Homeless and Unemployed

On September 22, we were escorted by PC vehicles to downtown Lima where we got some lunch and started discussing what to do with our lives. The next morning, Mark and I visited the US Embassy in Lima to get our personal passports updated since our Peace Corps passports would expire in 90 days. Our goal was to work our way back to Bolivia over ground by October 1oth to be able to rearrange our belongings before PC shipped them home for us. When we got back to our hostel after the Embassy, there was a group of fellow volunteers waiting to leave for Paracas, on the coast. We didn't really have any plans and were already tired of bustling Lima, so we threw on our backpacks and joined them. That night, we arrived in the Paracas nature reserve and joined the group for a great dinner.

The next morning we took a boat tour of the Ballestas Islands, home to many sea lions, penguins, pelicans, and peruvian boobies. On the sandy dune mainland, there was this symbol carved into the bedrock called the candelabra. It is similar to the Nasca lines which can only be viewed in their entirety by plane. Since the symbol is carved in the rock, the winds actually sweep the sand out of it keeping it clean and visible.These are the peruvian boobies I mentioned, a cousin of the Galapagos blue-footed boobies. Here´s a sea lion striking a pose for our cameras.

Penguins of the Ballestas. From Paracas, we took a bus to Ica then on to Arequipa, the jumping off point for our three day trek into the Colca Canyon. We took a bus from Arequipa about 5 hours to Cabanaconde, a small town with hostels for hikers passing through. From Cabanaconde we left in the morning to descend 3500 ft to the bottom of the canyon. We stayed at a lodge with huts made of reeds with beds on stone foundations. Doesn't sound that comfortable, but we slept great after soaking in the hot springs next to the river and eating a hot meal. The lodge was located at the junction of two rivers. I found the cats that lived at the lodge, or did they find me? This is the trail we hiked out of the canyon on day 3 of the hike. It took me about 3 hours, but others did it in closer to 2 hours. A couple of us decided to hire a mule to carry our backpacks to give us a chance to climb out of the canyon. The locals kept trying to get me to hire a ride on a mule, but I stubbornly declined. I'm glad that I did, because it was extremely rewarding to reach the top on my own. Here's everyone taking a breather at a rest stop on the bus ride back from the canyon. We'd hiked up and out of the canyon that morning. We spent a few more days in Arequipa after our hike. One night there was a spectacular sunset.
A fellow volunteer taught me how to carve a pineapple just like the Bolivians do (thanks, Kilo!). The first time it took me about a half an hour. It turns out to be easier on more ripe pineapples.
From Arequipa, the group split into two trips- one headed to Cuzco to visit Macchu Picchu, and the other to get to our sites in Bolivia by the 10th. I headed out a little earlier than Mark because I knew I´d need the time to finish the mural. He stayed in La Paz and was able to attend some Cholita wrestling as you may have read about in National Geographic. I took the bus from La Paz to Cochabamba in order to get an earlier flight to Tarija, and we saw this banner at the bus terminal. "The 8th nacional congress of the Bolivian movement of solidarity with Cuba."

Since I needed to get our belongings to the Tarija regional office by October 10, I only had four days in El Puente to finish the mural and sell our belongings. It was a rather stressful time and by the end I had a pretty strong head cold. Each day I got up and worked on the mural until I couldn't stand the hot sun. Then I went back to our place for lunch, took a short nap if I could, and spent the afternoon sorting our things into three piles: things to give away, things to sell, and things I was going to take with us. On the first day I sold a few pieces of furniture to a neighbor, and the word soon got out that everything must go. People were almost constantly knocking on the door to come in and see what I had to give away or sell. It was a little disturbing to feel like everyone was looking at me with dollar signs in their eyes (or Bolivianos in their eyes, I suppose). I was told many times that I should have informed people earlier that I was selling our things. At first it was really annoying and then I turned it into a joke so I could deal with it better. I told people that I should have hired a taxi with a speaker strapped to the top to make an announcement throughout the town, just like they do to announce public events and news from time to time. People thought that was pretty funny and then they weren't as mad that they hadn't known earlier about the sale going on. At the end of each day I made sure to visit with someone from town that I really cared about and who cared about me. Most nights this meant having tea with the Chambi family next door or with my landlady Nely. I've ended up sponsoring Adonia Chambi's ring for her high school graduation taking place in December. Since I won't be there, I will send the ring in my stead so that she'll have a memoir of our friendship. She was the girl who watched Salta while we were out of town. I helped her with her English homework frequently and she and I had many conversations about world cultures. She loved to watch Hindi movie musicals.

