Bolivia

Made it across the border with no problems and bussed it to the capital city of La Paz the same day. La Paz is HUGE. It's set high in the Andes and is well built up on the hillsides. There are beautiful snow capped mountains in the distance. It's a busy, busy city with lots of people watching to do. Spent a few hours at a market. Everywhere I´ve been, I keep expecting to find big thick wool sweaters, but what they have (which are quite nice) are thin alpaca and baby alpaca sweaters. I´ve been holding out on doing any real shopping, as the last thing I want is to haul more stuff around. I did some some Cape Cod baseball caps that made me wish I'd brought my camera along. A couple of weeks ago I saw a Filene´s Basement shopping bag. That was wierd too. Stuff that doesn´t sell back home gets shipped down here. They LOVE American clothes.

Everywhere I´ve been, without exception, there are shoe shine people. Some are old men, most are little kids...6 or 7 years old..covered in shoe polish. But here in Bolivia, the shoe shine guys are outright creepy. They were ski masks so all you can see is their eyes. My Lonely Planet travel book comments on it. They think it´s because the shoe shine guys are ashamed to be doing that kind of work. Which doesn´t make sense. Here, I think, most people are just grateful to be earning some money. Dunno.

Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. I believe it. The bus ride through the city...where some of the roads aren´t even paved, makes Colombia Road look like Newbury Street. In La Paz there are tours offered to bike Bolivia's Death Road. Uhh...no thanks, I passed on that one. Mama didn´t raise no foo! I saw the History Channel documentary on the Death Road before I left and there is a reason it's called that. It's a single lane, dirt road, along the winding peaks of the Andes. There is NO room for error.

I met some people who while out in the sun, for 2-3 hours got some nasty second degree burns. They were all blisted up. People forget that even though it´s cool (because of the altitude) you really must where sun block. Ouch!

I did get nervous last night, on my way back to my hostel I ran smack into the middle of a political rally. Bush is coming (or already here..don´t know) to South America. I don´t even know if that´s what it was about. Regardless there were hundreds of people and many, many cops in riot gear. This gringa kept her head down and RAN back to my hostel. My knees were knocking for a bit thereafter.

Today I flew south to the city of Sucre. I'll be here a day or so before moving along.

Man, these computers are soooo slow. I certainly miss do my Comcast high speed internet, that´s for sure, not to mention my super cool boss and work peeps.

Well mi familia y mi amigos..gotta run. Hope all is well. Love to everyone.