Hollller Bolivia! The land of pizza, salt, and cheap everything.

Okay, before I say anything, I have to talk about the really really delicious meal Jamie and I just had. Yes, we are in Bolivia, so yes, we should be rocking it indigenous-style, but Lonely Planet gave serious puntos to this place called ¨Minuteman Revolutionary Pizza¨so claro, we had to check it out. The name seemed weird until we arrived to find it loaded with gringos (the cool kind though, not the obnoxious ones that we try to stay away from) and talked to the owner, a man from Amherst, Massachusetts who married a Bolivian woman and moved down here 12 years ago. (okay... yeah, the name still seems weird to me especially for a pretty rural area of Bolivia). Anyways, pizza! To make it plain and simple, the pizza in South America is bad. Bad bad bad. However, Minuteman Revolutionary pizza was all the rage and it felt good to be eating pesto (young James got llama meat on his pizza). To top it off, I downed a delish chocolate chip cookie taht made this whole month long trip worthwhile.

Now, let´s back it up a few days. On Tuesday, Jamie and I started a 3 day journey from the San Pedro de Atacama desert in Chile to Ayuni, Bolivia (the quite unfortunate town where we are now). Along for the ride in our cramped 4x4 were our Bolivian driver, our Bolivian meal cook, 3 Brazilian chicas who turned out to be really cool and surprisingly not-lame, and one French dude that has been traveling though Asia and South America for a while. We unfortunately did not end up travelling with the buck wild Australians that we saw in San Pedro (pretty sure they would have livened up the trip tremendously), but it was a good group all the same. Our driver was really into off-roading - and when i say off-roading I mean the things considered ¨roads¨were dirt and rock filled already so it was like one of those extreme SUV commercials set in teh desert times a million. During the trip, we saw some geysers, LOTS of lagoons (some with flamingos), and most importantly, the Great Salt Flat (basically, an expanse of salt 30 meters deep and 12,000 square kilometers - for those who are measurement impaired, that is really fucking big. The biggest in the world in fact).

While the trip was fun and definitely more intersting than sitting on a bus for 10 hours, thre were ofcourse some downfalls. I feel like I haev been in a constant state of cold since late April, and this trip just made that feeling more intense. Although they were promised, sleeping bags were nowhere to be found at any of the hostal-type places we stayed during the trek, and the places we stayed were barely insulated structures. Last night, we stayed in a building supposedly completely constructed of salt (although I saw some concrete). Words of wisdom: salt is not a good insulator and should be avoided as a construction material should you desire warmth. Anyways, here in Ayuni sought out better accomodations and immediately found a lovely hostel with double rooms for only $4 per night per person. Hollller... that totally justifies that $15 splurge pizza dinner, yeah?

Recently, I´ve been having some serious nostalgia for weirrd things. I don´t necessarily miss people (no offense, love you all) so much as I miss places and certain feelings. For instance, yesterday (perhaps due to the sub-par freezing accomodations), I had the strongest desire to be at the Scranton, PA hotel where we stay every Christmas eve. There´s nothing special about this hotel except that the same people are working every year and it´s warm and bright and there´s always a big Christmas tree and lots of empty boxes wrapped in colorful paper (and a menorah ofcourse). The ice cream in Provincetown, a Saturday morning of garage sales in Delmar, the drive down the Unirondack camp road ... all things that have been on my mind a lot recently.

That being said, I´m so pumped for the rest of the trip. Tomorow, after indulging in a large and hpefully very satisfying breakfast, we will board a 9 hour bus to Sucre, Bolivia´s judicial capital (La Paz, where we will be later in teh week is the capital for the other governmental stuff). According to Lonely Planet, we might actualy be able to get a cheap room that includes heart-shaped pillows (no joke) and cable tv. I´m also hoping that in the next week I´ll be able to find some sort of gym so I won´t feel like a slob who is failing to appropriately train for a marathon in October.

Here´s a rough schedule for the next month for those who care:
June 19- travel all day from Uyuni to Sucre, Bolivia
June 21- take overnight bus to La Paz, Bolivia
June 25- travel (hopefully by plane) to Rurrenabaque (THE JUNGLE which will hopefully include a day long community-based eco tour of an Amazonian community that Lonely Planet speaks highly of)
June 28-fly back to La Paz and stay over a night
June 29- take a bus to Copacabana, Bolivia (Lake Titicaca!!)
June 30- travel by ferry to Isla del Sol and stay over night
July 2- head back to Copacabana and bus it to Peru (the other side of Lake Titicaca or Cuzco or wherever else)
At that point, we´ll be in Peru and schedules are unnecessary (at least at this point because it took us long enough to even figure out Bolivia) as long as we see Machu Pichu. Jamie´s girlfriend Erin will join us on July 8 and we´ll likely go buck wild until the 12th when I´ll head back to Santiago for a couple days. Oh to be young...

Okay, it´s 9:16 (i.e. WAY past our bedtime. En serio, we haevn´t made it past 8:30 the last couple nights). Chao for now and feel free to comment and demand post cards and presents (did I mention that our hotel is $4? I have a feeling I will be going consumer crazy here, as long as I can figure out a way to carry it on my back around South America).