Here I am with the art teacher, Elviz, and the senior class of Colegio San Miguel. They were the main students that I worked with on the two murals in El Puente.

The flag border ended up being a lot of work but turned out beautiful. There were a couple empty spots towards the end so I filled them with non-national flags.
Go Ags! This is the UC Davis emblem.
Finally, the new flag of the indigenous people of the Andes, called the Wipala.
This is what the mural looked like after I finished. I left clear varnish with the art teacher with instructions on how to seal the mural against sun and weather damage. I sure hope they do it. By the time I left El Puente, I was glad to be going. I was literally sick and tired. I cried a bit on the ride out of town, reflecting on how I probably wouldn't see again any time soon those colorful rocks and compassionate people I'd grown to love. It turned out that most of our belongings had already been forwarded to Cochabamba, so I didn't get to pull out useful things like Mark's hiking boots, our tent, or my sleeping bag. But it did save me from having to travel by bus with lots of luggage and I was grateful for that.

When I returned to Tarija, Mark and I headed out to meet up with others in Tupiza, the jumping off point for the tour of the Salar de Uyuni (salt flats). Little did I know what other wonders would be included on the tour. We set out in two SUVs, each with 5 passengers, a driver, and a cook. The first day of driving was a bit uneventful besides the four wheel drive mechanism falling off the SUV that Mark and I were NOT riding in. We stayed in a small village called San Antonio de Tropez the first night and slept well. The following day, we piled back into the cars nice and early to get going to see a series of lakes and volcanoes.

Lago Verde

We arrived at Lago Colorado right as the sun was setting. If it had been slightly earlier, the strong red color of the lake might have been more visible. We had seen several lakes populated by pink flamingos, which were reminiscent of our hike on the Inca Trail back in July 2007.On the second night, we stayed near Lago Colorado, slept and ate well, and headed out early to see more lakes and even some bubbling geysers in the ground.

On the third and final night of the tour, we stayed at a hotel made of large blocks of salt. It was right on the edge of the Salt Flats. We woke up before dawn to arrive at the Isla de los Pescadores at sunrise.

Here's a relief map of the Salar de Uyuni, which is said to cover 8000 square kilometers of land. It is composed of alternating layers of salt and water, each layer being about 20cm thick. Around the edges are companies that harvest the salt for sale at markets.

