One More Picture...

Here is one last picture form the top of the hotel. When I woke up at around 8 this morning, that road that you see was completely full of vendors selling fruits, vegetables, fish, flowers, sweaters, RCA cables, knives, and anything else you could ever want. Anyway, I should probably go, I need to find a cheaper place to stay for the night- it cost 5 whole dollars for my place last night.

Ciao

Some Pictures of La Paz...

These are 2 pictures that I took from the roof of the hotel that I stayed at last night. They were taken right at sunset. From the top picture you can sort of make out the shape of the city, which is located at the bottom of a bowl in the mountains. The pictures don´t do justice, however, to the magnitude of the height difference between the top and the bottom of the bowl - around 2,000 ft.

Arriving at La Paz really is breathtaking. After our little boat rides on Titicaca, we traveled for about 3 hours accross a completely flat plain, with mountains off in the distance. If it weren´t for these mountains, the road itself could be in Kansas. The outskirts of the city are the poorer regions, and slowly these began to appear. After about one hour of driving through the slums, with detours down dirt side streets due to strikes and demonstrations blocking the road (all peaceful) the bus turned to the left and we were on the edge of the top of the bowl. We had a complete view of the city. The city itself consists of tall buildings and organization in its center, but as it creeps up the sides of the bowl, it turns brown and chaotic. Richer people live in the older districts at the bottom, and poorer people have filled the bowl to the point of overflowing. The view from the top really was magnificent.

You Need to Move Your Bus Across the Lake? Use My Raft!

Here is a picture of our bus on its little raft. I took it while I was in the boat where all the people had to go. At first I was kind of annoyed about having to get off the bus and pay for another ticket to ride the boat, but when I saw this raft thing I was happy that I wasn´t trapped inside the bus as the raft capsized and it sunk to the bottom of the highest navigable lake in the world. Well, that didn´t exactly happen, but it very well looks like it could have, as evidenced in this picture.

Some other funny things about the bus - this one has ¨Leon de Juda¨airbrushed on the side, which means, ¨Lion of Juda.¨ The owner of the bus seems to be not at all shy about his faith. Also, on the way into La Paz, we passed a big church that had a parking lot full of buses in front of it and a priest was blessing each bus.

My favorite bus thing though, was on the ride out of Lima, when one of the attendants came around and passed out bingo cards! Then he got on the PA system and we all played bingo. The prize? A return ticket to Lima. The winner was invited to give a speech over the PA, in which he fervently thanked the bus company for the excellent entertainment and for the generous prize. He also thanked his family and all of the other passengers for playing. It was great fun.

Pictures!

I found a computer that will let me upload pictures, but it still doesn´t like the title thing very much. Oh well. So here are some pictures. They don´t tell a very complete story of the trip so far, because like I said, I have been on buses a lot. But of the things that I have seen, here is a glimpse into a few of them.






This picture was taken in the Cathedral of Lima, which was built in 1555. The bones were discovered in the 1900´s. There is another famous place full of bones which is called The Monastary of San Francisco, which I am saving for when Jill and I come back to Lima. The Cathedral is the official church building in Peru and consequently all of the important people like the archbishops, the viceroys, and whatnot were buried here. One of the famous guys buried here - Francisco Pizarro.

The Monastary was where everyone else was buried, so consequently there are a ton of bones there. None of this is news to Jacque and Brandon.

In this picture you can see many things.

1. This is a picture of the crossing that our bus did at Copacabana, Bolivia, which is located on Lake Titicaca, the ¨highest commerically navigable lake in the world,¨according to Wikipedia. This was a funny crossing because we weren´t told anything about getting off the bus beforehand. All of a sudden the bus came to a stop at the shore and the driver´s assistant announced that the bus would be going across on a barge and that we would be going across on a boat. We had to get off the bus and buy a ticket for like 50 cents to take a little boat across. This picture was taken after we had gotten off the bus and while we were waiting to get on little boats to take us across the lake. So you can see the little boat that we rode in with the Bolivian flag on it. Also, you can see that the other side was not very far. We were probably in the boat for like 10 minutes.

2. Prominent in the picture is the Bolivian Naval Seaman. Or maybe we could call him Lakeman since Boivia doesn´t have access to the sea.

3. You can also see the two ladies in the foreground of the picture with their boweler hats. Every woman over 30 and about 50 percent of the women over 20 wear the traditional hiked up skirt, little jackets made of wool, a woolen shawl, and 2 long braids and a bowler hat, just like in National Geographic. I didn´t want to just take a picture of them in the street ´cause that would be rude, so that is why I point them out in this picture.

I Found a Title for the Poor Little Orphan Entry...

For some reason, this computer won´t let me put a title on this blog. If I could, though, I would give it the title, A Change of Plans. I got into La Paz, Bolivia last night at 6.00. I was planning on going taking a bus to visit my friend Nate in Sucre while I waited for the Brazilian and Parguayan consulates to open on Monday. For some reason I thought that Sucre was only 8 hours from La Paz, which wouldn´t be so bad on an overnight bus. It turns out that Sucre is 16 hours from La Paz, and I don´t really feel like being on a bus for 32 hours this weekend just so I can be with Nate for like 10 hours. Sorry, Nate.

I am also dissapointed, because I wanted to go to Potosí, which is really close to Sucre, but I won´t be able to now. Oh, well, I guess that just means another trip, which we could call, Bolivia 2009. Or something like that. So I am stuck here in La Paz for the weekend, but it will be good, though, because I can do a bunch of research over the internet today and rest a lot tomorrow.

As I have been on buses for the past 3 days, I have mainly only met other tourists, which is neat, but I am not exactly experiencing Peru and Bolivia. Most of the other people on the buses are Europeans. It´s interesting. Everyone is really laid back and willing to chat for the whole bus ride pretty much. In every one of the conversations that I have had so far the topic of ¨where else in South America have you been¨ comes up and I always tell everyone that I lived in Paraguay for 2 years. And then they ask why, and of course I tell them that I was a missionary. And then they scoot a little further away from me and I tell them that I was a Mormon missionary and they scoot even further away. Then they look really worried and uncomfortable for a little bit, then I tell them about the church and what exactly it was that I did in Paraguay and they scoot back closer and we get along fine again. They always say, ¨but you don´t look like a Mormon,¨ which I don´t know if that is because they expect all Mormons to be wearing a white shirt and a tie or if it´s cause of the ultra-hip beard I´m growing.

I am trying not to enjoy myself too much, because Jill is working so hard back home. I always tell everyone that my wife always makes fun of me because she graduated before me, but now she is the one that has to work while I get to claim student status and vagabond around South America. Not that I´m really vagabonding, the buses are really nice. Maybe I´ll feel like I´m vagabonding when I ride the ¨Death Train¨from Santa Cruz to Corumba or on the boat ride down the Paraguayan river.

I was going to post some of the pictures that I have taken so far, but I just figured out that this computer not only doesn´t like titles, it also doesn´t like pictures. So I will find a different computer today and will do another post and put up some pictures. By the way, La Paz is at 15,000 feet. I think that is the highest that I have been while still touching the ground. I have a little bit of a headache and everytime I blow my nose it is a little bloody. But other than that I feel fine. Just had to think of a way to end this post while talking about boogers. Ciao