Phew, I can read my mail now. Drew, the url was the problem, I punched in http://mail.drewish.com/horde/ and it worked fine.
Anyway, I`m in La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia, where I`ve been since Sunday evening. Holy shit, what a trip to get up here. Almost two solid days of bus riding, man I don`t ever want to do that again but I know I will many, many times. It`s been worth it, though. Bolivia customs sits at 4500 meters which I think might be the highest I`ve ever been up, needless to say I was a little delirious while my passport was getting stamped. After that we descended from the Altiplano down to La Paz which is about 3500 meters and easily the strangest place I`ve ever been in my life. It`s a giant million person metropolis jammed into a valley and the view from the bus when we first started down towards the bottom is pretty amazing. I`ve been cruising around the city the past few days, went to the black market and the witches market (didn`t buy any llama fetuses, not vegan), haggled with the colorfully dressed Amarayan women in the streets selling pretty much anything you can imagine, did the museums today, been pretty active for the most part. I met a german and an argentinian on the bus and we`ve been rooming together, man it`s dirt cheap for a hostel in La Paz. The food`s been fun, too. Today I ate like a king for a few bucks at maybe the coolest restaurant I`ve ever been to. It`s called the Alfa Beta vegetarian restaurant, and it`s run by ufo cultists. This didn`t really sink in till I sat down at my table and looked up to see a large picture of jesus standing on top of the earth surrounded by flying saucers and a single sheep in the top left corner. "This is too perfect" I think to myself. And then it got even better when, over the speakers, you guessed it, the soundtrack to the X Files started playing. It felt like a joke, like I`m in the Truman Show and some wicked producer is fucking with my head. The food was rippin`, big ass veggie burgers and plates of rice. I don`t think they were Hari Krishnas, at least I hope not since Andrea told me she got gnarly food poisoning from the vegetarian Hari Krishna restaurant in Santiago. My guts seem to be in order right now so I think I`m in the clear.
On Sunday night Juan the Argentinian and I were wandering around when we looked over past a building and saw literally thousands of people crammed into a street fair. It turns out it was the last night of Alasitas` Fair, a yearly event that helps prove that Bolivians might be even stranger than Scientologists or the French. The whole fair is made up of booths selling miniature versions of everything- cars, houses, money, passports, food, you name it, and the idea is that the miniatures are burned in a ceremony and with the help of the mother earth god the real thing will be theirs within a year. Bolivians are ridiculously superstitious; they baptize their cars in order to prevent them from breaking down and, as I mentioned before, bury llama fetuses in the ground where they`re gonna build their house to ward off evil spirits. Juan and I swam through people for a while and I contemplated buying a miniature kitchen set but in the end decided against it.
So I`m all signed up for the bike ride from La Cumbre down to Coroico tomorrow morning. 70 kilometers of sheer terror and fun and then I get dropped off for a couple days of hiking and relaxing in Coroico before making my way back to La Paz and Santiago. Unfortunately I won`t have time to make it to Chulumani which sucks because I really wanted to go there. It`s this beautiful little town kinda like Coroico but quieter and with really cool day hikes all around. The other intriguing thing about Chulumani is that it`s the town where Klaus Barbie, Adolf Eichmann, and a bunch of the other highest ranking nazis fled to after world war two. Apparently the cemetary`s really weird, all these german names on gravestones. There`s also a lot of white bolivians that could be nothing else than their descendents. The whole thing isn`t really talked about but I`d still like to see what I can find out. They`re also considering turning Klaus Barbie`s house into a hotel. Oh well, I`ll make sure Andrea goes there when she comes to Bolivia and she`ll give me the scoop on what`s up.