A tradition of the Salar tour is that you take wacky perspective pictures like this one. Stay tuned for a few others in Mark's post.
At the end of our tour, we took an overnight bus from Uyuni to La Paz. We arranged to hike up Huayna Potosi, a mountain that is claimed to be the easiest 6000+ meter peak to climb. It is less risky because medical evacuation is easier (with La Paz only an hour away by car) than on other more isolated mountains. Also, very little technical experience is necessary to complete the climb.
Here we are being dropped off at the lower base camp: Refugio Huayna Potosi. Elevation: 4100m (that's about 13,500 ft). We arrived at the lower base camp in the late morning and set out after lunch to practice ice climbing and self-arrest on a nearby glacier with crampons and ice axes. Having been to rock climbing gyms in the past, the climbing was pretty straightforward. One of my crampons fell off so I had the opportunity to learn how to climb assisted by a partner below me with an ice axe and how to tighten the crampons onto my boots better. It was pretty fun to learn how to self-arrest. You roll over onto your stomach and jam the axe into the ice, thus halting your slide down the mountain.
Sunset at high base camp: 5400m (over 17,500 ft)
Several of us had resting heart rates of 130 bpm at the high base camp while others were in the 80s. I decided to take altitude medication in the middle of the night when I woke up with a pounding headache. The refuge was a metal building with 6 thin mattresses on the floor for the 9 of us. It was remarkably warm, although the moisture in the air condensed on the ceiling and was dripping on us all night. We got up at 12:30am, had a quick cup of coca tea, and headed out. I had arranged for my own guide and a slightly earlier departure since I was the slowest hiker of the group (no doubt related to my ridiculous heart rate). Everyone else was with a guide and one other hiker. We all wore headlamps and carried empty backpacks so that we could take off layers of clothing as we heated up. Although I know it was my body that carried me up that mountain, I am incredibly grateful to my guide for the support he gave me along the way. Since the rope that was attached to my climbing harness was attached to him the whole way, he was able to lend me some of his will at times when I had little of my own. This was particularly helpful during the last 100 meters of ascent when my body was telling me how nice it would be to take a quick nap in the rising sun to give my legs a rest. If my guide hadn't pulled on that rope I might not have made it all the way to the top. Thank you Gualberto!

Summit: 6088 meters (19,968 feet)

Mark and I had very different experiences on this hike, as you'll hear in his post. On the way down from the summit to the high base camp, I had a surprise opportunity to use our training when my guide was teaching me a new way to use the ice axe to stabilize myself. I didn't do it right the first time, and ended up sliding for a few long milliseconds before I performed a five-star self-arrest.

I was a little worried that doing this would somehow get Mark addicted to mountaineering. However, after we'd gotten all the way back to the lower base camp, Mark commented, "If that was the easiest 6000m peak, then I'm not sure I want to do the second easiest!" My mind was put at ease. Although this was an amazing experience, I wouldn't want to do it every weekend.

