A Month of Holidays PART 2

to continue....

I arrived back to my house in Santa Cruz on the 8th and that night was met (at about 11:00pm) by a crowd of singing people. My birthday was the next day and a bunch of people from the church had come over to give me my birthday serenade (see below)!

That was pretty cool. They sang a ton of songs and we all ate jello and empanadas (dough wrapped around cheese... pretty good, no?) and drank coca-cola. It was fun, even though I felt a little awkward because I wasn't exactly sure how I was supposed to act as the sung-to person.

The next day my family (the most fabulous host family in the world!) gave me a meal with my favourite foods and then a cake! (see below.... me with my host parents... the cake later had candles... that refused to be blown out... honest. I blew them all out and then they relit - a few times. Silly candles, they even kept going once they'd been pulled out of the cake).

The day after my birthday I was off again with my friend, Kat, to La Paz. I would like to relate to you the journey there (which was scheduled to take 24 hours... to start us off, we left 2 hours late):

Hour 1 - Heidi and Kat don stoic faces and excitement is high for the trip to La Paz

Hour 2 - Light begins to dim and eyes roam outward to watch fading landscape

Hour 4 - Sleep descends

Hour 7 - Bus stops for an undetermined amount of time. Kat and Heidi make a mad dash to the bathroom bushes - bus leaves unexpectedly and made chase ensues. Heidi and Kat clambour onto bus, victorious, tired and slightly abashed. Endulge in salty crackers.

Hour 8-9 - Flota jumps line and passes a plethora (and I mean a very large amount) of parked trucks and buses causing two sketchy road blocks and some very amused passengers.

Hour 15 - Still in unimaginably long line [later discovered to be the cause of a road collapse] - but much further along. Heidi and Kat wipe sleep away long enough to lament over their static position and "ooh" over the gorgeous scenery.

Hour 18-19 - Arrive in Cochabamba (half-way point??). Happy yet numbed by the late arrival. Buy snacks and nibble on tasteless crackers. Bus leaves late. Wonder how stupidly late the bus will arrive in La Paz.

Hour 24 - Kat and Heidi realize a bus should not be judged for its outward appearance. Their esthetically-stunning flota (bus) sucks.

Hour 27 - La Paz sparkles into view. Breath is taken away - literally.

Hour 28 - Starting to lose patience. Traffic is heavy - so are our bladders.

Hour 29 - Safe exit from flota. Kat and Heidi make hurried escape away from terminal.

Hour 30 - Undramatically, yet exhaustedly, arrive at Arthy's (hostel). Play a short-lived game of pool. Wander aimlessly to bed - sans shower.

So, we did eventually arrive.... and we slept a lot. And then, the next morning, we peaked outside with our backpacks on and became quite frightened by the frenzied activity outside. La Paz turns out to be an amazingly crazy, busy city. I have never seen so many people running before. The first person running made me stop a second and watch. I wondered what was wrong... turns out a lot of people run in La Paz. Perhaps they enjoy the exercise of carrying a briefcase and jogging up enormously steep hills at a giant altitude of 3600m. Then again, perhaps not. It was a little amusing for Kat and I since we'd been getting use to the slower Bolivian pace in Santa Cruz. We wandered a bunch around La Paz and I shopped a ton! La Paz has got such an amazing artesans' market! I wanted to buy one of everything!... almost.

After a few days in La Paz we signed up for a tour to Lake Titicaca. That turned out to be an amazing trip! The lake is absolutely gorgeous! I got a little ocean-sick (as in... I started missing the ocean). The lake is over 8500km2 (squared kilometers), so there were places where the other side was not viewable. It was spectacular. We stayed on a tall Island on the lake called La Isla del Sol (The Island of the Sun), which was 4000m into the sky and took an incredible amount of will-power and lung-capacity to climb. Thank goodness for a cool little plant called muña, that we held close to our noses as we walked and inhaled its abundant supply of oxygen. We stayed at a really nice hotel there and ate some fish native to the lake. Absolutely delicious!

(the view of the lake from our hotel)

After our fantastic journey to the lake, we spent a day or two more in La Paz, hanging out... meeting more people from all over (we roomed with a pretty awesome group of people from France and Brazil... that was a lot of fun). It was, all-in-all... a pretty super trip. The trip back was not very eventful. We arrived early to Santa Cruz.

Well, that about sums up my vacation month (actually... a bit over a month). I've really enjoyed the chance to travel and all my freetime, but I suppose I'm now a bit excited to return to a routine. The time will move faster when I start working again and I'm excited to be working with some new co-workers and with some new kids.

Until next time! (hasta el proximo!)

Heidi