la, our lovely coordinator, found us a small hotel in the center of the town Villa Tunari, which is tiny and centered on tourism, as there are various resorts and nature parks in the area. The hotel had a pool and a nice open area with lots of palm trees (later in the weekend Margaret took it upon herself to knock down, crack, and drink 4 of them, although the water inside wasn't anything compared to what I had in Brazil) and a decent pool. The pool ended up being a key element in the weekend because we soon found out that the hotel was conserving water, and thus didn't have it turned on unless you asked; then, when you did ask, it would be about 5 minutes of trickle. So, it was a very hot, sweaty, bug repellent filled weekend without showers, but it was totally worth it.
t is home to several species of monkeys that just walk around and steal wallets from visitors. You can pet the monkeys, and it's not at all uncommon for them to climb right up onto your head. Bridget, Weenta, and Margaret all had very close encoutners with a mommy monkey who was carrying a baby on her back and jumped from one of them to the other. I, unfotunately, only got a few pets in, but at least I didn't get bitten, which I've heard of happening on numerous occasions. 
the walk through the jungle was nice. Actually the waterfall was pretty tiny and slightly disappointing, but we found another one that was a little better and quite refreshing, at the least. That afternoon we tried to find some natural lakes we'd heard about, but failed and ended up swimming in a green pool that dyed my hair a lovely shade of mold. It's fading out now, but it was funny because Bridget refused to get in for fear of the green hair and I told her she was silly... at least she was nice about it when she got to say "I told you so!" That evening we just hung out at the hotel, played cards, swatted mosquitos, cracked coconuts, and swam until we got yelled at for being too loud.The following Friday we had out second Amizade-planned trip, which was to Uyuni, in the southwestern department (like a state) of Potosí. The six of us went with Sergio, who is Jean Carla's assistant and a very cool guy; Eric was sick and had to stay behind, unfortunately. On Friday morning we got a bus to Oruro, a city 4 hours away famous for its unique carnaval, then from there we took a 7ish hour train ride to the town of Uyuni. Uyuni itself if very tiny, but we stayed in a neat hotel with AWESOME food (American-style fruit pancakes and llama pizza; actually the place is run by a guy who woked at Margaret's favorite pizza place in Massachussettes, talk about a small world) and got a good night's rest before heading off on our grand adventure through the arid Andes. I might also add that the region we were in for the weekend was over 12,00 ft above sea level, a rude awakening for me from Cochabamba's 8,000ish. I was the only one who seemed to need the altutide medicine, though.
The tour we took (that everyone takes if you go there) was a 3-day jeep ride around the region, which boasts the largest salt flat in the world at 12,000km (7.5mi); several lakes full of thousands of flamingos, including one green and one red lake colored by the natural minerals; volcanic rock formations, hot spots, and hot springs; wildlife like llamas, alpacas, viscachas (like a rabbit mized with a chinchilla), and vicuñas (like a llama mixed with a white tail deer), and miles upon miles of a surreal desert landscape. You should go.
We were in two jeeps, one of which was also shared by two Canadian girls and two very nice Swiss guys, two drivers, and a cook who rode around with us and made us yummy food like pasta quinoua, which is a typical grain of the Andes that is very high in nutritional value. The first day we went to the salt flats, where we took some fun perspective pics (where you can make it lokk photoshopped because there's no point of perspective; we didn't know about this before, though, so ours aren't all that cool, honestly). There is an island in the middle called the Isla del Pescado (Fish Island, because it's shaped like a fish) that's made of fossilized coral, and is covered in beautiful cacti. That was probably one of the coolest things we saw, if not the coolest.
That night we stayed in a hotel in a "ghost town" that only had electricity until around 9pm. After that Sean and I taught everyone to play Euchre by candlelight and drank Argentinean wine (we were still friends the next day, but the atmosphere did get a little tense even with the wine... they tell me I can get a LITTLE competitive, so I guess I am my mother's daughter, haha). It was called a ghost town because all the people that lived there aside from the family that runs te hotel literally left their houses in search of better economic opportunities. If you saw the town it's easy to understand. There's not much money or opportunity to be scraped off the bare rock of a rugged mountainside. It was really neat to walk around, though, because you could really examine the houses and try to imagine the way the people must have lived. At the very top of the town there was a flat area with just the skeletons of mud huts; it could have easily been mistaken for Incan ruins if you weren't able to crumble the mud off of the walls yourself.
