant: I did get a bit annoyed that the beggars never asked Bolivians for money though.  I mean, I get that I am a tourist and they think I have money, but so do the other Bolivians walking past. It was a pretty big turn off to the country in the sense that it seems like they really don´t take care of their elderly since those were the majority of beggars that I saw.  It was really sad, and definitely put a damper on all the happiness Bolivia was making me feel.  Bummer.  I just think the beggars should ask everyone for money instead of just tourists, because if they really need it, then it shouldn´t matter who help comes from, right?  Maybe I am not getting some cultural part of the begging though..who knows. This country has so much potential, I really hope that it can get on its feet soon.  I read up on the history of Bolivia, and basically every other South American country has taken advantage of it, which really sucks and is totally unfair because the people are so wonderful here and they really deserve so much more.

Candace and I spent our time exploring the city and checking out this massive market of food where I got some amazing fresh fruit juice (strawberry, pineapple, passion fruit is the best juice combo ever!!!!), that unfortunately made Candace sick and she spent most of her night in the bathroom throwing up. Ew. I must have third world stomach or the milk her fruit lady used was bad.  Who knows. I had two glasses though, and they were sweet as! ´´Sweet as´´ is an expression used by my New Zealand friends. haha. Thought I would try it out, but I´m not sure I like it.

We spent the next day horseback riding through the valleys of Sucre.  My horse, Mancerat, was basically amazing and he totally navigated us down hills and rocky slopes no problem. I even galloped!! It was a fun day, minus the extreme sunburn I got on my neck, but a horse pooping onto Candace´s pants and shoe pretty much made up for it. haha.  Apprently our guide is the only person in Sucre who owns horses, and unfortunately, a few years ago, he was riding his stallion and rounding up his horses and car deliberately hit him while he was on his horse and he was robbed while he was lying unconcious on the road!!! Probably the craziest story I have ever heard.  His horse died, too. So sad.

We ended the afternoon at this little old lady´s house where she made us chachi, a homebrewed beer made from corn, and really bad bread and cheese.  I got my cup and noticed a bug floating in it. haha. Tradition is to spill the first bit out before starting to drink, but I couldn´t get the bug out of my cup when I did that! Dammnittttttttttt.  I had to spoon it out, and then after I stirred in some sugar, I noticed more black specks (bug parts possibly? eww!) and just had to try to drink around it because the little old lady was so nice and I didn´t want to be rude.  I should have declined the drink in the first place because it was brewed in a rusty looking vat in the yard, plus it was made with water which is definitely not something I should be drinking in Bolivia.  I took the smallest sips I could and tried to make it look like I enjoyed it. haha. The best part of that afternoon with the little old lady was basically me and another girl having to explain to her the Israel¬Palestine conflict.  What the shit??  I can barely speak spanish, and now I am trying to talk about WWII and the holocaust?? What was my life? haha.  The funniest part (well funny now, shocking then) was that she and our guide had no idea what the Jewish religion was. WHAT??!! The girl and I didn´t know the word for Jew, but we could not get the other two to say the religion when they started to list some off.  They said Muslim, Catholic, and even Mormon, but there was no concept of Judism. It was crazy. Just goes to show how isolated some people are in the world.  She was an absolute sweet heart though, and I´m really happy I didn´t get sick from drinking that beer.

Next up is La Paz...should be interesante to say the least!