After keeping you all in suspense for such a long time, I figure it is about time to send out part three of my South American Travel updates. The last update I sent out included my travels through Brazil. This time to keep from boring you all too badly, I will only talk about my travels through Bolivia and I will save my peruvian adventures (where I am curently) for yet another email.

For those of you who heard something about my travel plans prior to my departure, you may be wondering where the idea of Bolivia came from. After all, originally I was just planning on visiting Brazil and Peru, two relatively prominent nations in Latin America. So why did I decide to visit the poorest most indigenous and one of the least talked about countries in South America? I guess the only answer to this is word of mouth. During my month travelling around Brazil I kept meeting other travellers who had nothing but great things to say about Bolivia, and who insisted that I really should spend some time there.

My original plan with regards to Bolivia was to get a plane ticket with a few stopovers in a couple prominent cities and then head over to Peru. I expected my total time in Bolivia to be about a week and a half. This estimate proved a little shy, as almost four weeks later I was still in wandering around the country. My first destination in Bolivia was a town called Cochabamba where I arrived by plane from Sao Paulo. The flight was supposed to take 6 hours, but after an unplanned 5 hour stopover in Santa Cruz the plane surprisingly enough was 'slightly' delayed. After arriving in Cochabamba much later than I originally expected, I basically checked into a hotel, grabbed some dinner and got to bed early in anticipation of a now rushed tour of the city (I had only given myself a day and a half to see the town without taking into account aircraft delays).

The next day I spent wandering around Cochabamba. I wandered up well over 1000 steps to see the largest Jesus statue in South America (bigger than the one in Rio), wandered around the streets and overall started getting acquainted to life in Bolivia. It was actually startling to see the differences in lifestyle not just between the US and Bolivia but even between Brazil and Bolivia. The average salary in some parts of Bolivia is something like $50/month, shopping is all done in open air street markets including in the major cities, and things like sanitation and hygiene certainly aren't given as much priority as in Western Countries. Despite this though, the people were all very friendly, and happy. Everyone was eager to talk and find out about the gringos and all in all it was a very welcoming place.

From Cochabamba I was scheduled to take a short 30 minute flight to Sucre. So after a mere 7 hours of delays the flight departed and I was on my way to Sucre with yet another day of vacation lost due to the wonders of Bolivian air transport. The one nice part of this delay was I met a group of travelers (two English, one Australian and two Scottsmen) in the airport who I ended up travelling with for the next part of my trip. Sucre is a beautiful colonial town which I spent some time wandering around. The most interesting thing I did while in sucre was to view the worlds largest dinosaur footprint collection. A cement factory while chopping up limestone discovered sets of tracks hundreds of meters long from dozens of different types of dinosaurs preserved vertically on limestone walls, and these are now available for public viewing. The sad thing though is the factory is still chopping up the limestone where the dinosaur tracks are preserved to make cement.

After Sucre my original plan was to fly to La Paz, but by this point I had become so disenfranchised with flying in Bolivia I decided to join the group I met in the Cochabamba airport and take a bus south to the mining town of Potosi. Potosi was one of the most interesting and tragic towns I have ever visited. During its heyday it was richer than New York and Paris. The majority of the spanish colonization was provided for by the mines in Potosi where veins of silver 2 meters wide existed and where more than 8 million Bolivian natives and african slaves were killed while mining the ore. The city is also the worlds highest at around 4500 Meters (14000ft). This originally caused me some problems with altitude sickness, but I quickly learned that a great natural remedy for this is Coca leaves (also used to produce cocaine).

While in Potosi I took a tour of the still operating mines, and got to see the conditions that the miners are working in today. The mines were basically used up by the Spaniards, and today the locals are barely able to scrape by on the ore that they can accumulate (average wage around $100/month). The mines are covered in natural asbestos and arsenic, and the miners have virtually no safety provisions. The entire mining process is done by hand without electricity, ventilation, or mechanization. Miners basically chisel out a hole with a hammer and chisel till they have created a gap big enough for a stick of dynamite. They then blow up the hole and carry out the rubble on their backs. The average life expectancy of the miner after they start working in the mine is around 10 to 15 years. However, the miners earn more than double what they would earn at other jobs available in Potosi.

From Potosi I left for the salt flats at Uyuni in the South of Bolivia. This consisted of a 4 day jeep tour driving around some of the most spectactular scenery I have ever seen. The first day we actually drove around the salt flats which covered the ground as far as the eye could see. A lot of the flats were covered with a thin layer of water which created the most incredible reflections of the landscape. Other highlights from the four day trip included active volcanoes, numerous geysers, exotic animal and bird life, a train cemetary and swimming in natural hot springs.

After Uyuni, the next stop was Bolivia's capital, La Paz. My first couple days in La Paz I mainly took it easy, saw the sights and had a great time bartering with the street vendors for random souvenirs and gifts. A couple of the more intersting sights I visited included the Coca Museum and the San Pedro Prison.

