PEEERRRUUU!

puno, arequipa, the lake, beautiful mountains, crossing the border into chile!!

Last days in LA PAZ....

leaving Bolivia was very emotional and sad and hard and i felt ready but also like i wanted to stay forever. here are some pictures from my last week in which i ate my way through the week in order to savour all the flavas of bolivia before i left. i lived in a building called building santa monica for my last week, at some ceviche, said bye to my family, ate a pastel with cheese, took a picture of the entrance of bolivia from peru, ate some fresh trout from lake titticaca and was on my way to peru. i walked across the border. it was fun.

Que te llamas? 1 de Mayo. Club de Madres.

The community I have been working in for the past 3 weeks. Its a moms club and they sew and knit together every morning. I am going to be this little guys godmother and attend his baptism in March apparently. Also, I am knitting a hat with llamas on it. The moms are amazing and I miss them already. Hopefully in February before I go to Buenos Aires I will be able to come back and visit them for a little bit. The pictures below are of the community, the women, an exposition of the things they make, frying treats for the exposition and of course the KIDS! They want me to start a co-op with them and sell the "aguayos" or tapestries in the United States and then share the money with them to help the community. The picture with the older woman and me with the baby on my lap... look at that one carefully... that tapestry is what they want to make and sell. Would you buy that? The aguayos are GORGEOUS so I think I know all of your answers already.

I like to call this section my random section. Why? Because its a compilation of random pictures that have nothing to do with each other. (1) a sign of a dog pooping (2) a large collection of plastic bottles on top of a small car. people also move their couches and belongings this way (3) view from airplane of Bogota, Colombia when I had to make an emergency landing on my way to Miami (4) graffiti in la paz (5) graffiti in cochabamba

Soroche and Bad English

One of the main guys from the Cochabamba Water Wars of 2003. 1 de Mayo Community. Showing us that there is no water here....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Cochabamba_protests

Vegetarian food in Cochabamba. All you can eat for $2. Can you smell cheap and delicious?

check point leaving Chapare making sure we didnt smuggle any coca leaves with us. i was really excited that we were going to have to get down and be checked but all they did was wave us through. on the way into the Chapare i saw a martial climb this bridge and then jump into the back of a truck to check it. we had to hide our cameras.

juice from camu camu. DELI!

coca leaves being dried and turned so that they can be sold at the market. the coca that is grown in the chapare region of bolivia is much moister but less sweet than the coca grown in the yungas region near la paz.

Cerro Rico, Potosi.

This bad boy was the seat of the $$$ the spanish robbed from Bolivia. They say that with all the gold and silver extracted from this mine during colonial rule by the spanish, a bridge could have been built from Bolivia to Spain out of silver.

A Church in Potosi.

I am standing in front of a famous mine. I cant remember why its famous or what its called but at the moment I was there I knew. Thats why I had my picture taken with it.

planet earth?? no, just the train ride from Oruro to 7,000 miles of natural salt flats. those are REAL flamingos!

Bolivian Altiplano

Salar de Uyuni!

the world's largest salt flat at 10582 square kilometers (4086 sq mi).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salar_de_Uyuni

llamas, islands filled with cactus bigger than cars, american students running around in their underwear at sunset, hotels made of salt and SALT!

Mining my own business. Miners leaving the mine. Me and Jenny pretending to be miners. Me Jenny and Eloise with a woman who sells coca and 96% alcohol to miners. They chew coca all day so that they dont feel nauseous or hungry and drink 96% alcohol so they dont have to think about how hard and difficult their work and lives are. We made a little friend named Alex who was about 8 and ran down the mountainside to sell us rocks. He came inside the mine with us and knew more about the mine than our guide. Makes you think about what education and knowledge mean, why do we give value to certain kinds of knowledge and not others?

This is real my friends. It looks fake, but its real. I know that youre probably asking yourself and the person sitting next to you " is this real? it doesnt look like it." But yea, its real. Traveling from Salar de Uyuni to Potosi by scenic route. Everything was breathtaking and beautiful. I almost threw up from the ZigZag road though. My head also almost exploded from altitude. The highest we were at was 15,000 ft. YIKEZ!