The next day was colder and very windy. We drove around to some very neat volcanic rock formations, and got to see our first two lakes, one of which is called the Stinky Lake because it smells like sulfur. The lakes were full of pink and white flamingos, and I got just about enough flamingo pictures to wallpaper my house in the two days we visited the lakes. We visited the Lagua Coloradad for a bit, though, which wasn't as red as it's supposed to be, unfortunately, and the Laguna Verde, which was also not all that green, but still very beautiful. Its sits right below a volcano, so the reflection was really neat. Plus we never got tired of the flamingos. We could also see mountains on that part of the drive that are in Argentina dn Chile, which was a neat concept.
That day we also ran into a herd of llamas, which I was probably a little too excited about. The mountain landscape on this day was really incredible. There are several where you can see layers of different colors starting from the peak and going down the side of the mountain from the different minerals. We also saw a few volcanoes, one of which is still smoking, and the famous "tree rock", which is naturally shaped like, you guessed it, a tree. That night we stayed at a hostel in the park Reserva de Eduardo Avaroa (I don't, know who he is) at the edge of the Laguna Colorada, a reddish-orange lake.
After going to bed at an unusually reasonable hour, we were awaken a little late at 4:30am by our somewhat impatient drivers (they were obviously annoyed by our taking the time to brush teeth, etc) and headed off into the sunrise to see the natural and man-made geysers (steam shooting out or the earth reaching what must have been around 30ft) and the "dangerous volcanic area" where the pic at the top is from. This area was really reallly cool. It was like craters burned into the ground with boiling water at the bottom and steam rising all around. The smell was not that awesome, but it gave one the sense of being on another planet.
Next came what was possibly the most fun part of the trip: the hot springs. Keep in mind that when we got out to the cars at 4:45 it was probably around -10degrees C (14 degrees F), and it didn't really get much warmer than that at all after the sun came up. So, you get there with freezing toes and all these layers on (for me it was 2 pants, a tanktop, T-shirt, sweater, hoodie, hat, gloves, scarf, and 2 pairs of socks), and suddenly there are all these people just chilling out in bikinis. I was a little skeptical, but decided there was no way I could miss it, and it was AWESOME. The water is like 95 degrees F, and it warmed me up to the core for the rest of the day. Margaret, Weenta, Hannah, and I all got in, and we haven't quit raving about it since, haha. Bridget, being from Texas and all, wasn't handling the cold as well as the rest of us, and Sean just gave s a "no", haha. We ate our breakfast there, and the rest of the day was a little rushed because we had to get back to Uyuni, and the Swiss guys had to make it to the Chilean border to get the only bus by 9am.
That afternoon we had lunch in a little town that had fiels of moss with alpacas all over them, which was really beautiful, and after lunch we headed back to Uyuni with few stops. In Uyuni we got some much needed showers (although not nearly as needed as they had been after returning from Villa Tunari, haha, at least there was virtually no sweating on this trip), ate the most delicious pizza ever made, and then Weenta and I went with Sergio to a little pub (called The Extreme Fun Pub, which was, despite it's absurd name, actually really neat) to meet up with some friends of his from Uyuni who are opening a hostel there while everyone else took a nap before the train ride. We got the train at 1am, and slept some, although they decided to turn on the worst DVD ever made at around 6:30. It was all these aweful 80s and 90s songs like "Total Eclipse of the Heart", but dubbed in even worse Spanish translations; it was really one of the worst things I've ever seen, and although it was funny on the way there, the humor was lost on me at 6:30am, haha).
We got home that afternoon and had dinner with a very nice Canadian guy we met on the bus, and have since had a fairly standard week. Well, actually yesterday was Weenta's bday, so we had a little party in Spanish class, then a very delicious dinner at her house. Yesterday evening we also went to a presentation about Andean/indigenous cluture by a famous Bolivian anthropologist named Wilfredo Camacho and his wife, so that was neat.
Friday night Jean Carla bought us tickets to go see Bolivia's most famous traditional band, Los Kjarkas, whose music is a lot of fun. They sing in both Spanish and Quechua, which is the traditional language passed down from the Incan Empire of the Bolivian middle lands and much of the Andes. Here's one of their most famous current songs, Fría: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ6pdOHPJgo. The concert was a looot of fun, although I'm not sure how much I would just listen to their music. They make it so you can dance and get into it, and most of the crowd was singing, etc. We were lucky they came while we were here.
So that's that. Now we have 2 weeks left in Cochabamba, which is still thouroughly depressing. Next weekend the group is splitting up for another weekend of travel. Bridget and I are going to reschedule the Sucre and Potosí trip, and the others are going to Toro Toro, which I think is a jungle-esque town where you can go caving, scuba diving, and other fun outdoorsy things that I'm a little too claustrophobic to really enjoy, haha.
If I don't post before then, I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving and safe travels throughout the season!
Yours
Alanna
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