Cody's note: I haven't found much time to write blog entries the past several days, we've been so busy collecting plants! So here is half of the story I promised in my last entry. I'll follow up with the other half soon.
Even before we left La Paz two weeks ago, our misadventures had already taken a turn toward the unfortunate. We stopped for lunch in one of the most upscale neighborhoods in the entire city, and parked our brand new 2007 Land Cruiser rental parked on the street just a couple of hundred feet from the cafe. The agent who rented us the vehicle warned us to never leave the car parked on the street in the city, because thieves love Land Cruisers, especially new ones. But since we are gringos tontos, we figured that one little time parking on the street would be ok. We only had to walk about a block from the car to get to our restaurant, and the street was clean with plenty of pedestrians. But in the thirty minutes that it took us to eat lunch, someone thieved three hubcaps (one from the spare tire!), the glass from both of our side mirrors, and the Toyota logo from the front of the vehicle. We drove around the city with no mirrors for a couple of hours until we finally located a black market dealer who sold us replacement mirrors of questionable history for a tenth of the cost of buying them new. We're still cruising around with two hubcaps and the Toyota symbol.
The next couple of days were pleasantly uneventful. We arrived in Sajama National Park in the afternoon and awoke in the morning to wander among the bunchgrasses with the llamas, exploring hot springs and enjoying the view of the colossal volcano Sajama, Bolivia's highest mountain, looming over the landscape. We left Sajama in the afternoon and arrived in the city of Oruro late in the evening, after collecting some Eleocharis in a pasture along the way. In Oruro we met our next challenge. No money. Wayne's ATM card had mysteriously ceased functioning just before we left La Paz, but we thought nothing of it since the Bolivian ATMs were giving us regular problems up until that point. Unfortunately, when we arrived in Oruro and Wayne's card still didn't work, we began to worry. I'd lost my debit card in a taxi just a week into the trip, so by the time we arrived in Oruro, our access to money relied entirely on Wayne's now apparently unusable card. We went to the bank to try taking out a cash advance, but the bank politely informed us that every single POS system in the entire city was out of commission, and there would be no cash advances for several days. I called my exceptionally helpful parents in the states to see if the PIN for my new debit card had arrived in the mail, but it had not. We tried the ATMs again. No luck. We were down to our last $25, and getting hungry. Something must be done.
Almost as a last resort, Wayne called his bank, and discovered that they (Bank of America) had placed a hold on his account for suspicious activity. Presumably they thought our numerous ATM withdrawls from Bolivia were suspicious, which seemed odd since Wayne had been using his card in Bolivia for over a month before the bank decided that any suspicious activity had occured. Go figure. Wayne spent the next few hours on the phone with Bank of America trying to reactivate his card—a phonecall which cost more than food for two days, or a night's stay in a pricey hotel. We found out after the fact that Bank of America has a collect number for international emergencies. Apparently this information is secret until you actually have an emergency.
That afternoon after preparing to leave the city, we stopped into a trendy coffee shop for a caffeine jolt and a short stint on the computer. I wanted to download some of my photos to the laptop so I could take more. I booted up the laptop and started organizing files and downloading photos from the camera. From somewhere nearby, something croaked like a metallic frog being electrocuted, or the sound of a rototiller hitting concrete, as heard from a distance. The first couple of times I heard it, I thought it was a noise from outside the coffee shop. When it started happenning more frequently and lasting longer, I became more curious about what it was. When Wayne noticed it too, and gave me a quizzical look, I decided something inside the coffee shop was making the noise. I only realized that the noise was coming from the laptop about thirty seconds before the laptop's screen went completely blue and it shut itself down. The rototiller sound was coming from the laptop's hard disk. I tried to boot it up again with no luck. It had flatlined. Our laptop had officially died.
At this point the humor of the situation was beginning to settle in. First we got robbed in La Paz, then Wayne's bank froze our funding for days, and now the laptop had melted down! We joked about what was next. Maybe someone would kidnap us and sell us into white slavery? Maybe the car would spontaneously combust? Each day a new adventure, that was for sure!
