I will start this blog off by telling you some things I've forgotten to mention in past blogs.

1. In every town or city in Peru, all the homes/businesses are built from brick and cement and they all have a foot to 6 feet of rebar sticking out all over the top, like every building is unfinished. Shelby and I could not figure out for the longest time why and then one of our guides told us that the taxes are higher on finished buildings so everyone builds their houses up to this point and then just leaves the rebar sticking out the top so it is considered "unfinished" and they don't have to pay so many taxes!! It looks so terrible but I guess it works haha.

2. Every public restroom in Peru and Bolivia requires you to pay a couple soles or a couple bolivianos to use it. They give you a few squares of toilet paper and you get to go in. However, all the toilets are missing toilet seats and their are no backs on the toilet... I have no idea why but it got really annoying sitting on the cold porcelain toilet bowl to do your business. Also in Bolivia, public restrooms were really hard to find so I actually had to sneak away from the group a few times and squat behind a rock hahaha. Also when we did find restrooms, the pipes were frozen so you couldn't flush or wash your hands. I miss nice bathrooms.

3. It is still legal to smoke inside in Bolivia. There was smoke everywhere and it got to be really annoying.

4. People have a really weird obsession with the Titanic in Peru and Bolivia. Shelby and I have heard the song from the Titanic (my heart will go on) like probably 20 times whenever we happen to be near someone's radio or stereo. It is so weird. We also saw a boat named the Titanic and the Titanic movie was playing in a restaurant we went in once. Literally everyday for a week we saw something from the titanic. It was really strange.

5. I forgot to mention on our La Paz city tour we saw lots of shoe shine boys and men in the streets downtown. They wear masks (full fledged ski masks with tiny holes for the eyes) because they are ashamed of their job. How sad is that?! We also saw a shoe shine guy in Copacabana, but he wasn't wearing a mask. He asked to shine our shoes every time he saw us downtown but we always said no because there's not much point in getting hiking shoes shined. Then one day we were eating outside and he came up and said he was hungry and asked if he could have a piece of my pizza.. I said no because I don't like enabling begging but then I felt really bad afterwards. He was probably really poor :(

6. There is a lot of lithium in Bolivia and Chile. On our salt flat tour we went to one flat where the lithium was mined. Apparently Bolivia has something like 67% of the world's lithium reserves. And we learned yesterday that Chile refines and exports over 50% of the world's lithium (they probably get most of it from Bolivia). Quite interesting!

7. The guides on our Salt Flat tour played the worst music ever! We were driving a lot over those three days so at first it was so annoying and then it just got to be a huge joke between us tourists in the vehicle. They would either play Rihanna for an hour straight, or their local music which is just terrible. I don't even know if I can call it music. It is lots of pipes and guitar but the women who sing are just terrible. It is not conventional singing. It's more like whining or screaming super high pitched and way off key. Oh god it was bad. Or the music was American dance club music from like 5 years ago which was just weird but the most bearable.

