200th and Salar

Last Thursday, the 16th, Bolivia celebrated it's 200th anniversary of the War of Independence; aka the entire city of La Paz shut down from Wednesday to Friday. Wednesday we all spent the day roaming around La Paz, for once with nowhere to go, which was surprisingly nice! It was so good to people watch and experience the city without having to rush to a hospital, flag down a micro (while also getting hit by a taxi, yes, that happened to me yesterday), or play travel agencies against each other for the best price. We literally spent the entire afternoon slowly meandering up and down El Prado and watching the beginnings of the festivities. That night, we fought through thousands of people on the street to get a view of the parade; we even saw Evo!! (the pres.) Although slightly jealous of the 4 obviously American girls that subjected themselves to being WRAPPED in Bolivian flags and joining the parade (probably very unwelcome) we all survived the night as inconspicuous gringos with only one camera being stolen. A few of us even survived the street food, myself NOT included.

After we had our parade-fill, we headed off to RAM JAM, our current night life place of interest. The DJ provided us with the best of the best American music, since we were blatantly the tipsy tourists more than likely warding off local customers (maybe the music choice was meant to make us buy more, who knows). Around 1 a local band played and we got some salsa lessons from Joel (our newest, Cuban born, lives in Holland, schooled in Chile, traveling solo, friend) who completely represents the coolest of people that love to travel, have fun, and meet new people. One phone steal and 700B's later we stumbled home, only to wake up to Thursday, the REAL day of celebrations.

Thursday night we traveled over night to Uyuni, locale of the famous Salt Flats. For future reference, overnight bus rides across consistent rocky terrain = death, and I hate to think that I'll be going to Peru in similar fashion. BUT, after the 14 of us got our bearings 10 hours later, we decided that a lack of sleep was well worth what we faced when we got there. Placido, our personal driver for the weekend, came and picked us up and we went straight to Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat (4085 square miles): indescribable. Apparently, when looking out you can see for 30 miles; it was endless. And beautiful. Really cool pictures to come, because perception is completely different there (ex: we staged a picture where it looks like Ale has an angel and a devil on her shoulders (Christa and Sarah) whispering in her ears). My temporary home for the weekend was the Land Cruiser we all became very fond of, especially when Placido sang along to our ipods with us. We also had a cook that traveled with us everywhere and made, quite possibly, some of the best food I've ever tasted in my life.

Friday we stayed in a salt hotel, made from salt and water. Just Salt and Water. We ate on salt tables, sat on salt stools, slept on salt beds. It was crazy. Saturday we saw the Andes Mtns, colored lakes, and flamingos. And Sunday we saw the desert, geysers, lava (180degC), and swam in natural hot springs. Oh, and there was snow too. Sounds boring, huh.

The trip back Sunday night was pretty much the same as the trip there, with the exception of the Tylenol PM overdose I attempted to use for sleep aid. Worthless. This week I'm at a new Hospital which is a Catholic hospital about 30 minutes from town. It's been good thus far, but will be a short week since Thursday morning at 6 we fly to the Amazon. Tough life.