The laptop seemed like an easy fix. Back home in Washington, I could have picked up all the supplies I needed in less than an hour. Not so in Oruro. We scoured the city for an external hard disk. We hunted down every computer store in the entire city to ask about external hard disks. No luck. We asked people on the street. We asked our hotel. We asked vendors at the market. No luck. After hours of searching, we found one tiny computer store with a box in the window advertising the exact item we were looking for, but that store was closed. We checked back at least five times throughout the day, but to no avail. We left Oruro feeling defeated, but decided to come back in a few days when the store should be open again.
After two days spent in the near-wilderness watching flocks of feather-boa pink flamingos fly over our heads, we returned to Oruro. The store was still closed. We spent another night in the city hoping that our luck would improve in the morning and the store would open for us, but it didn't. We finally found a phone number for the store owner and called him, hoping that all our waiting around would finally pay off. The owner even answered the phone, but the news didn't cause any excitement. The box we'd been staring at for four days through the store's glass front, the box that said it contained the item we needed, was empty! We had wasted our time hoping on an empty box! We left Oruro late that afternoon, laughing about our bad luck as we headed south toward the Salar de Uyuni—the largest expanse of salty wasteland anywhere in the world—and even more exciting misadventures.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Sucre
We finally arrived in Sucre last night around seven in the evening. I like this city more than any other Bolivian city we've visited. The city blocks are enormous, and nearly every doorway leads into a huge interior courtyard, protected from the street. Our hotel has three courtyards, each one overflowing with potted plants, trees, and hanging baskets overflowing with flowers. Our room contains two large beds and a bathroom with a huge window that opens onto the courtyard. And although all these luxurious characteristics would lead you to believe that this is a pricey option, in fact this hotel is one of the cheapest places we've stayed in any city. Apparently, tasteful excess is just par for the course here.
The Bolivians call Sucre The White City, because a city ordinance mandates that all the classical architecture continually be whitewashed to preserve the historical ambience of the place. Enormous, ornate white buildings surround the ancient fig trees in the central plaza. The colossal structures used to house pieces of the bureaucracy of the Spanish empire, but now they are mostly home to hotels, trendy shops, and information offices. Sucre is the judicial capitol of the country, and I expect that the high court of Bolivia continues to operate within one of the giant old buildings, but other than that, only the churches seem to have maintained their function over the years.
Since I've only been here for a matter of hours (time spent sleeping excluded), I can't very well describe the local attitude, but all of our experiences so far with the Sureñas have been great. Even the policeman who told Wayne that he couldn't park on the street was extremely polite and helpful. I think that the slightly warmer climate and the abundance of college students here affects the way people interact with one another. This city is vastly more welcoming than La Paz, Oruro, or Potosí.
I have quite a story to tell about the last ten harrowing days of our expedition. I've got to save it for later because it will take some time to write, but for now I'll just say that my story contains almost all the elements of a classical adventure tale. We, the heroes, went on a quest. Along the way we were betrayed, attacked, stranded in the middle of nowhere for days, and finally abandoned by one of our own. But despite all these dramatic challenges, we returned from our quest alive and healthy, carrying with us the Eleocharis specimens that we sought (at least some of them). Read about all the rest of the details and find out who betrayed, attacked, and abandoned who when I post a full account of our story here in the next couple of days!
The Bolivians call Sucre The White City, because a city ordinance mandates that all the classical architecture continually be whitewashed to preserve the historical ambience of the place. Enormous, ornate white buildings surround the ancient fig trees in the central plaza. The colossal structures used to house pieces of the bureaucracy of the Spanish empire, but now they are mostly home to hotels, trendy shops, and information offices. Sucre is the judicial capitol of the country, and I expect that the high court of Bolivia continues to operate within one of the giant old buildings, but other than that, only the churches seem to have maintained their function over the years.
Since I've only been here for a matter of hours (time spent sleeping excluded), I can't very well describe the local attitude, but all of our experiences so far with the Sureñas have been great. Even the policeman who told Wayne that he couldn't park on the street was extremely polite and helpful. I think that the slightly warmer climate and the abundance of college students here affects the way people interact with one another. This city is vastly more welcoming than La Paz, Oruro, or Potosí.
I have quite a story to tell about the last ten harrowing days of our expedition. I've got to save it for later because it will take some time to write, but for now I'll just say that my story contains almost all the elements of a classical adventure tale. We, the heroes, went on a quest. Along the way we were betrayed, attacked, stranded in the middle of nowhere for days, and finally abandoned by one of our own. But despite all these dramatic challenges, we returned from our quest alive and healthy, carrying with us the Eleocharis specimens that we sought (at least some of them). Read about all the rest of the details and find out who betrayed, attacked, and abandoned who when I post a full account of our story here in the next couple of days!
