With my game face On

In La Paz, Bolivia we had the chance to go watch a true South American futbol match. It was Bolivar playing The Greatest. We decided to sit in the fan section to get the full experience (and to cheer for Bolivar of course). Man did we get what we asked for...the fans were insane! It was fun to try and learn all the cheers in Spanish... ha ha, half the time i think we may have been saying many derogative phrases. But it was such a fun game and a lot crazier than any other game i had experienced before. Oh, and our team won of course :)

Death Road, La Paz, Bolivia.

Since we thought we hadn´t had enough adventure yet... we decided to give ourselves a rush by biking down the world´s deadliest road... hence its´name, Death Road. Suposidily 300 people die on it a year (mostly traffic accidents). It actually wasn´t so scary now that they built a new road and this one wasn´t the main one anymore. We also really lucked out because we didn´t have to deal with many cars that day... it was a slow day for traffic. However, it was a little intense knowing that if you were to slip out on your bike you would go rolling off the edge and fall about 500 feet to your death. So the fact that it was a pretty narrow dirt path with many winding curves made it a little heart-racing... not to mention the stories we heard of bikers that have fallen off to their deaths. Needless to say, we made it! We made the decent of over 3,400 meters in about three hours and we survived El Camino de la Muerte! :)

Pics of all this to come...

More Salt Please

The salt flats of Uyuni, Bolivia are amazing... Salt Lake's salt flats don't even compare. It was neat to be out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but miles and miles of White and Blue and huge Cati. Was very beautiful...

I was glad that we got to experience the adventure with a bunch of friends we had meet while traveling... Here are some photos of us trying to be creative on the salt flats... ha ha was a little difficult to organize a group of 15 though!

Me Encanta Bolivia xoxo

Bolivia, I love you! The Traditional Bolivian Women dress so rad...They are quite the stylish people with their cute little outfits. However, they don't take well to getting their picture snapped so i sneaked some peeks from the bus...Here are a few of my favs...

and just to warn all you future travelers that are headed to South America... Bolivia is underated! A lot of travelers seem to skip this country when passing through SA, which is a shame because it is one of my favorite places in SA. The food is muy rica (Very delicious) and the country is super barato (cheap...like $1.00 for the best meals). The country is full of little old ladies selling hand-woven goods for practically nothing... including: scarfs, rugs, and sweaters. It is such a beautiful place and neat cultural experience you don't want to miss!

A Cactus City

NW of Iguazu we stopped in Salta, Argentina. The city was full of the coolest cacti I had ever seen. We ran into the same friends we had hiked with in Patagonia and went on a horse-back riding trek with them. It’s nice because you just keep running into the same travelers in the next city and it feels like you have friends all over the country! Our horse trek was really fun, it was on this little ranch about ½ hour outside of the city and up into the mountains. My horse was a little crazy… he kept trying to bite my leg! I had to show him who was boss and he finally stopped. Then we got to run the horses (sorry Als I know you would have loved it...I thought about you!). It was a bit scary… I thought I was going to fall off. Ha ha, I didn’t think I liked horse-back riding that much until now. It was a blast! At the ranch I learned how to lasso the skull. I was pretty excited about it cause it was really hard at first. But yeah, i love learning random skills!

A Tale of Two Robberies

1st Robbery:The whole time we have been in Argentina we have felt pretty safe, we never expected that the biggest danger would be from a three-foot animal. I thought the little South American Racoons (Coatis) were so cute until they ambushed me out of no-where and stole my whole lunch sack. I swear they had an attack plan. I was just getting my camera out to film how cute they were and out of nowhere a little black Coati (the leader of the pack) ran out of the bushes and clung upside-down to my lunch sack, (legs and arms wrapped around the whole bag). I tried to shake him off but he wouldn’t budge he sliced the bag open with is gnarly claws and all my food dropped to the floor and then that’s when the whole ambush ran out and snatched every last piece of my lunch food. I just stood there trying to get my food back from those little thieves while Jessica ran to save herlife. She kept yelling to me… Run!! Run!! And I kept yelling… Somebody help me!! Help me..I want my food back! In the end, they totally worked me for everything I had. I guess I was just lucky I didn’t get bit by any of the little ravages and get rabies. Jessica was the only lucky person that got to witness this whole scenario…we laughed about it for the next hour or so and wished that we could have gotten more of it on flim...i just have the audio of us screaming (couldn’t focus on filming while I was being robbed).

Second Robbery:Was even crazier than the 1st. Jessica, Gorgie (our new friend from England) and I had been planning to go the supposidly the "best market in Bolivia" for about a week. Thursday (the only day of the market) finally comes around and we are super excited to be able to buy textiles, jewlrey and hand-woven sweaters for really cheap. About five minutes after we arrive at the market I go to pay for some freshly squeezed orange juice and that is when i notice that my bag/purse has been sliced open with a knife and my wallet is gone. It was so crazy. When i think back i can remember being squished in a crowd with two men on either side of me and thinking "this is weird" so i pushed back and grabbed my bag and picked up my walking pace. I have no clue how they managed to grab nothing but my wallet. I had so many other things in my purse that could have been easily mistaken for my wallet and somehow they mangaged to grab the exact one. Lucky my camera wasn't taken as well, i was robbed about the equivelance of $100 USD's, my Drivers Licence, and my Debit Card. I guess it could have been worse... but geeze they are so skillful. It happed so quickly... within seconds! Watch out travelers of Bolivia... the natives here really know their techniques.

My Paradise

When you think of paradise Iguazu Falls is it. So hermosa (beautiful)!! There are about 200 and something waterfalls in the middle of the jungle and everywhere you look there are rainbows, butterflies and birds. We were lucky to be there while there was a full moon because we went on this night tour that they only do three times a month when the full moon is out. It was really neat to see the waterfalls at night with only the reflection of the moonlight. Jessica and I were conversing as we walked but stopped mid-sentence when we reached the viewpoint because the waterfalls were so impressive that we were totally taken back with amazement. It was really cool to be able to see them at night first and then return the next day to see them with the daylight. Two totally different experiences, both very amazing.

"El Fin Del Mundo" Ushuaia

Our next stop was 'the end of the world’. We took a 16 hour bus ride to get there and made friends with three little kids on the bus but they nearly wore us out. They were very cute though. Their mom was moving them from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia and wow, she is amazing cause I don’t know how she traveled all that way by herself with three kids ages 5, 3, and 2 and then she was pregnant on top of it! The kids were super cute and we tried to learn some Spanish from them. The five-year old girl loved Jessica and ran her ear off even though Jessica had no clue what she was saying. Ha ha it was funny. Awe cute little kiddies, but we were excited to finally arrive at the southern most city in the world! It was beautiful there.

We went on a boat ride to some islands and saw seals swimming right next to our boat, they were so cute… they just poke their little heads out of the water and look at us with curiosity. I love them. I was so sad we didn’t get to see penguins L they had migrated North to Brazil about two weeks before we got there. Who would have thought they migrate to where it is warmer, they are penguins! I thought they would have gone more south, but nope, they headed north, crazy. We did see some birds which look like penguins if you’re far enough away ;)