On our last day in La Paz, we visited the ruins at Tiwanaku. Here we are with the Sun Gate, thought to be a calender designed by a now extinct population from 200AD.After both of us returned from Tiwanaku with sunburned faces, we took a bus to Cochabamba to break Roque out of the veterinarian's office he'd been living in for a couple weeks. With Mark's GRE test dates fast approaching, he flew to Tarija to get a taxi to Salta, Argentina where he could find a bus for the long haul to Buenos Aires. I stayed another week in Cochabamba waiting for Roque's immigration paperwork to get finished. After several failed attempts to have Roque taken home by others, we decided to take him directly home to make things more simple. We'd also built up a fair amount of souvenirs and other items not useful for being on the road that needed to get home. So we found me a flight from Santa Cruz, Bolivia to Miami and on to Buenos Aires. I was going to ship Roque from Miami, but then my parents offered some of their frequent flyer miles to get me all the way to California for a short visit. I couldn't pass that opportunity up, so we booked it. Then I booked the short flight from Cochabamba to Santa Cruz for the day before the voyage. Roque and I watch Barack Obama be elected on CNN from our hostal room in Cochabamba. The next evening I checked my luggage and Roque onto the Aerosur flight and was in Santa Cruz within the hour. When I arrived in Santa Cruz, all of my luggage came through, except for Roque's crate. So I asked the luggage staff to see where he was. After 10 minutes or so, a tall man with a yellow reflective vest came into luggage claim and said there was a problem. He showed me the empty crate that Roque had been traveling in. "No hay gato," he said casually. My first reaction was to laugh. For those who have lived in Bolivia for an extended period of time, this would seem like a typical Bolivian experience. But despite my familiarity with Bolivian travel conditions, I was in denial that he was gone. I asked for an explanation, and they said he must've escaped from the crate during the flight, because when they opened the cargo hold upon arrival, he jumped out and ran into the nearby field. I asked them to let me out onto the tarmack to call for him and they directed me to the security office where I was told it would not be possible. I described Roque to the team of crew members in vests and they set out to find him. Within the hour, the group came marching triumphantly into the baggage claim with a little orange ball of fur. I was so elated that I failed to notice right away that it wasn't Roque. As they approached, I realized they were holding a kitten that fit the description I'd given them, but it wasn't Roque. I hated having to tell them it wasn't him because they were so excited, but their response was that I should take the kitten anyway. I insisted that I wanted OUR cat back, and they returned to look for him again. I waited as other flights arrived and eventually was kicked out of the baggage claim area when there were no more arrivals. At around 12:30am, the original vest-clad employee came to tell me that I'd been cleared to enter the tarmack to call for the cat. I knew this would be the last step of the search, and was grateful for the opportunity to help and see the situation. We searched underneath the vehicles, scanned the surrounding fields, and laid down on the ground to look under the maintenance shack constructed of boxcars up on cement blocks. We lured out a cat that looked very similar to Roque, but acted nothing like him. After this disappointment I started really feeling that we'd done everything and that he was too scared to be found, if he were even near where we were searching. Several of the idling plane engines had been turned off to aid our search, but I imagine the team of 8 men calling his name was enough to spook Roque at that point. At around 2:30am, I called off the search and took a taxi 15 minutes into Santa Cruz to a hotel to sleep a few hours before returning to the airport. The decision I faced now was whether I should get on the flight to Miami at 10am. I investigated how much it would cost to delay the trip a few days to have more time to search, and it would have cost more than the original ticket. Having spent a decent amount of money already on boarding Roque and getting his paperwork done twice, plus the indebtedness we'd incurred to others who'd helped along the way, the financial cost far outweighed the low possibility of finding Roque. When I went back to the airport after 4 hours of sleep, I requested to be let back onto the tarmack and was denied. I left Roque's crate and food in the lost and found office and walked to the chain link fence outside where I could see where we'd been searching shortly before. I called Roque's name, cried for a while, made my apologies to him for this turn in his life. Even though I wouldn't be bringing Roque home, I continued the journey to California to see my mom and drop off souvenirs at home. Each time I checked in for a flight or picked up my luggage off a conveyor belt I thought about how Roque was supposed to be there. When I got home it made me sad to see Javier (our cat in the care of my folks) because I knew they would have been good friends. Mark and I contacted the airport staff by phone and email and eventually were told that they hadn't seen Roque for a while. Disposing of Roque's then expired immigration documents was a very symbolic act for us, and very sad. It was interesting to note the phases I went through in this experience: from denial through mourning and into rationalization. I have to tell myself that he's okay, that he probably has found shelter and food, that he just wanted to stay in Bolivia but didn't know how to tell us. This is the last picture I have with Roque- it was taken in Cochabamba the day we were being evacuated to Peru.

I joined Mark in Buenos Aires after a short stay with my mom in California. It took me a while to get over my jet-lag since there was a 6-hour time difference and the people in Buenos Aires live on a late schedule. Most businesses don't open until 9:30am and people don't eat dinner until 10 or 11pm. Even on weeknights! We rented an apartment so that Mark would have space to work on his grad school applications and so that we wouldn't have to deal with living in a hostel.

We made Thanksgiving dinner a night early with our volunteer friend Emelia. We made it early so that we'd have more time to eat leftovers before we had to check out of our apartment on Friday. From Buenos Aires, we took a bus to Puerto Iguazu and there were only 6 or 7 people besides us on the bus. We asked the bus attendant how the company can make any money with such an empty bus and he told us that the bus would be in the road even if it were empty. This was a strange thing to imagine compared to our experiences in Bolivia with buses only leaving when 75% full- meaning indefinite delays at times.

