Lo siento

For those of you that still read this blog, I'm sorry that I've been really awful at keeping it up to date even though I was trying to write blogs after the fact. I was almost caught up with everything at the beginning of this month, well I'd written the old blogs and just had to type them. I was doing that while I was waiting for John in Lima, Peru. So I will put the old ones up when I get home and have time to type them, but since I have some time now, I'm going to write about my current situation. Well, first a little bit of a recap to give you a bit of an idea of how I got to where I am right now.

The last blog is from Nicaragua. After that weekend I spent a few more days there taking some Spanish classes. My grasp of it all was pretty good and then I left to meet Tiffany in San Jose, Costa Rica and from there most everyone speaks English which made it more difficult to be immersed. We got there the Thursday before Good Friday and knew ahead of time that Semana Santa was going to cause us some problems. Having booked a shuttle in advance, we were able to get to the Caribbean coast on Good Friday. In retrospect, we should've skipped Costa Rica all together. We left the next day for Bocas del Toro. Bocas del Toro was really nice, really really nice. It's a bit touristy but if you get out of Bocas proper it's nice. From there we went to Panama City from which we were both leaving. Saw the city (a US city if there ever was one), saw the canal, I chilled out on an island for the day (a bit of a story), and then I made it to Lima, Peru on my flight. Went to Miraflores, the nicest neighborhood in Lima, where I waited for John to show up. Lima was completely different than the Central American cities I'd been in. Well, let me rephrase that. Miraflores is completely different than any Central American city I'd been in. I think I could live there in Miraflores. John and I banged Lima for a day or so and then flew to Cusco. I'd have to look at a map to tell you where Cusco is in relation to Lima. We flew because the bus is 24h and supposed to be hell. First day, got acclimated to the altitude then we started trying to find out about what we could do there and how to get to Machu Picchu, since the Inca Trail was completely booked until August. When we got there, we got hooked into a South African family that runs 2 hostels, a restaurant, a mountain house, and a tour agency. If you're ever in Cusco, find the South Africans. Machu Picchu is fucking great! Seriously. Be there for sunrise. From there, I went to Lake Titicaca, Bolivia and stayed on Isla del Sol. Go here if you're ever in at Lake Titicaca. From there I went to La Paz. Fuck, was that a wild place visually. Imagine if they built a huge city in the Grand Canyon, and that's La Paz. Well, there's more than that, the altitude for one thing, but I'm summing now.

Ok. So since I left La Paz yesterday let me go into more detail. The bus from Copacabana (on Lake Titicaca) to La Paz was chill. Great scenery. I wasn't going to come to Bolivia, but I'm so glad I did. Isla del Sol was an absolutely amazing place. When my Spanish is better, I'm going to go back with someone that can really tell me about the place. It's the mythical birthplace of the Incas and you'll see why it could be if you go there. The 3h bus ride from Copacabana to La Paz was really 5h and we come through El Alto, which at first I thought was La Paz. Man was I wrong! We came out of El Alto and all of sudden there's La Paz. Massive massive massive. I wish we could've got the bus to stop so I could take a proper picture. But it really is like if we would build a city of 1.5million in the Grand Canyon. I'm having a hard time putting it into words properly. But just imagine brown brick buildings from the top of the canyon all the way to the bottom and then back up the other side. It's just massive. Bolivia reminds me a lot of Guatemala, which would make sense since both countries are the poorest in their respective Latin American locations. Bolivia seems to have a bit more infrastructure in my opinion though.

While I was in La Paz, I rode a bicycle down the World's Most Dangerous Road. This road isn't used anymore as a main route but when it was being used, on average, 350 people would die a year on the road. I went on this tour with Gravity Assisted Bike Tours which I highly recommend. Yeah, it's a bit pricey, but well worth the price. I liked the day so much that I signed up for one of their other tours the yesterday. The Death Road tour goes down the World's Most Dangerous Road. When we were on this road you could really understand how it got it's name. For the majority of it, it's unpaved with 400m drop offs that go straight down. It's easy to see how vehicles would just go over the edge. Compound this with wet weather, landslides, waterfalls onto the road, and crazy Bolivian drivers and it would be hard to imagine what the road would be like. I suppose the name says it all. The guy that owns this company (which was the first company to do this tour) started the tours when there was still trucks and buses using the road daily. In 2004 or 06, they opened a new road, so now there's less traffic. I couldn't imagine trying to ride down that road with more traffic. Just insane I think. So much fun though. It's like skiing and riding a motorcycle and so much fun. Like I said, I liked it so much, I did another tour the next day. It was called the Ghost Ride and goes through some more technical stuff like single track trails which are just what they sound like, a single track wide enough for the bike tire. There will be a really nice video of me falling when I put everything together when I get home. It's called the Ghost ride because it goes by an abandoned church, through an area that was so polluted by smelting that there are no animals or insects living in the area, and then ends at a haunted mansion that was built by a former Bolivian president that he's now supposed to haunt along with his lover. All in all both days were fantastic. The slow Irish chic yesterday put a damper on the speed at which we could fly along but still it was great. Mountain bikes have come a long way. Front and rear full suspension and hydraulic brakes.

The Salar de Uyuni is a major reason that I'm in Bolivia. Since being in S. America, everyone I've met said I have to see the Salar so that's why I'm here. Yesterday, I chilled out in La Paz and took care of some errands needed to be done before I left for Uyuni in the southwest of Bolivia. I'm in Uyuni right now waiting for my friend Mark (who I did both bike trips with) to get here so we can book our Salar de Uyuni trip. The Salar de Uyuni is a giant salt flat. One of the largest in the world, if not the largest. The bus ride here last night was one of the coldest things I've experienced since Salt Lake City last year. I thought me toes were frostbitten it was so cold last night. But that's the desert. Hot during the day, effin cold at night. Just like our southwest I suppose. But I don't know, the seasons here are all wacky to me, being reversed and all. All of you in the states are thawing out and I'm bundling up. I'm stoked though. It's supposed to be a great couple of days coming up. I'll try to blog about it when I get to Chile. Yeah, it's possible to take the tour of the salt flats and other stuff and then end up in Chile. San Pedro de Atacama to be exact. The Atacama is the northern desert of Chile. I haven't decided what I'm going to do once I get there, maybe chill out some more in the desert. I don't think I'll go much further south than Santiago on this trip. Couldn't imagine Patagonia going into fall and winter.

Ok. That's it for now. Like I said, I'll update this later on for Central America and the rest of Lima and I'll try to be better about updating this going forward in my last couple of weeks. Ciao fam.