Day 24: Last One

Our taxis came to get us at 2:30am, and we were off once again,  hopefully we would make it back to the states this time.  The morning was uneventful and our plane left on time.

  After some severe turbulence on the way to Lima, we landed and weaved our way through World Cup fans on their way to Brazil.  The Lima airport was very nice, but not as nice as our plane to Miami was.  We few Lan Airlines and they really brought their A game.  Each seat had a personal entertainment center with more movies and tv shows than you could possibly watch.  I was actually a little bummed when we landed in Miami, because I was in the middle of a movie.

After Miami customs, food was the first thing on my agenda, so we all stopped at a burger place that Tim recommended and it really lived up to expectations.  Everyone said their goodbyes after supper and then dispersed to their individual gates.  I got into Richmond a little after dark and my parents were waiting for me with my favorite order of Chic-fil-a.  Its good to home.

Day 23: I Hate Unions

Our last day! We we're supposed to wake up at about 2:30 to leave for the airport at 3 but I had the bright idea to not go to sleep, which made me a little cranky.  Our flight was leaving a little after 6 but we needed to be at the airport plenty early.  We got there, got all the proper forms filled out, and got to our gate to wait for our flight.  After about 45 minutes waiting, we knew something was a little off, because the departure time kept getting delayed and the flight attendants at the gate were not very helpful.  Based on some of the flight updates on our phones, we feared the worst and these fears managed to be true; our flight had been canceled.  Evidently weather delayed the flight for a while and if they had continued on to La Paz to get us, they wouldn't be able to get their union mandated rest period, so they had to go back to Miami.  Needless to say I was a little ticked off, but tried to get to the check in desk as soon as possible.  Finally a group of us got a flight out the next morning at 5:30 that went through Lima, Peru on the way back to the states.  We took the flight and also learned that the airline was comping all of us rooms at the Ritz downtown for the night.  After I got to the hotel and cooled off, I really started enjoying the free food and rooms that we got.  If we had to spend an extra night in Bolivia, we sure did it in style.

For some reason, I decided not to go to sleep again that night.

Day 22: Lots of Llamas

We got into La Paz early again and took some cabs to Afnon's house where we crashed for a while.  Bolivia was starting to get the best of me and America was starting to sound pretty good.  Not wanting to just sleep in our last day in the country, we ventured out into the city with our old tour guide Jugo at about 10:00 after picking up some cash at the ATM, we were all broke by this point.

After wandering through some witch markets and stores that sold a lot of Llama gear, Will and I wandered onto some guys that were selling paintings on the street.  Game on.  We spent just about all the money we had left on the coolest paintings we could afford, trying to give our private art collections a little kick start.  Since the first time we had been in La Paz, they had finished the installation of a new cable car system.  Wanting to get a bird's eye view of the city, we waited in about a 2 hr line to go on the cable car, and it was worth it.  

This city was so much bigger than I thought, and the aerial tour was a great way to bookmark our trip before we returned to America the next morning.  Supper was street burgers that were incredibly cheap and incredibly good.  I was really hoping that they wouldn't make sick, but at that point I didn't care, we we're about to go home....Or so we thought. 

Day 21: Back on the Bus

Waking up Saturday, we came to the frustrating realization that we were going to be out of our hostel room by about 10:30 that morning but we weren't leaving for the bus station until about 8:00 that night.  We managed to occupy the first few hours with lunch and aimless wandering, but but retreated to the hostel lobby to watch movies in Spanish for the next 4 hours.  Needless to say it was a little dull but there were some cool things to look at around the hostel and there was also wifi which did a pretty good job of occupying everyone.

To make sure we had ample time to digest our food, and because we were bored, a few of us ate supper early before we could board our incredibly comfortable bus ride to La Paz.  There were no crying babies or ringing phones, so it was a very pleasant ride.

Day 20: The Journey Back Begins

For as messy as our room had gotten during our time in Pampoyo, packing was surprisingly quick, largely because we just stuffed our things into our bags.  After we finished cleaning up our mess, we boarded our small bus for one last time to make the return trip to Potosi, bidding goodbye to all of our new friends in Pampoyo before we hit the road.