Once settled at our hostel in Puerto Iguazu we took a dip in the pool and investigated how we'd get to the Cataratas de Iguazu (waterfalls) the next day. Of course we could sign up for a tour, but it'd be way more expensive and we'd prefer to have more freedom as well. So we took a city bus to the visitor's center and got there before the park opened. I didn't really know what we were in for, having not seen many pictures of the waterfalls in the tourist literature. We had to hike in a little to get to the falls, and I got more excited as the sound of the falls grew louder. Right away we started to see wildlife as well- brightly colored butterflies and a mama coati (ko-ah-tee) and her babies. We'd never seen a coati before so it was pretty sweet. Eventually we got to the catwalk suspended over the falls and were able to look over them and get spectacular views of the surrounding area. There were several boat tour options and we decided to take the 12-minute-long "baptism" in the falls. It was exhilarating to be dunked in the spray from the falls, but I kept thinking how dangerous it was. They said they'd never lost anyone but they'd had boats flip over in the past. We were very glad to have done it.

I thought the signs were pretty funny. They were posted along the metal catwalks that we followed to view the park.

Our final stop on the waterfall tour was the Garganta del Diablo- Devil's Throat. I was impressed by the sheer volume of water descending into the mist. It was mesmerizing to stare into the current, and I'm glad that I was able to capture the rainbow in the picture. There were hundreds of birds flying around in the mist, which made it seem even more magical as you stood there feeling the mist on your skin.

Ok this post is getting ridiculously long and it's Mark's turn to share his perspective. Thanks for your patience in waiting for this post and reading it all the way to the end!

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers

So it's official -- as of Monday, September 22 our Peace Corps service ended. The whole process of our consolidation, evacuation, and completion of service has been a bit surreal. At times we were bogged down with paperwork and details and at other times we were overcome with emotion. Actually leaving Bolivia was the most difficult moment for me. I held out hope that the political atmosphere would calm down and we would be allowed to return to El Puente and continue our service. With each announcement from the PC Admin I thought "This will be the one where they tell us everything is calm again." Even as we waited in the Cochabamba airport and our plane was delayed over and over again, I hoped that things might return to normal. Not until our Country Director finally announced that Bolivia and Peru had approved our flight plan and the C-130 had left La Paz did I begin to accept that this phase of my life was over.

Erica and I walked outside the airport and took some last looks around at the mountains. I cried. We talked. We laughed a bit. Then we went to the observation deck and watched the military plane arrive.

Loading the plane took on a bit of a circus atmosphere. We were told not to take pictures, but hardly anyone could hold back their curiosity. The PC staff, volunteers, and even the Bolivian airport staff were all shooting photos of the military cargo plane. The mood was quite somber as the doors closed and we left Bolivia. We had a great view of Mt. Tunari as we sat on the runway and I was grateful that I had the opportunity to take two trips up the mountain. When we arrived in Peru the mood lightened and we were happy to be greeted by the US Air Force and Embassy officials. In another strange twist, one of the Embassy officials turned out to be my old high school drama teacher. I recognized him immediately but could not remember who he was until his name was announced. Later I talked to him and even though it had been over 15 years since I graduated and I'm a bit more hairy now, he also recognized me.

The next days were spent at a "retreat center" outside of Lima with all 110 Bolivia volunteers. We did paperwork, had sessions to express our feelings, and had time to unwind and just hang out with each other. When Monday came we were whisked away in vans to the central PC Peru office in Lima and were officially no longer Peace Corps Volunteers. It was a strange, abrupt ending to such an intense period in our lives.


At the entrance to our retreat center with fellow B-44 volunteers Gina and Stephanie.




We spent the next two days in Lima, planning out our next steps, eating good food, and renewing our passports. We went to the US Embassy on Tuesday and were helped by a former Bolivia PC volunteer who served in the early 90's. She had heard about our evacuation and we shared stories about our experiences.


We were fortunate to return to our hostel just as a group of friends was setting out for southern Peru. Our bags were already packed and we took advantage of our newly gifted freedom and made the decision to join our friends on the road...


And so begins the next phase of our lives -- we are now Returned Peace Corps Volunteers traveling around South America. We expect to take our time and see this continent and slowly make our way overland to Mexico. We are grateful for our time in Bolivia, the community of El Puente and its people, and the many other volunteers who we met and forged friendships with. We are also very excited about the opportunity to travel a bit before returning to our friends and family in the US.

