Bom Bom,

Bloging frequently is tough when you only have an iphone as your only means of communication.  I also have no idea if I´m making spelling mistakes since spell check is in Spanish.  We´ve now spent a month and a half in beautiful, always sunny, Sucre.  I spent about half my time trekking, and half my time hanging out in Sucre.  The backpacking down here is fairly tough.  At 10,000 ft + every step carries a little more punch and wears you out more than normal.  Also, the sun is killer, especially for a white boy like myself. The countryside, however, is crazy.  Waterfalls pour off of huge cliffs while bulls and goats drink from the sky blue waters.  The mountains are literally every color imaginable.  I have walked on purple, blue, turqouise, orange, and every other color ground.  Speaking of the ground, the ground in the countryside is littered with fossils and dinosaur tracks.  Nothing like following along a trail carved by a t-rex.  I wish I could post pictures, but right now that may prove too technologically advanced for my current internet situation.

Bolivia is very different from US, or even western culture.  Their beliefs can be strange and they way they live their lives often makes little sense to me.  One guide told me that he was convinced that the Earth was flat.  Others are convinved that after 6pm at a certain waterfall, a demon whirlpool forms and sucks anyone there under to their death.  I´ve also been told that Bolivian children up to age 8 are bound to help bone growth.  Weird stuff.  There is a certain rural community in which one of their festivals essentially reinacts fightclub.  Community members join into a dance where they fight, and often die, for honor.  Also, it´s not uncommon for women in rural communities to have 15+ children, and in some communities men choose mates from the women who rotate through on a yearly basis.

And of course the great part about Bolivia is that practically nothing works, especially their government.  Bolivia´s national sport is protesting and going on strike.  The people are against the government, the police are corrupt, you can make bribes for your drivers license, rural people dont believe in medicine, and road blockades are common.  Speaking of which, the first part of our travels in the morning literally involve running a blockade to get out of Sucre.  The truckers are angry about paying taxes and have blockaded every single road out of and into the city.  I heard about one car getting out, they drove across the rail road tracks.  The truckers are slowly strangling the city.  Millions of dollars have been lost aready by crops rotting before they can get to the market.  Fortunately, they don´t seem to care if you cross on foot, so we´re waking up early to walk a couple of killometers until we reach the other side.  The US travel site warns against this, but it should be fun!

One of the best parts about being in the city had been living in our apartment: La Selenita.  We live in the garden of a French painter and an anthropologist from Brussels.  The French painter reminds me of Captain Jack Sparrow, he´s crazy and loves to switch between English, Spanish, and French as he rambles and makes French jokes. We have a fantastic cabaña surrounded by pear trees, tomato plants, walnuts, and vines full of pumpkins.  We also have a beautiful shaded terrace that looks out over the city and provides a great view of the sunset framed by the Andes.  There is also a friendly dog and simease cat, the later of which enjoys climbing into our bathroom sink.  I spend a lot of my time in Sucre doing absolutely nothing, a welcome change from my life in the US.  I´ve read the first Harry Potter book in Spanish and have now moved on to the second, we bought all 7 for 20 USD.  I also spend some of my time teaching English to some of the guides and helping out with other projects around the Condor office.  The guides are a lot of fun and I have enjoyed getting to know them over the last month and a half.  The other day we played walley ball (a raquet ball-volley ball hybrid) with some of them and made fools of ourselves.  It´s sad leaving this community that we´ve come to be part of over the last 1.5 months, but it will be a nice change to get out of Sucre and take in a little but more of this amazing and beautiful country.  Tomorrow we head to Potosi, the highest city in the world at 14,400+ ft, and then on to the Salar to Uyuni and La Paz. Thanks for all the prayers and support, I´m excited to travel, but I´m also excited to get back to the good ole US of A.  BOM BOM

Ling Ling