Another uneventful trip put us in Potosi for the day where we wandered around for a while before retiring to our rooms for a bit.  Dinner was at El Fagone, the steak restaurant that I wasn't quite able to enjoy last time on account of my stomach bug.  This go around however, was much much better.  A few of us ordered a sizzling plate of steak, sausage and chicken for supper that was absolutely delicious.

I could have probably eaten two portions, but ice cream for dessert was going to have to do for now.  Wanting some more ice cream, a few of us went back to 4.060 for some after supper drinks and more ice cream.  We probably stayed there for too long but it put a good cap on probably the most fun night I had in Potosi. 

Day 19: The Final Countdown

With the pipe team in full swing, I was working solo with my team of locals today, because everyone else was helping install plumbing. We worked at Helogio's house for most of the day, almost finishing his latrine.  The afternoon we went back to our 2nd site and put the roof on that one.  As a final tally for our time there, 3 of our 4 sites were completely done, 2 of those 3 had already been plumbed and the last one just needed a roof to be put on.  A pretty productive trip when you think that there were 3 other groups that were just as productive as we were.

The pipe team actually ran out of materials because we were more productive than we thought we would have been.  If that doesn't measure success than I don't know what does.  The idea was to pack some that night, but we ended up playing another soccer game.  We added Afnon to our team from the night before, and played some 4 v 4.  After playing 2 games and taking away 2 wins, we had to call it quits because it was way too dark to keep playing. All in all, a pretty good way to end our time in Pampoyo.  

Day 18: Shower Time

On our second to last day of work, everything progressed like normal on our site.  The pipe team was slowly getting bigger as they were installing the plumbing in multiple latrines and it was pretty awesome. The design was pretty simple but worked amazingly well.  The water was actually hot and everything worked perfectly.  It was amazing to see the finished product in action, even if I didn't get the chance to install one myself.  The whole day was spent either prepping for a roof or roofing, so that the pipe team could plumb as may as possible in the next day.  Capping off a productive day, Warner, Alex and I played a soccer game that night. Unfortunately we lost in sudden death overtime, but it was still a great game and I was still exhausted after it was over.

Day 17: Things are coming together

Tuesday was our first full day back at work and it had a late start because of last night's festivities.  We finally got to our job sites at about 9:30 but our crew wasn't even awake yet so we had go to Helogio's house (our group leader) to wake up the troops.  Allison and I were the only ones left because Lux was off helping another group and Will was still putting roofs together.  We put the roof on our 1st site so that it could be plumbed and ready for use on Wednesday but were done with all of that by lunch.  We moved to the 3rd site that afternoon and did virtually the same thing that we did that morning.  We were also working all day without Luis, one of our group members that was feeling some of the effects from the night before.  Pampoyo definitely likes to party.

Day 16: I missed you Pampoyo

After 3 days of being sick in Potosi, I think I can speak for a lot of people in saying that we were ready to head back to Pampoyo.  With only a few days left to work, we quickly unpacked and ate some lunch when we got back to Pampoyo before getting back to work at about 1:00.  It was astonishing to see what our teams had finished since we had been gone.  We worked until about 5:00 before going up to the school house for a post baptism party that was much more elaborate than I was expecting.

The town had rented and outfitted the room with huge speakers for the night's festivities that proved to be plenty loud.  After some waiting we had a great dinner of llama and different types of potatoes that was delicious.  Some toasts followed dinner and then we pushed the tables aside and started dancing.  This dancing was still just bobbing back and forth with the music, so Will and I decided to kick it up a notch and grabbed Hannah and Perry and danced with them.  It was kind of a competition between me and Will and it was a pretty close one at that, but ill give him the victory.  We had call it quits at some point because the dancing wore me out.  Will kept partying late into the night but myself, Warner and some others called it quits in order to get some rest for another work day tomorrow.

Day 14 & 15: More of the Same

So I put Saturday and Sunday together because nothing much happened due to the fact we felt like doing nothing.  We woke up Saturday at about 11:00 from our 13ish hour hibernation.  We knew we had to venture out to get some food at some point, so at about 12:30 we walked to the supermarket to buy some "sick food" of crackers and gatoraide.  Sleep was on the schedule for the rest of the day, and I didn't even go out to dinner cause I still felt really bad.

