Well, after twenty eight days of seemingly endless waiting, we have finally acquired our official collecting permit and our visa extensions. We are now legal, and can finally leave La Paz in search of greener and more peaceful pastures.
First we head south to the departments of Potosí and Oruro, where we will encounter a landscape that more closely resembles the surface of the moon than any other place on Earth that I have ever seen (although as yet I have only seen satellite photos). Then we head east to the southern Bolivian Andes, the home of the World Heritage City of Potosí, home to the the most impressive collection of original Spanish colonial architecture in all of South America. The entire city looks very much today like it did in the year 1700. Then on to Sucre, Bolivia´s proud second capital, a city of whitewashed arches and university plazas where we will meet a counterpart researcher who will most likely accompany us to our last destination for this leg of the trip: the department of Santa Cruz in the southeast of Bolivia, a land of thorn scrub and enormous undeveloped expanses of seasonal swamplands. Good thing we brought plenty of mosquito repellent.
It will likely be a week or longer before I post another blog entry. I will make sure it is worth the wait.
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