Alturas

I left Santiago a week ago and have been traveling north by bus.

Antofagasta, Chile: I was going to spend the night here but when I walked around the only interesting thing was the port. At least it was a good break from the long bus ride from Santiago. I was hopeing to check out the portada, but there were no public buses going there that day.

San Pedro de Atacama, Chile: I got here at night and found out what hostel the stanford kids from Santiago were staying at. It was definitely a lot of fun hanging out with them. I went bike riding to the ruins of Quitor then sandboarding at Death Valley. The next day I rode a bike 15km uphill to Valle de la Luna to watch the sunset. Yes, that meant that I rode back to town in the dark with a little headlight. Well, in between all this goodness, I actually do things for my project. At the town square at noon there was a cueca festival featuring youth group champions from every region. The cool part was that there was a live band with two guitars, an acordion, a mesa and three women singers.

4x4 three day adventure: I had originally thought to go back to Calama and take a bus to Uyuni, but I found out that there were three day tours from San Pedro that cross the altiplano to Uyuni. For $100 I took this trip with everything included (transportation, Bolivia entrance fee, breakfast lunch dinner, accomodations and park entrance fees). For anyone that doesn't know about the altiplano, it was above 3,000 meter peaking at 5000 and bitterly cold even with the crystal clear skies. The first night I slept with two t-shirts, two long sleves, a jacket, gloves, my beenie and two pants in addition to the four blankets.

There were several things that made this trip worth the cold. The first was that I saw llamas! I felt like Jimmy Neutron's fat friend that is in love with llamas. There were also alpacas and vicuñas (smaller versions of llamas).

The second experience pretty much made my trip to Bolivia already. On the tour we passed by a REALLY small town to take a break. That's when I saw a kid (10) walking down the dirt road playing a zampoña. I started a conversation with him and then asked if he could play a tune for me. After a few minutes of encouragement because of his shyness, he played a song and in the middle of it sang in Quechua, his native tongue.

Uyuni, Bolivia: The downside of the three day trip was that I felt sick when I reached Uyuni. Could have been due to the food or the altitude. There was nothing for me so see in Uyuni so I took the next bus to Sucre which left at 7pm yesterday and passed by Potosi at 3am and reached Sucre this morning at 7am.

Sucre, Bolivia: Now that I've had such an adventure in just a week its time for a break. I'm going to stay here two nights. I plan to check out the museo de folklore and maybe catch a show at one of the two theaters.

I wish I could upload the pictures I've taken because I'm afraid of loosing them. Especially the video of the kid from San Juan.