Sunday was the baptism for everyone that had a Bolivian godchild, but as neither myself, Will or Warner had one, the La Casona Hostel room 5 had another slow day.  Most of the day was sleep, until the rest of the group got back from the baptism at 4:00 when we ventured out to get some street food, which for some reason sounded like a good idea.  We were looking for street burgers that cost 5 B's,  (which is less than one dollar).  Unfortunately I started feeling bad again when we got out and went back to the hostel to go back to sleep.  Putting the cap on a very rough weekend.

Day 13: Bolivia got the best of me

I woke up on Tim's birthday excited for the next few days in Potosi and feeling much better than the day before.  Breakfast was empenatas and some tea that went down surprisingly well for how I felt the day before.  After packing a small bag for the weekend trip, we boarded our small bus and, like a bunch of sardines, had a pretty uneventful ride into the city.  There were rooms already ready for us when we got there at 10:30, so Will, Warner and I crushed a nap for about an hour before surfacing to get some lunch.  To our shock, everyone else was already gone so we went to one of the only places we knew, a cafe we went to breakfast at earlier. After searching the menu for something good, Will found a "hamburguesa double" on the menu, so we all ordered one of those.  The burgerish thing that came was definitely a disappointment but we ate them none the less. We paid our bills and left, and turned back for the hostel as our stomachs turned against us.  The three of us returned to the hostel by 2:00, regretting our lunch.  We didn't really move from our beds until about 7:00 when we went to dinner, but unfortunately there wasn't much on TV that was in English.  Dinner was at a steak restaurant for Tim's birthday but I didn't feel like eating much.  Hoping that this was the last day of sickness, Will and I went back to the hostel and crashed right after supper.

Day 12: TGIT

Thursday was our last day in the Village for a little bit.  In order to breakup our work schedule and give us some time to rest, we were going back to Potosi for a few days to relax before our final push before we went home.  We reverted back to site number 1 for the day, getting to the point right before we were ready to nail on the roof.

We finished a little early so that we left the site at about 4:00, excited the bed and some rest in Potosi that awaited us.  That also happened to be the same time that I began feeling bad, thus beginning the sickness portion of the trip.  Determined not to be out for very long, I took some medicine when I got back and went to bed early that afternoon, trying to sleep it off or at least feel better for the bus ride back to Potosi.  My precautions seemed to abate my symptoms for a while, but it was still a very uncomfortable night and was unfortunately just the start of a long few days. 

Day 11: Our team is gone

Wednesday began a little weird.  When we went out at 9:00 to begin working, we checked all 3 sites and couldn't find our team anywhere.  Thinking they were just running late, we went back at 9:30 and then at 10:00 but they were no where to be found.  Allison and myself ended up helping the pipe team assemble roofs for the morning until Tim and Afnon stumbled on them at at 4th new site that we didn't know about yet.

Anyway, we went back to work with our team after lunch and got to bend and cut more rebar, fun... The day ended a little early because our entire group was going to the hot springs that afternoon, our second trip there.  We had a little more people than last time, but it was still just as much fun and just as relaxing as last time.  Since we went later than we did last time, they closed when we were there and turned all the lights off on us.  I guess that's one way to get people to leave at closing time.  It was crazy how cheap the entire thing was.  The equivalent of a little less than $2 got you the whole hour or hour and a half in the hot springs.  After we got back and had a late supper, surprise, I went to bed. 

Day 10: Higher and Higher

Tuesday began at the normal 9:00 time, reporting to our job sites with bellies full of a wonderful scrambled egg breakfast.  The morning was just like Monday afternoon, mixing concrete and stacking bricks higher and higher. We got almost to roof level on our 1st latrine we were building before lunch time, so having one close to completion was a really good feeling.

After lunch, we went to yet another site to start a 3rd site.  During lunch time, we were the only ones that actually eat lunch, all the locals just chew dried coca leaves that abate the feeling of hunger.  Anyway, back to the afternoon activities, we worked on the 3rd site til we got to the slab height before calling it a day.  We lost Warner for the day because he was beginning to assemble the roof piping that would heat and store the shower water.  The design was amazing and surprisingly easy.  They got the 1st roof made that afternoon and it looked really good.  Everything was starting to come together.  

