Day 37-38

 
 
 
 

Back in the US again! Mike books us this incredible hotel, The Blue, through Orbitz which is so nice I want to live here. Two bathrooms - decked out, three plasma TVs (living room, bedroom, bathroom) quartz counter tops, ice in the full sized freezer...I am guessing people usually don't stay here just one night, but that is all we have as we work our way home.
After settling and taking pictures we walked down for happy hour where they have a $5 appitizer menu and staff that make you feel so welcome despite being overwhelmed by a big group here for a business meeting. We enjoyed calimari so good that it not only made our top 5, but maybe number 1 and then walked back to our room to enjoy sitting on the balcony and watching all 3 TVs (when you have the opportunity to watch TV from a whirlpool bubble bath, you have to try it out).
I don't want to leave this hotel, but I am ready to get home...this morning I woke up and said to Mike, tomorrow we will wake up in our own bed and he responded, with our own dogs and so I rolled over and pushed hard on his chest to mimic the way Cassie climbs on your chest and puts her nose in your face in the morning just to make him feel more at home.
The sun is now rising over the golf course and it is time to get back on a plane. Miami, Dallas and then home!
Thank you all for reading and your love and support. See you soon!

Day 36 continued

 

We arrived safely on Santa Cruz, one day late and did a quick walk around the plaza before walking down to my old house and meeting with the family for dinner. It was sad to say goodbye, but I am hopeful that they will visit us in Tucson. All in all, Bolivia has been a phenominal experience. We have had a wonderful safe trip and hope to return someday to see the rest of the sights that we didn't have time for. For now it is back to the US and back to work.

Day 36

 

This is a picture of Mike and my hopeful faces as we wait in the airport...we have seats on a plane to La Paz and from La Paz to Santa Cruz today but it is still cloudy and I won't believe we are going to make it until I land in Santa Cruz - the plane we are taking to La Paz has not arrived yet. We do have emergency back up bus tickets which hopefully will have strong enough Karma to make our plane fly (I figure if we hadn't bought the bus tickets in case then the planes definitely wouldn't fly). We will see...the good news is the airport has free WiFi.

Day 35

 
 
 

Woke up in our beautiful Hostel Sucre (pictured) and drove out with our guide to Tarabuco where we shopped and learned some more about the town and the culture there. Our guide was concerned because of the rain that our flight might be canceled. Mike and I did not understand until we were headed home and she explained that the airport was closed because it was cloudy. They do not fly if there are clouds...evidently this is a recurring problem. We discussed it with our travel agent in Santa Cruz and decided to get a bus to Santa Cruz and she would try to get a partial refund on our ticket. We went to the bus station to discover that there were no seats to Santa Cruz left. After throughly discussing the posibility of taking a bus to other places which were ultimately also sold out we decided to stay in Sucre another night (ok, we had no other options, we even tried to find a taxi to take us which would have cost a fortune, but would have been worth it). We found a travel agency who could buy bus tickets for us a day in advance (at the bus station they only sell tickets day of which would have meant us getting up and rushing to the bus station early tomorrow morning) so we now have bus tickets to go to Santa Cruz tomorrow and are on the waiting list for a plane to Santa Cruz tomorrow if it isn't cloudy and the airport opens. I wouldn't be worried except that our bus (if all goes well) gets us in to Santa Cruz at 0800 Tuesday morning and our plane to the US leaves at 1045. With any luck we will get a plane to Santa Cruz and there won't be a problem.
We had a lovely dinner at a place that brews their own beer and has free wireless and rinses their veggies in bottled water so I was able to eat my first salad in 6 weeks. Now we are headed to bed hopeful that the sun will be out tomorrow.

Day 34

 
 
 
 

Started the day in a Nissan Sentra going 100m/hr for 3 hours scaling up and down the Andes only spending about 50% of the time on the right side of the road. Definitely felt safer than our bus ride, but still had a few moments of fear for my life.
We arrived in Sucre in one piece and found lunch at a great café playing Beatles music. Our lunch was delicious.
In the afternoon we took a city tour to see museums and beautiful breathtaking views of the city. Sucre is beyond beautiful; I could see myself living here. The museum had women weaving traditional cloth which we will see tomorrow when we go to the Tarabuco market.
After our tour we changed into warmer clothes and went out to find dinner at the Bibliotec Café which was also delicious. It started to pour rain while we were eating dinner so we had dessert, but the rain didn’t let up so once again we rain home in the rain, thankful that the Spanish was so fond of overhangs into the street that kept us a little dryer.

Day 33

 
 
 
 

Woke up and had a yummy breakfast of toast and strawberry juice, plus some cheese roll that wasn’t as good as it looked. Our guide picked us up around 9 and took us up to the mines. We climbed into an active mine which Mike describes as terrifyingly adventurous and archaic yet amazing. We climbed and crawled through not entirely stable areas, though our guide had complete confidence in our safety and only reminded us to watch our heads (hard hats on) or grab this rock to make sure we didn’t fall every 10 minutes or so. We carried coco leaves, alcohol and soda in to give to the miners as they passed use during our tour or while we watched them mining. The coco leaves help with altitude sickness and don’t taste as bad as they smell when someone else is chewing them. At one point, our guide sat us down and had us shut off our lights. It was pitch black in the heart of the mountain (which is now shorter than it used to be because of mining and cave-ins). He said that if your light goes out in the mine, you sit where you are because you can’t see and can’t tell up from down and are more likely to go deeper than out so you might as well wait for someone to find you…what an incredible life for about $10 per day in income.
We had a fabulous lunch and then napped a bit before our city tour. We saw the city mint, which is no longer in service and then our guide gave us a bit of a tour of the city. We both are of the opinion that he gave a much better tour of the mine (leading us down holes and tunnels) than the city which makes us wonder how long he was a miner before learning English and becoming a tour guide.
After our city tour we decided to check our email before finding dinner and got a bit of bad news over email. After crying it out, we drank a bottle of red wine with dinner–a really good Concho and Torro from Chile $12…you wouldn’t believe what a bottle of red wine does to you at this altitude.

Day 32

 
 
 
 

Another full day of travel, on a bus the whole time this time. We had seats next to each other, but the allow people who have not bought tickets on the bus so for the entire 7 hours a woman sat in the isle, on a case of coke and her luggage, next to me which I didn’t mind too much, except for 1. It was crowded, 2. Every time someone wanted to pass (one of the other standers) the bumped into my head as they climbed over her and 3. She chewed a lot of coco leaves the entire trip which don’t smell very good.
We arrived at our hotel too late to go to the hot baths, but not too late to wander around and see what we could see. We saw the market, a bunch of churches and had Chinese food for dinner (Mike was dubious at first, but after his first bite realized the beauty of Chinese food which is that even in Bolivia it tastes exactly like you expect it to taste). We stopped at a dissert place to pick up sweets for Mike on the way home…Mike has decided, by far he likes Potosi the best, he even says he could see himself living here.