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
The Waiting is the Hardest Part
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Nighttime in La Paz
I´m sitting in an internet café of questionable repute, where web surfing patrons enjoy the complete privacy of walled-in blackout booths that conceal completely any curious activities going on within them. This internet café stays open at all hours of the day, which is convenient both for the night-owl porn surfers and also for me, since I am waiting on the hour to strike one thirty in the morning (ten thirty at night on the west coast of the States) so I can make a phone call.
Outside, the city half-slumbers, half-shivers in the cold winter night. Street vendors have ceased hawking their wares, and many of them sit bundled in piles of brightly colored blankets, with their necks cocked at uncomfortable looking angles and their mouths wide open, snoring lightly. Women stoop over large steaming woks within which sizzle mysterious meat products and potatoes that they stir lazily and occassionally ladle into disposible cardboard snack trays for passers-by. Loosely affiliated packs of dogs rifle through piles of garbage in the shadows. Taxi drivers careen through the empty streets, obeying even fewer laws than usual, and once in a while a harmless drunk man or two or three stumbles down the sidewalk on a mission to find either something else to drink, or somewhere relatively warm to sleep.
The vast majority of shops in the city close down around ten or eleven pm, shuttering up their entry ways and windows with roll-away ceiling-mounted steel doors and sometimes also with wrought-iron cages that extend from one wall of the doorframe to the other. With all the doors closed, the city takes on the appearance of a prison town, where access both into and out of every building is quite effectively denied. Our hotel is no different. At ten pm, the man behind the front desk extends a metal grate across the entrance, closes the sliding steel doors, and attaches no less than two padlocks for posterity's sake. Watching this happen from inside the hotel definitely reinforces my feeling of safety, but exiting the hotel through the layers of metal and hearing the locks click back into place behind me leaves me feeling a bit exposed.
That feeling vanishes quickly though, once I hit the street outside our hotel-prison. I get relatively little attention for a six foot tall gringo wandering the streets in the middle of the night. Few people even seem to notice as I pass by. And as yet, crime seems to be virtually nonexistent here. Except for the few scammers which we watched attempting to relieve unwary tourists of their money in the traveler's ghetto a few blocks from our hotel, we have seen no actual criminal events take place. We haven't even heard about any, in fact. Even at night, the Bolivians are friendly and cheerful, yelling jovially at each other and flamboyantly flagging taxis and minibuses for the ride home. The gates, bars, sliding steel doors, and padlocks seem to be a just-in-case measure--par for the course in an otherwise relaxed and comfortable nighttime city.
It's time for me to make that phone call. Good night.
Outside, the city half-slumbers, half-shivers in the cold winter night. Street vendors have ceased hawking their wares, and many of them sit bundled in piles of brightly colored blankets, with their necks cocked at uncomfortable looking angles and their mouths wide open, snoring lightly. Women stoop over large steaming woks within which sizzle mysterious meat products and potatoes that they stir lazily and occassionally ladle into disposible cardboard snack trays for passers-by. Loosely affiliated packs of dogs rifle through piles of garbage in the shadows. Taxi drivers careen through the empty streets, obeying even fewer laws than usual, and once in a while a harmless drunk man or two or three stumbles down the sidewalk on a mission to find either something else to drink, or somewhere relatively warm to sleep.
The vast majority of shops in the city close down around ten or eleven pm, shuttering up their entry ways and windows with roll-away ceiling-mounted steel doors and sometimes also with wrought-iron cages that extend from one wall of the doorframe to the other. With all the doors closed, the city takes on the appearance of a prison town, where access both into and out of every building is quite effectively denied. Our hotel is no different. At ten pm, the man behind the front desk extends a metal grate across the entrance, closes the sliding steel doors, and attaches no less than two padlocks for posterity's sake. Watching this happen from inside the hotel definitely reinforces my feeling of safety, but exiting the hotel through the layers of metal and hearing the locks click back into place behind me leaves me feeling a bit exposed.