Alright on to regular blogging. Today Shelby and I have the day off! We had a long day yesterday so I'm really looking forward to it. Plus I can wear only one layer of clothing here so I'm excited to spend some time hanging outside in the sunshine. Yesterday we had to get up at 4:15 am to catch our tour bus at 5 am. This was the geyser and hot spring tour we booked the night before. Our guide picked us up along with 13 others from San Pedro and we started our 2 hour drive to a thermal field. Our guide was so great. He wasn't like a regular guide who just spouts of information. He was lots of fun, made lots of jokes, and was always dancing. We stopped at around 6 am and got to climb out of the vehicle and star gaze for awhile. We stood outside for maybe 7 mins and I saw 2 shooting stars. Our guide also pointed out what looked like a smaller Milky Way and he said that was the next galaxy closest to ours. I'm telling you the night sky is unimaginable here! I will never forget it. We continued on up to the geyser field which was at 4,300 m and arrived at around 7 am. It was very very cool to see. There were over 100 geysers in this field which, if I remember correctly, was about 3 miles squared. It was just a dirt field but much of it was soft, wet, or muddy because of the heat and water from the geysers. There were boiling streams of water (so weird to see a stream of water running along that is bubbling from the heat!), boiling pools big and small, and geysers that were constantly erupting or blowing up water now and then. There were also many fumaroles, openings in the ground that just emit steam, carbon dioxide, sulphur, and other gases. All the geysers and fumaroles had huge columns of steam/gases coming off them so the field looked really cool with over 100 columns dotted all over the field. So we walked around getting pictures for about 45 mins and then gathered at the van for breakfast. The guide asked who's hands were cold and Shelby and I said ours were and he said come with me... He led us to a boiling pool where he had stuck a couple cartons of milk to boil for breakfast! He grabbed them out and we got to carry them back to the group! Ouch they were hot but it was really cool and they did warm my hands up! At that altitude the water boils at 85.5 degrees Celsius. So we had breakfast standing around with the group and then went and got some more pictures at a really big geyser a ways away. At this geyser there are two "eyes" (holes where the water blows out) that are really big and there is a kind of bridge between them. At the present there are now rock walls surrounding some of the bigger exploding geysers so you can't get too close but a few years ago there weren't, and there were 4 people who died at this big geyser. I guess they all had glasses and when they tried to walk across the bridge their lenses steamed up and they all ended up in one of the geysers!! They didn't die instantly but died later from burns. How gross. And you'd think they would learn to put up a wall after the first person died but apparently it took 4 tries. After checking out the geysers we walked by the hot spring pool but didn't go in (later I was wishing I did). Instead we drove to a natural hot spring river. I thought it would be great because the one I went to in Costa Rica was beautiful but this one was full to the brim with moss and algae. When the group went in it all got disturbed and ended up all over us which was really gross. The water was a mix of scalding hot from the ground and the cold glacier water from the mountains so it was a luke warm temperature. There were a few spots where the hot water ran directly into the river and if you hit one of those they burned pretty bad! As Shelby and I went to get out we hit one and it felt like it burnt my leg off! We didn't stay at the hot springs too long, maybe 30 mins, and then we headed back to San Pedro. On the tour we also saw the worlds largest species of fox, wild vicunas (a smaller, skinnier llama), and an animal related to the chinchilla but larger. We had a few hours off and then had a moon valley tour. This tour was ok but by this point we were getting a little sick of sight seeing rock (we have seen lots in the colca canyon tour, sacred valley tour, and our salt flat tour). It was a very different landscape though. The valley is famous for its resemblance to the surface of the moon, owing to its different stratifications and the salt formations and crystals formed by natural environmental factors. It was a mix of salt flat, sand dunes, and huge rock formations made from magma many years ago. Shelby and I have nerdy geological sides to us from our geological engineering class so we enjoyed seeing the different formations and discussing how they were probably formed, what type of rock they were, what minerals were in them, etc. Nerdy I know, but it is more interesting than just taking pictures. Our first stop on this tour was "The Three Maries". These formations were the result of intense erosion processes and are approximately 1 million years old. They depict the Mary in three positions, one in which she has her arms uplifted to the sky, one on her knees praying, and one standing with her hands together, praying. Our second stop was the great sand dune, a very large dune we climbed up. On the side we climbed it was still a mix of sand and rock so it was easier to climb up than pure sand. When we got to the top we had a great view of the valley. There is a high mountain range from west to east, then a salt mountain range, and the Andean mountains and a chain of volcanoes in the distance. From the peak of the dune we could see what they called the "amphi theatre" named for its resemblance to the colosseum in Rome. After the dune we stopped quickly in "death valley" named for the massacre that occurred there when the Spanish invaded. Then we went to the top of a cliff to watch the sun set behind the mountains in the distance. It was quite beautiful. Then we headed back to San Pedro and had supper. I always want to order a salad (I miss my veggies) but I have only had one good salad while I've been gone- they are usually disappointing. I ordered one last night and it was quite good actually but very different how they present it. They put a few big chunks of lettuce in the middle of the plate, with the toppings all surrounding it (big squares of cheese, uncut tomatoes, peppers, and other veggies) and no dressing. So basically you cut everything up yourself and mix the salad. I didn't mind doing that but it is just different from how they serve it at home, already mixed and ready to eat! After supper we washed off all the leftover algae left on us from the river and I went to bed early. I was wiped from the long day of touring. Tomorrow morning we have a long bus ride (10.5 hours) to Salta, Argentina!

The picture with this blog is not from Chile, but is a picture of me with the flamingos in Bolvia!