These are the closing pictures of PC Bolivia taken Monday morning before everyone began their new adventures. We took a Bolivian-style photo without smiles.

And here is the final picture of our training group, B-44. We all met in Miami in January 2007 and became close friends during our time in Bolivia.

Hasta lluego,

Marcos

Leavin' on a Propeller Plane

We've been staying about 1 hour east of Lima, Peru in a little community called Chaclacayo since our evacuation from Bolivia on September 15. We started the COS (close of service) process on Tuesday with the distribution of film canister sized containers that we have to poop in to make sure we don't have any parasites. For those of you less desensitized to talking about digestion, I'll spare you the details. We have to go through a whole medical clearance like we did before we started. On Thursday a team of people from Washington, D.C. arrived to assist with paperwork and to tell us about our options. Some people will be signing up for a year or two in another PC country. Some people are going straight home to the states, and others will stay and travel for a while. We are still trying to figure out exactly what we're doing, but we're definitely going to travel around South and Central America before coming home. We may even go back to our site briefly to finish the mural, shift around some of our belongings, and say goodbye more thoroughly. Roque is safe in Cochabamba with a PC staff member's family and he will most likely be brought to the US by said staff in October. All 110 volunteers are staying in the same place, so we've been able to hang out and do a bit of much-needed processing.

Leading up to our evacuation, tension had been building in Bolivia for a couple of weeks. We had been cut off from our regional city by multiple bloqueos. There was even a roadblock in El Puente that had lasted three days. We saw a rock fight break out between those maintaining the bloqueos and those trying to pass through and we heard dynamite go off at night in an effort to scare people from trying to pass. We were put on alert by the Peace Corps on Sept 10th and then moved up to "standfast" on the 11th. That evening we got a call from our project director, who wanted us to pack right away to get to another town that night so we could catch a morning bus to Cochabamba. Normally we would go to Tarija, which is about 4 hours by bus compared to the 18 or so it would take us to get to Cochabamba. The reason they wanted us to go to Cochabamba by land is that the roads were blocked between us and Tarija and the airport in Tarija had been taken over by protesters. Since we weren't comfortable trying to cross the dynamite infused bloqueo at night, we decide to pack and depart the next morning. We were able to say goodbye to most of our friends and co-workers that morning and miraculously flagged down a taxi to take us north almost immediately. We took that taxi to Villa Abecia, about 30 minutes up the road, then transferred to a small van to travel another hour to Camargo where we spent the night. The next day, we took a bus from there to Potosi (about 4 hours) where a PC employee drove us the remaining 9 hours to Cochabamba.

Somewhere in between Potosí and Cochabamba we pulled over by the side of the road to go to the bathroom. Roque had been stirring in his crate and meowing a lot so we thought he might need to go as well. So we put his crate on the ground and opened the door. He timidly came out, but once he realized he was outside he took off! Luckily it was a full moon that night so we could see him. We tried to sneak up on him, but everytime we got close he´d walk further into the desolate wasteland. Finally I made a wide path around in front of him and was able to corner him between some scrub brush. We put him immediately back into his crate without him getting a chance to use the bathroom. We were relieved that he´d be coming with us instead of living a short life in the altiplano as condor fodder.

Upon arrival in Cochabamba, we got to sleep around 3am and had to get up for an 8am meeting where we were informed that we were, in fact, being evacuated. A group of about 70 volunteers left for Peru that morning, and the rest of us were consolidated at a hotel until the next day when our flight would depart. The really amazing part of the evacuation process is that we were flown to Peru on a military plane. Here we are waiting at the Cochabamba airport to be picked up.
The arrival of our plane in Cochabamba was delayed because they were having trouble receiving clearance for our Bolivian military plane to enter Peruvian airspace. We were at the airport for about 6 hours before it finally arrived. We were fed pizza and American candy while we waited.
From left: Kilo, Miguel, Marcos, Rachel

It was a special treat that the back of the C130 was aligned with a view of Tunari, the peak in Cochabamba that Mark climbed on two occasions.