That feeling vanishes quickly though, once I hit the street outside our hotel-prison. I get relatively little attention for a six foot tall gringo wandering the streets in the middle of the night. Few people even seem to notice as I pass by. And as yet, crime seems to be virtually nonexistent here. Except for the few scammers which we watched attempting to relieve unwary tourists of their money in the traveler's ghetto a few blocks from our hotel, we have seen no actual criminal events take place. We haven't even heard about any, in fact. Even at night, the Bolivians are friendly and cheerful, yelling jovially at each other and flamboyantly flagging taxis and minibuses for the ride home. The gates, bars, sliding steel doors, and padlocks seem to be a just-in-case measure--par for the course in an otherwise relaxed and comfortable nighttime city.
It's time for me to make that phone call. Good night.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Migraine-ación
We went to the Bolivian immigration office today again to try and rescue our passports from the iron grip of the buearacracy. Fourth try. No luck.
We dropped off the passports over two weeks ago, and were told to return on May 30 to recover them with our visa extensions stamped and ready to go. I didn't expect them to be done on the 30th, since a whole slew of people have advised us that nothing involving the government here ever gets done on time, but this is getting a little bit ridiculous. We've been waiting for three days now on a single signature from the subdirector of the immigration office. Apparently she must be a very busy woman.
The Migración office itself stands as a living, breathing testament to the pre-computer-paper-trail bureacratic lifeform. No less than twenty five clerks sit in seemingly random positions behind twelve teller windows scattered hapazardly throughout a dingy grey room. Each teller window has a specific purpose, although every task involves several windows. Directions sound like the play by play of a very tedious and boring role playing game. "Go to window seven and pick up nine different forms. Fill each one out in black (not blue!) ink, affix the sticker to the top form, print your mother's maiden name in space provided, sign the line next to the word 'sucker' and roll your D-20 to calculate the likelihood that the teller will actually pay attention to you when you come back the window. Oops! She isn't even there anymore! Right, didn't you know that you need to go to window number eleven now? Oh, stop crying, the line's only thirty people long."
Unsuspecting tourists anxiously approach the windows with slips of paper clutched between white knuckles. Often, while one clerk attempts to locate a passport or a form, other clerks will point and the poor tourist's slip of paper or the computer screens and cackle out loud. So far I've seen quite a few very irate tourists bitching out the clerks, who sit calmly behind their plexi-glass enclosures and smile demurely while repeatedly uttering simple, aggravating, two-word phrases. "Vuelve mañana. Lo sé. Vuelve mañana." (Come back tomorrow....)
To pass the time while we wait indefinitely in line for our own disheartening experiences at the windows, Wayne has started describing the clerks' actions like a sports announcer, and offering his own predictions of their thoughts. It goes something like this... "He's taking the ticket!! Oh, he's going for the computer! Now he's thinking, 'Who the hell is this guy kidding, his passport's not going to be ready til August!'". It does help pass the time. But when some poor kid hands a clerk a slip of paper and the clerk passes it to his assistant and busts up laughing, I really have trouble deciding whether to laugh along with them or grind my teeth.
Our passports are supposed to be ready on Monday, just like they were supposed to be ready last Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and today. Maybe I should start taking bets.
We dropped off the passports over two weeks ago, and were told to return on May 30 to recover them with our visa extensions stamped and ready to go. I didn't expect them to be done on the 30th, since a whole slew of people have advised us that nothing involving the government here ever gets done on time, but this is getting a little bit ridiculous. We've been waiting for three days now on a single signature from the subdirector of the immigration office. Apparently she must be a very busy woman.
The Migración office itself stands as a living, breathing testament to the pre-computer-paper-trail bureacratic lifeform. No less than twenty five clerks sit in seemingly random positions behind twelve teller windows scattered hapazardly throughout a dingy grey room. Each teller window has a specific purpose, although every task involves several windows. Directions sound like the play by play of a very tedious and boring role playing game. "Go to window seven and pick up nine different forms. Fill each one out in black (not blue!) ink, affix the sticker to the top form, print your mother's maiden name in space provided, sign the line next to the word 'sucker' and roll your D-20 to calculate the likelihood that the teller will actually pay attention to you when you come back the window. Oops! She isn't even there anymore! Right, didn't you know that you need to go to window number eleven now? Oh, stop crying, the line's only thirty people long."
