Fresh fruit breakfast smoothy, $0.50- this will happen everyday from here on out!

So happy that I'm in a hostel with a fantastic roommate- finally got my first round of food poisoning. I probably asked for it by eating this old woman's street food chicken concoction that had sat out for who knows how long. Anyhoo, can't talk about that anymore, bleh!

A few recents:

Explored a small portion of the crazy city of La Paz; so many people (just under 1 million + travelers) and vehicles, and instead of buses, there are vans w/ the door open and people hanging out of them yelling the destination- if you want in, you run and jump. They have a witches market with all sorts of potions and such. Lots of dead baby llamas that you're supposed to bury under your house for good luck; so now you all know what you're getting for Christmas! They also have some amazing churches, including the San Francisco, which I walked through. The Catholics sure do like over the top goddy decor, but man is it stunning inside! We walked to the prison also, but didn't go in- too many bad stories. It's very interesting though- the prisoners' families live in the prison with them, and they make little crafts to sell to visitors to make money, and there's a market and everything set up inside (we could kind of see it through the front gate).

You see the traditional dressed women everywhere- they look like this:

And one day I saw a group of them playing soccer (well, trying to)- it was adorable and hilarious, and out in the middle of nowhere.

A kid (thats right, i'm gettin old- theyre all kids) from Canada, Charlie Little (the electrician that wants to start his own business called The Little Electrician, sigh) told me on a bus ride back from death road, that condors pick one mate for life, and that if/when the female dies, the male will fly way up into the sky and then dive-bomb down to his death. I haven't fact checked this, but quite romantic if it's true, especially since they're an endangered species.

We went to Uyuni and out to the salt flats. The city Uyuni is a dust ball, crappy village, that is so cold! The salt flats were really cool to see (so bizarre to see nothing but salt out to the horizons). I am glad we only did a one day trip, instead of the more popular three day (you do also get to flamingos and a couple other neat things on the 3 day, but too cold, and too much salt and desert for me). The salt flats are 12,000 sq km, and the people harvest it all by hand (what an awful job). Recently, the worlds largest lithium pool was discovered to be beneath the flats, so it probably wont be long before a big corp moves in to get that out. We saw several volcanoes, but too far away to see much detail. The flats are so bright! We ate lunch at an island in the middle of the flats that is covered in cactus; we hiked around and got some great views of the massive flats. Stef and I had dinner with Patrick from Reno- cool 21 yr old, traveling around after finishing his semester of Spanish studies in Chile.

There are a lot of shoe shiners on the streets and they wear scary ski masks over their faces. We assumed it was to protect them from breathing the polish fumes all day, but when we spoke with one, he told is that it was so they won't be discriminated against.