This is what the hatch of the back of the plane looked like from the inside once it was closed.



Apparently the C130 is often included in military chants, such as:
"C130 flyin' down the strip
Cuerpo de Paz gonna take a little trip..."

Click on the arrow to see a video tour of the inside of the C130- yes it was that loud.




There were 44 of us on this flight. The flight that left the day before involved over 70 evacuees.


We were invited to visit the cockpit 2-by-2. I was impressed that there were 5 military personnel in there. This plane was built in 1959, but it had been updated with GPS navigation technology as well. We learned that it was actually an American-built plane that had been sold to the Bolivian military under the condition that it was available for use by the US military when necessary.
The view out the back of the plane when we arrived in Lima about 3 hours later.


Lima Air Force Base.


Upon arrival we were debriefed by officials from the US Embassy, US Air Force, and Peace Corps Peru. After getting our passports stamped with a 6-month Peruvian visa, we were whisked away to the "vacation center." It must have been a small university at some point, but had been converted into a hotel/event center. Each day buses of Peruvian kids would arrive to ride horses and play in the pool. We were staying in a dorm room and others were in small cabins with shared baths. Our meals were served in a dining commons and the wait staff were pretty tired of us by the time we left. We are now staying at a smaller hostel in the heart of Miraflores- a pretty touristy area of Lima.

It was nice to be in the same place as all the other volunteers while we wrapped up our service. We had several opportunities to meet with the volunteers we went through training with to share our experiences and feelings about moving on from Bolivia. I was really impressed that the majority of people are either going back to Bolivia for some reason or are pursuing Peace Corps service in other countries. Towards the end of our time together, we were a bit bogged down with administrative tasks and paperwork, but we still found time to get together to play the blues, wax nostalgic about our interrupted service, and compare future plans.

The team from Peace Corps Washington, D.C. facilitated the purchase of shirts for all the volunteers and Bolivian staff. Here's a picture we took before people started leaving on Sunday.
Tonight, reality began to set in as we accompanied Stephanie and Christian to the Lima airport to put them on their flights back to the states. They were both Tarija volunteers that we'd come to know and love. From left to right: Ellen, Marcos, Emelia, Stephanie, Alana, Christian.

It was sad to see them leave South America and we again recognized how lucky we are to be able to travel for a little longer before heading back to full-time American life. During a short souvenir shopping spree with Stephanie, I realized how we're quickly blending in with the backpacker population. Vendors refused to speak Spanish with us, insisting on using English to negotiate prices. We found ourselves yelling across plazas to pass on messages to our fellow travelers. And most shockingly, everything is SO expensive here compared to Bolivia. We've started making plans for the next few weeks- head to the US Embassy tomorrow to renew our personal passports (our PC-issued passports are only valid for 89 more days), get ourselves to La Paz so that Mark and some friends can climb Huayna Potosi at over 6000m, and then to our site before October 10th so that we can have Peace Corps ship our non-travel belongings home for us. The other reason for getting back to El Puente is so that we can put the finishing touches on the world map mural. Only about half of the countries were labelled and we had run out of yellow paint for the flag border. I expect we'll be able to finish it up in two weeks or less. We've been watching Bolivia on the news and it seems that most of the turmoil continues to be concentrated in Santa Cruz and Pando. Our Peace Corps contacts within Bolivia have also given us confidence that we will be fine getting there and out again without worrying about our safety more than usual.

We're flip-flopping about what to do with Roque. He's apparently adjusting well to his host family in Cochabamba, so we're considering the possibility of letting him go to save him from a long series of flights and moving around the states while we get settled. But as soon as we see a picture or video of him on our camera we can't imagine leaving him behind. He's only been a part of our family for a few months, but he was a great source of comfort and fun.

Here's something totally ridiculous I trained him to do back in El Puente... or did he train me?
(basket elevator video-coming soon)