Unsuspecting tourists anxiously approach the windows with slips of paper clutched between white knuckles. Often, while one clerk attempts to locate a passport or a form, other clerks will point and the poor tourist's slip of paper or the computer screens and cackle out loud. So far I've seen quite a few very irate tourists bitching out the clerks, who sit calmly behind their plexi-glass enclosures and smile demurely while repeatedly uttering simple, aggravating, two-word phrases. "Vuelve mañana. Lo sé. Vuelve mañana." (Come back tomorrow....)
To pass the time while we wait indefinitely in line for our own disheartening experiences at the windows, Wayne has started describing the clerks' actions like a sports announcer, and offering his own predictions of their thoughts. It goes something like this... "He's taking the ticket!! Oh, he's going for the computer! Now he's thinking, 'Who the hell is this guy kidding, his passport's not going to be ready til August!'". It does help pass the time. But when some poor kid hands a clerk a slip of paper and the clerk passes it to his assistant and busts up laughing, I really have trouble deciding whether to laugh along with them or grind my teeth.
Our passports are supposed to be ready on Monday, just like they were supposed to be ready last Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and today. Maybe I should start taking bets.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Sorata and Coroico
We visited Sorata last weekend. I had hoped to post a blog entry then but did not find the time before we left for Coroico this past weekend. So I'm combining the two towns into a single post (more bang for your boliviano.)
Moonrise over Nevado Illampú.Sorata is difficult to describe. A small town by USA standards, it is nonetheless the commercial and cultural center of the valley to whose very steep walls it clings. Each morning, the townspeople of Sorata and the abundant European and Israeli tourists (and a few Americans) greet the gigantic, glaciated crags of Nevado Illampú, which tower above the town. The mountain draws more people to Sorata than even the beautiful canyons and exceptional mountain-biking opportunities. Illampú is the most difficult ascent out of all the peaks of Bolivia's magnificent Cordillera Real, and attracts hardcore mountaineering types as well as more prudent tourists who just want to visit a glacial lake or two and spend a couple of days in Sorata, which has been described, accurately, as Shangri-La.
Conga the Mountain Dog and yours truly.We spent quite a bit of our time in Sorata on the trail. Conga the Mountain Dog, a.k.a. Gizmo, accompanied us everywhere we went on our first day out. She climbed hills faster than we did, skidded down scree slopes more gracefully, and seemed to know where we were headed before we could even figure it out! We learned later that evening that Conga regularly disappears for up to a week at a time on similar adventures, sometimes wandering so long without food that by the time she gets back home she’s become seriously malnourished and feeble. We thought our ten-hour day of rock-hopping in the riverbed had worn her out, but it to her it must have felt like a leisurely stroll through the park!
A blue moth from our campsite.The next day we planned an ambitious fourteen-kilometer hike along the river canyon to the town of San Pedro, where a navigable cavern, the Gruta de San Pedro, beckons tourists with colonies of bats and an underground lake. We headed out early, but because we stopped for every interesting plant and photo opportunity, we only made it halfway there by the end of the afternoon. We raced some Israeli tourists back to the finest Swiss-baked cake Sorata has to offer at a café up the hill from our campsite (we won), then ate an enormous dinner of goulash and mashed potatoes, and passed out.
We departed Sorata on a minibus headed southbound back to La Paz, with our backpacks crammed on the roof rack, and ourselves crammed into the back seat. In this country of overwhelming Aymara and Quechua heritage, standing taller than five feet six inches puts you at a serious disadvantage. Not only do Wayne and I manage to whack our heads on every other bathroom doorjam, we also seem to get lucky quite often and end up in the back seat of the minibus on long distance trips. At six feet tall, we do not fit very well into the back seats of the minibuses! But we survived the mercifully short three hour trip, and checked back into our hotel for another week of paper pushing, which turned out to be much shorter than we expected. We exhausted our list of tasks in just two days, and then set out for Coroico, this time armed and dangerous with a plant press and official permission to collect.
Coroico greets the dawn.Coroico lies about 80 km northeast of La Paz, in the range of Andean foothills known as the Yungas, and at a mere six thousand feet above sea level, enjoys a much warmer, wetter climate than either the Altiplano or Sorata. It is a destination for tourists and vacationing Bolivian highlanders, and feels like a resort town, with secluded bungalows scattered throughout the surrounding hills. We picked a particularly secluded one that was recommended by the guidebook, but when we arrived at ten pm, nobody was home! Fortunately the door to the main guesthouse was ajar, so we selected some dorm beds and made ourselves at home in spite of the receptionist's absence. Nobody even batted an eyelash the next morning when we walked downstairs for breakfast.