Day 9: Back at it

Expecting a bad wake up because of the night before, we woke up a little late, but feeling ready to work. Allison was feeling sick, so our team of 4 was temporarily down to 3 until we picked up Will to work with us for the day.  The entire day was filled with cutting and bending rebar as well as pouring slabs.  By this point, we were well into our 2nd site and all the groups were making better-than-expected progress.  We finished at about 5:30 and went to bed right after supper.  8:30 bed times are always fine with me.

Day 8: Sunday Football

Even after only two days of work, a day off was very nice, although I think we ended up getting more tired because of it.  We decided to sleep in late, so naturally we woke up at 8:00 and figured we would eat breakfast, which was a great choice.  The meal consisted of homemade bread and cheese and scrambled eggs, an excellent combination that I ate way too much of.  Trying to catch up on our journals, Warner and I sat outside to write, but some of the people from the village quickly came up and asked if we wanted to play soccer, which we obviously said yes to.  Team USA actually held its own pretty well against the Bolivians, but the altitude was really terrible for any sport that running is involved.  I think I was gasping for air about the whole time.  Nap time ensued after lunch, until Will, Warner and I decided to go with the girls, Afnon and Tim to the hot springs.  These were basically a big bath tub filled with hot water. It felt so nice to relax and get clean.  After a fun car ride back and some revelry when we got back, we just hung out for most of the night until I felt like I needed to go to bed.

Day 7: First full day

While we were still excited to work, we all jumped into Saturday eager to get things done, a sentiment that would slowly fade over the next few days. Our main job was to finish the floor slab on the latrine we started the day earlier which we thought wouldn't be too bad at all. Our overall sentiment began to switch a little bit after bending an absurd amount of rebar to strengthen the concrete we were about to pour.  We finished pouring that slab right after lunch and were ready to start and entire new latrine by 3:00 that afternoon.  Laying 5 layers of brick that afternoon, we finally called it quits, looking for our already needed rest the next day.  After the usual dinner times and another amazing meal, the sky had finally cleared up enough to look at the stars.  That night sky was the most vivid that I had ever seen.  It's really amazing what the absence of city lights can show you.

Day 6: Off to work we go

Our first day of work began with Tim and Afnon singing us a wonderful good morning song at about 8:00 and following that up with breakfast at 8:30.  After some walk throughs of our sites with our group, as well as with the locals that were going to help us, we began working.  The group I was working with was Warner, Will Luxhoj, and Allison, and we were all ready to work, even though our team helping us was a little hungover from the night before.

We finished our day's work at about 4:30 and went back to our school house that we were staying in and watched Matt Brau and Peter Buelmann climb one of the mountains within range of our town.  

Darkness came next, followed closely by food and then an earlier bed time. 

Day 5: Are we there yet?

We thought that the 8:00 wake up call would come early, but the actual wake up of 10:00 was much more acceptable.  Somehow in a day and a half, my things seemed to explode all over our room, so after a little packing, we were all ready to hit the road.  We piled into two small buses with a lot of bottled water and hit the road.  The drive to Pamopoyo was just filled with beautiful scenic view after beautiful scenic view, showing us some of this country's true beauty.

The village was very small and very basic, but also very prepared for our arrival.  There were all sorts of decorations set up and a lunch feast of llama meat and potatoes with fresh llaqua (spicy salsa).  The llama was incredible, and a real honor for them to be serving such a prized animal to us for our meal.  Both before and after lunch, the villagers grabbed many of us to dance with them.  Now when I say dancing, I mean dancing in the loosest possible sense of the word, much like how house cats and tigers are technically the related, but still very different.  Their dancing was just shuffling around for a while, while the drums and some other instruments were playing in the background.  This went on for probably 4 hours until we got sometime to unpack before supper at about 7:30.  Bedtime followed directly after dinner, which was very necessary at this point.

Day 4: Are these Ray Bans real?

After our first night in a real bed, we slept very late, before making the executive decision that we should probably wake up to have some lunch.  Not knowing where anything was in this city, we went to the "Coldplay resturant", under the guide of John Titus, and had some surprisingly good pizza, even though it took about 2 hours to get.

