Hey everyone! Still in Bolivia...I really like it here. Beautiful, great culture (the music is incredible) and incredibly cheap. The only thing that I´d change is the quality of the bus system...one can´t have everything, I guess.

Sooo...I left Santa Cruz and went up to a really nice little town called Samaipata with a norwegian girl called Nina that I had shared the traumatic Trans-Chaco experience with (we´re bonded for life now). We spent the night there (both of us had colds and were sneezing our noses off) and went up to a pre-Inca archeological site the day after. It was pretty cool, although there were a lot of clouds so the viewing wasn´t great. The best part was taking a taxi up there on this washed-out red rock dirt road. Quite the adrenaline rush.

So, after that, quite reasonably, we decided to catch the local bus to the next big town of Cochabamba. What we didn´t realize that this tiny little bus was overnight, getting there around 3 in the morning, and it was the ONLY bus to Cochabamba on this road, meaning that we picked up everyone who wanted to go anywhere. This meant stopping and turning the lights on every half hour all night to let someone on or off, and packing the bus so that it was difficult to get out and go to the bathroom. Definitely not my greatest transportation experience.

So we got to Cochabamba at an ungodly hour and had to wait outside the terminal, hopping around to keep warm, until it opened. I decided that I might as well go for it, and got on a really early bus to the capitol of La Paz. I got there around 11ish, bleary-eyed and stinking, and called a taxi to my destination--my friend Rueben´s house.

Rueben and his wife Rosalie have been staying in LP for about a year, and they were generous enough to let a free-rider like me stay at their house for three nights while I was in the city. Rosalie works for the US Embassy, which provides them housing, and there are no words to describe how I felt when I got in to the house and slept in a real bed that night. They are just awesome people too--I think that a touch of family living was just what I needed at that point. They also have the cutest baby in the world, Marina, who is just 15 months old.

And La Paz was just awesome. It felt very authentic, as everything in Bolivia does--it doesn´t feel like the US like Santiago, or Europe like BA--it feels like South America, like Bolivia. Some highlights:

--Going on hikes with Rueben and Dean (his dog who is actually the brother of ours) around the incredible canyonland of La Paz

--Checking out town, buying a lot of s*** on Sagarnaga street (good stuff) and going to a Peña concert (awesome dinner variety show of dancing, comedy, and beautiful Bolivian folk music)

--Digging up potatoes all day on the altiplano with the Aymara family of Rueben´s family´s maid, Mercedes--this was one of the coolest things that I´ve done on this whole trip. We worked with the entire family, ate an awesome traditional lunch with them, and the weather was great.

--Resting yesterday because the downhill mountain bike trip I had planned (the "world´s most dangerous road") was cancelled because a guy had died on the trip the day before

In short, pretty bakan. After on last hike in the sandstone cliffs around town with Rueben, I took a little micro out to the town of Copacabana, on Lake Titicaca (b-e-a-utiful!). I´m going to be hiking out to and island called Isla del Sol tomorrow, and I´m thinking about camping there (i have to get a little more use out of this stupid tent I´ve been dragging around). Should be some fun walking and good views...

Well, I really want to hear from people! It makes me sad when my inbox has only newsletters and REI advertisements. Contactame-po! Hugs and kisses,

Matt