This guy looks a little nervous. Maybe he knows that he tastes good.Birds outnumber people in Coroico. Spending a morning watching the forest canopy will confirm this beyond any doubt. Actually figuring out the proportion, however, is more difficult. Most of the birds are usually heard and rarely seen. Some of the birds, like this pheasant-looking number on the right, make every effort toward invisibility, ducking behind branches or flapping away immediately upon making eye contact with any human. But many of them make such loud and raucous noises so frequently that in spite of their stealthy movements, it remains almost impossible not to know where they are at all times. This is especially true in the very early morning, when several species seem to prefer to screech their welcome to the day from perches just outside the hostel windows. Actually, it's quite convenient that these birds choose to squawk next to the windows. It really simplifies the process of birdwatching. I got some great bird photos one morning (including the photo on the right) without even getting out of bed!
Each morning, flocks of fluorescent green parrots cruise over the town and its surroundings, squawking unceremoniously as they fly to their daytime hangouts in the valley below. Shimmering blue and green hummingbirds flit obsessively to and fro among the blossoms of the Inga trees, vigorously attacking any rivals who make the mistake of encroaching upon their territories, while the beautiful and much more secretive trogons glide silently among the branches of the shade trees in the coffee plantations on the hillside. The occasional tropical woodpecker may also be seen, enjoying the pleasures of an avocado by the side of the road.
A tropical woodpecker enjoys an avocado.We spent our last morning in Coroico fighting off the abundant biting insects and nursing our legs (quite sore after three days of hiking the steep trails of the valley slopes). That afternoon we caught a bus back to La Paz, which brought us through lush cloud forests into sparse highland grasslands, and finally into the upper reaches of the city, where the familiar odors of diesel smoke and fried chicken welcomed us back. After a brief taxi ride to our hotel, we lugged the now overflowing plant press up to our second story room and commenced our re-acclimation to the altitude.
Now we'e been pushing papers again for a couple of days. We almost have our visa extensions, after only three weeks of waiting! Assuming that all goes well, we'll soon head southwest to the town of Uyuni and some of the most amazing scenery in Bolivia. I've heard people compare the Bolivian southwest to the surface of the moon. More photos and stories will certainly follow.
Moonrise over Nevado Illampú.Conga the Mountain Dog and yours truly.A blue moth from our campsite.We departed Sorata on a minibus headed southbound back to La Paz, with our backpacks crammed on the roof rack, and ourselves crammed into the back seat. In this country of overwhelming Aymara and Quechua heritage, standing taller than five feet six inches puts you at a serious disadvantage. Not only do Wayne and I manage to whack our heads on every other bathroom doorjam, we also seem to get lucky quite often and end up in the back seat of the minibus on long distance trips. At six feet tall, we do not fit very well into the back seats of the minibuses! But we survived the mercifully short three hour trip, and checked back into our hotel for another week of paper pushing, which turned out to be much shorter than we expected. We exhausted our list of tasks in just two days, and then set out for Coroico, this time armed and dangerous with a plant press and official permission to collect.
Coroico greets the dawn.This guy looks a little nervous. Maybe he knows that he tastes good.Each morning, flocks of fluorescent green parrots cruise over the town and its surroundings, squawking unceremoniously as they fly to their daytime hangouts in the valley below. Shimmering blue and green hummingbirds flit obsessively to and fro among the blossoms of the Inga trees, vigorously attacking any rivals who make the mistake of encroaching upon their territories, while the beautiful and much more secretive trogons glide silently among the branches of the shade trees in the coffee plantations on the hillside. The occasional tropical woodpecker may also be seen, enjoying the pleasures of an avocado by the side of the road.
A tropical woodpecker enjoys an avocado.Now we'e been pushing papers again for a couple of days. We almost have our visa extensions, after only three weeks of waiting! Assuming that all goes well, we'll soon head southwest to the town of Uyuni and some of the most amazing scenery in Bolivia. I've heard people compare the Bolivian southwest to the surface of the moon. More photos and stories will certainly follow.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
A Golden-toed Toad
A toad in the Eleocharis.
Golden toes.
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