Obviously wanting to buy something cheap and fake, Tyler showed us a place that sold fake sunglasses, the best of which were Ray Bans.  Being the gringos that we were, we spent 45 minutes choosing which $5 pair of sunglasses to buy.  We wandered around some more until getting tired and somehow finding our way back to the hostel.  When Tim and Afnon came to get all of us for dinner that night, we walked an oddly familiar route that took us to the same restaurant that we had lunch in.  After having more pizza in our bellies, we were ready to head back to the hostel, knowing that we would have an earlier morning the next day when we headed to Pompoyo. We tried to hang out a little in the hostel courtyard before crashing for the night, but some high pitched European dude stuck his head out his door and told us to "take it elsewhere". He sounded really stupid but we decided to call it a night anyway.

Day 3: Is it nap time yet?

After the very long bus ride, we arrived in Potosi at about 8:00 am, piled into taxis, and took a trip to our hostel where we were going to stay the next two days.  We dropped our gear quickly and went to get some much needed breakfast.  When ordering food in Bolivia, no one is ever in a hurry to get it to you, and nothing is already made ahead of time, leading to rather long wait times whenever we went out to eat.  After breakfast was over, we walked around until our rooms were ready, and then took some pretty wonderful naps.

Waking up in time for dinner, we went out at as a group to a restaurant called 4.060.  Most of us ordered Silpancho, which was a thin piece of meat the size of a horse head on top of a bed of rice and potatoes, topped off with 2 fried eggs and pico de gallo.  It was amazing but so much food...

Being still pretty early, we bounced around some of the local hotspots for the rest of the night, getting some good karaoke sessions in at one point, before retiring back to our hostel to try and get some rest. 

Day 2: La Paz

After a surprisingly good night's sleep on the plane, we arrived at the La Paz airport at 5:20.  Immediately we noticed the amazing mountain ranges all around us, reminding you of how high of an altitude you really were.

 Balancing out the awesome new landscape around us, was the equally less enjoyable temperature.  Since Bolivia is in the southern hemisphere, it was winter and therefore a little colder that ideal.  Nevertheless, we wrapped up in our jackets and pressed on.

After meeting up with our Bolivian contact Afnon, we went to his house for a few hours of R&R before venturing out into La Paz with our tour guide Hugo.

Hugo basically took us wherever we wanted to go, but being the Americans we were, we ended up feeding pigeons for a while, which was actually pretty amazing, even though it made you feel a little dirty.

Dirty was kind of a theme of the Bolivian cities, the streets themselves were clean but everything just had a dirty feel to it.  Whether I wanted to or not, my mind was subconsciously comparing everything to what I was used to back home, which really helped me appreciate the things that we saw and did.  After we walked through the street markets, tried to find food to eat that wouldn't make us sick, and looked at the occasional dried llamas for sale, we headed back to Afnon's for some supper before we boarded a very nice two decker bus that would drive us for 10 hours to Potosi.  A barrage of crying babies and cell phone alarms serenaded us until I was finally able to fall asleep.  When we finally got to Potosi, the man was nice enough to finally turn his cell phone alarm off, what a guy.  Oh and Will threw up.

Day 1: And So We Begin

My trip begun meeting up with Warner Thomas in the RVA airport where we were definitely way too excited and probably a little obnoxious. I though I was trying to go for the rugged look but Warner went for the Crocodile Dundee look and it was pretty great.  After a little Jalapeno popcorn (that was surprisingly hot for such a little snack), we boarded the plane and were on our way.

 A quick layover in Charlotte meant some fast walking and a quick Baconator stop, before continuing onto Miami.  After spotting Will Jordan in the Miami airport sporting the full jean wardrobe, Warner and I grabbed this denim crusader and ventured out to find some supper.  Our whole group eventually met up at the gate (except for Allison Partin) and boarded our plane late that night. So I'm normally one who enjoys planes, but even this full day of travel was pretty tiring

We got on our plane, ready for the overnight ride to Bolivia and whatever adventures lay ahead of us. Somehow in their infinite wisdom, American Airlines managed to put myself, Will and Warner beside each other.