The San Pedro Prison is probably the most wacked out place I have visited in South America. Some of the more exceptional aspects to San Pedro include the fact that guards are not allowed inside the prison gates, and inmates have to buy their accomodations (cells), which can cost into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, the nicest (5 star) accomodations include jacuzzis, satellite tv, and anything else you could want. It is in fact normal to bring your wife and kids in with you if you get sent to jail. The prison has a bunch of restaurants including Japanese, Italian, and German (of course the proprietors are of the respective nationalities). The prison has its own counterfitting operation where the inmates make fake student id's among other things. The prison even has its own orphanage and school system where they teach children up to the age of 12 or so important things to get by in life such as how to make cocaine! In fact, for those tourists that are so inclined in addition to a tour you can rent a room for the night which will include cocaine, marijuana, and a bottle of rum for a bargain price.

After a few days in La Paz I decided it was time to do something a little more active, so i signed up for a mountain bike ride to a nearby city called Corioco. Now this was not just any mountain bike ride as the road it follows descends nearly 4000 Meters (13000 feet) in just 80km (50 miles). The road is also considered by the UN as the worlds most dangerous road since 26 vehicles (or about one every 2 weeks) careens off the edge. But what makes up for this danger is the incredible scenery that you get to ride past. During the descent you pass through more than three different distinct climate systems, and see everything from the Andean highlands to tropical rainforest, the landscapes are just indescribable. An added benefit to this ride was at the end in Corioco I stayed in quite a nice resort hotel situated on the side of a mountain with a nice swimming pool, hammocks, beautiful day hikes, and overall quite a relaxing atmosphere. It definately was difficult to leave and head back to La Paz (especially considering I had to return by bus on that same most dangerous road).

The day after returning to La Paz I went on a day trip from the city to a place called Valle de La Luna or Valley of the Moon. While I was there I rented a quad bike and rode up and down trails for quite a while with a group of people from my hotel. The funny part was I had never ridden a quad bike or any sort of motorcyle before, I never showed them a drivers license, I never signed any sort of waiver or agreement, I just said i want to ride and they gave me the keys to a 300HP Quad and pointed to the woods. I thought they would get suspicious when I stalled out 2 or 3 times as i was getting used to the motorcyle style clutch, but no problems at all. So after having a blast on the quad bikes we went to the actual Valley of the Moon, which is an aptly named section of badlands that really look like they should be on the moon.

The next destination in Bolivia was a town situated in the Amazon basin in the north of the country called rurrenebeque (Rurre) that I was going to use as my base for tours of the Jungle and Pampas. I flew to Rurre on a Bolivian Air Force plane, which the air force uses to generate a bit of extra money for the armed forces. However, despite this change in carrier, the plane was still 3 hours late, and actually ended up landing at a city 1 hour away from Rurre. I suppose this was understandable though since the dirt air strip which is the Rurre airport was too muddy for the plane to make a safe landing.

The next morning I left for a tour of the pampas which is sort of marshlands that run next to the Amazon jungles in Bolivia. The nice thing about this areas is you can see lots of animal and particularly birdlife. During my 2 day tour I saw numerous types of monkeys, sloths, dozens of different birds, alligators, crocodiles, strange pig/anteater looking creatures and coolest of all pink river dolphins (which we also got to swim with). Unfortunately, we also ran into more than our fair share of Mosquitos, sandflies, Fire ants, and other nasty insects. After the two days in the Pampas we returned to Rurre for the night which happened to be Good Friday so I got to watch the locals celebrating and parading down the streets.

The following morning it was time for a two day jungle trip, we took a hollowed out canoe (with a huge outboard motor attached) up one of the amazon tributaries until we were well into the middle of nowhere. Once there we set up camp and started our jungle excursions. Some of the highlights of the trip included bushwacking through the jungle with machetes, drinking water from vines in the trees (a la Predator), taking the Heart of Palm from palm trees, finding and eating various edible fruits and nuts, making pan pipes from the bamboo in the forest, and seeing some more cool animal life including some gigantic and highly toxic spiders. After two days I returned to Rurre where I spent one final night before flying back with the Bolivian Air Force Plane to La Paz.

My final stop in Bolivia was Lake Titikaka which is considered one of the highest navigable lakes in the world. I arrived at a town on the Bolivian side of Titikaka called Copacabana and the following morning took a boat trip to the Isla del Sol or Island of the Sun. The island is supposed to have been the birthplace for the first Inca, and was a sacred place for the Inca people. I spent the better part of the day hiking around and visiting the inca ruins on the island, and spent the night in a fairly nice hotel on the island. The next morning I took a boat back to Copacabana where I caught a bus to Puno in Peru.

So, that catches everyone up on the Bolivian section of my travels. One other effect of all that time in Bolivia is in order to be able to see anything in Peru I had to extend my vacation a bit, so I will not return to the US until April 20. I hope everyone is well, and I apologize if I have not been very good at keeping up with personal emails while I have been travelling, but I will try and make up for it when I get back.