Last Sat there was a giant festival in all of La Paz that started at about 9am and went till about 3am. The streets were packed with people and there was a huge on-going parade. It was pretty fun to watch. It was also the day of the Bolivia vs. Venezuela soccer match. We spent the day walking through the festival and then went to the soccer game, which was pretty exciting, but Bolivia lost.. On Monday I started the H.P. climb. The first day we tried on gear and then headed to our first refuge camp, which was really really [View Full Entry]

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La Paz is very different from Cusco. It is a huge city with tons of traffic and people. Nearly every street is a market and you can buy absolutly anything you want. It also is a lot less touristy which is really nice. The food though is not that great. I have found a couple cafes with good sandwiches and some thai and middle eastern food that is good, but there are probably a million fried chicken places and some sketchy street food. The other day I went to El Alto, which is a couple miles out of La Paz and [View Full Entry]

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Tues night I headed out of Peru and into Bolivia. This time I decided to spend a little more money on a bus ticket so I could have a nice bus, since the ride is about 11 hours. The bus company sounded great, the pictures were good, and they were going to get me quickly to Copa. But that was all a lie. It was a cramped bus, left late, smelled strongly of urine, no dinner, no movie, no blanket, no heat...And when they said they would get me to Copa, they actually meant they would drop me off at 5am [View Full Entry]

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This trip started bright and early at 430am, we were picked up from our hostals and then drove 3 hours to our starting point. Here we hiked next to Salkantay Mountain (witnessed a HUGE avalance) and hiked uphill to the highest point of 4550m. I was feeling the altitude a little bit and it made me kinda nauseous, but after we reached the highest point the rest of the day was downhill into the valley where we were camping. It was a very cold night, and had rained a little bit earlier in the day too. I wore just about everything [View Full Entry]

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Thursday we met our group and guide at 5:30am at the bus station. We took at 3 hour bus ride and a half hour taxi ride to the trail head. Here we sat around for a couple hours, not really knowing what we were waiting for (our guide didnt tell us much, except that we were waiting for "some guy"). We had lunch here, and then started hiking at about 1:30pm. The trail was relatively flat for the first two hours and then we walked downhill for about 3 hours to our first campsite. It was in a tropical area on [View Full Entry]

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This past weekend I headed to the Sacred Valley, first stop in Pisac. Me and Jessica arrived and settled in and then I took off to Lamay to hike up to Huchay Cusco. The hike was about 1.45hr uphill (maybe the steepest part of Mt. Si the entire way!) but the views were amazing! You could see miles and miles across the valley (the pictures dont do it justice). At the top there were tons of ruins and I walked around those for a bit before heading back down. It felt so good to get a good workout in and to [View Full Entry]

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Friday Jenna, Sabine, and I got on an overnight bus to Arequipa (9hours). The bus was awesome and super comfy. We arrived in the city at about 6am and couldnt get a room till 11am so we killed time eating bfast and walking around the city. Arequipa is beautiful--It is bigger and cleaner than Cusco. We walked through all the markets and hunted down the best coffee places (Cusco Coffee Company is by far the best). They have streets for everything..some are just for cakes, just for dentists, just for fruit, just for shoes, etc. Its a weird way to organize [View Full Entry]

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This past weekend was a lot of fun. I was able to get out of the city and enjoy the sun. On Sat me and a couple other volunteers went horsebacking riding around the Sacsayhuaman ruins. We saw the Temple of the Monkey and the Temple of the Sun/Moon. We also explored a ton of caves all connected to each other, but our "guide" (an eight year old boy) told us to just go up there and didnt tell us the significance. It was really pretty riding through the hills and valleys and we had a great view overlooking the city. [View Full Entry]

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here are a few pictures so far [View Full Entry]

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This week I have started my volunteer project. Im volunteering in a small walk in clinic. It has a dentist office, general medicine, and topico area, which is were I am working. I am giving injections, cleaning and dressing wounds and removing sutures mostly. The language barrier is pretty hard to work with, but I am with several other volunteers that speak better spanish than me. The clinic here is very different from anything in the US. Gloves are barely ever worn (too expensive), the nurse never washes her hands, the patients bed and chairs are never wiped down, the sterile [View Full Entry]

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