Bolivia

Before I start reminiscing about other trips I've loved and sharing those photos and stories, I'll tell you about my most recent adventure - BOLIVIA!

It was my first trip to South America, and my first trip south of the Equator.  Honestly, I've been waiting for that forever it feels like.  And it's true, the toilets really do flush in the opposite direction!  They did.  Yay!

I flew down overnight on Friday the 16th.  The flight started out a little crazy, since the flight lost all but emergency power while loading the luggage.  Confidence, that's American Airlines.

The arrival, the visa, and getting a cab to the hotel where I was meeting my friend was all fine.  The visa is 135 USD upon arrival, and you should have two passport photos ready to be used.  The cab was 50 Bs (that's Bolivianos), which at the time was approximately 7 USD.

Wondering where the photographs from our arrival and first few days are?  Me too.  My camera bag complete with dslr, point and shoot, bank card, and cell phone were stolen.  So any photos I took between Saturday morning and Sunday evening are gone; including the best T.K. Facebook profile picture of all time.  Sorry, T.K.!

I suffered from altitude sickness for most of the trip.  In case you aren't aware, Bolivia is the highest country in S. America.  In fact, when the planes take off, they take a lot longer to get off the ground because the air is so thin.  Makes sense when you think about it, but I wouldn't have thought about it.  Good thing someone mentioned it.

Saturday we checked into the Hotel Alem on Calle Sagárnaga and spent the rest of our day sort of getting our bearings.  We tried mate de coca (coca leaves in hot water; it's not tea, though) and ate Italian for dinner.  Yup, Italian.

Sunday we walked over to the prison that has capture Stacy's imagination, San Pedro.  There's a crazy history for this prison.  If you Google it, you'll come up with all sorts of stories related to prisoners, tours, and so on.  Stacy had been told to go to the park across from the jail and approach the prostitute for a tour.  Honest.  So, we went to the park, but we didn't see anyone who fit the description; after about twenty minutes we were hungry.  So we left to find the lunchtime treat of saltenas.

Leaving the park we ran into Stacy's backpacking friend Ken.  Once he joined the group, we had some direction regarding food and more mate de coca.

We ate lunch at a little restaurant where the servers wore masks, which turns out to be rather common there.  After lunch it looked like rain, so we ducked into a higher end establishment whose outdoor seating had not only a cover by sides that had been put down, too.  So we could be outside and dry simultaneously.  Nice!

Walking back to "our part of town" we found a street party, which was a lot of fun.  I'll have to write about it another time.  It was after this party, we stopped for one last beer, grabbed our belongings, and headed off to the bus station to head to Uyuni and the salt flats.

At the bus station, Stacy was watching all our things.  Too many items for one person.  Shouldn't have put her in that position, but hindsight is 20/20.  One man tapped her shoulder, the other grabbed the bag. My bag.  My camera bag.

And so here we are, starting our story without pictures.  Next post will have pictures, promise.  Oh, wait.  Next post will probably be about the street festival.  Ok, how about within the next five posts, I'll start having pictures!?