Today was the first day of a four-day jeep tour of Southern Bolivia. I was wondering what I had gotten myself into when the seven of us--Edgar, the guide; Celia, the cook; Rob, Rosco, Mike, Polly, and I--piled into a landcruiser and Celia began to play her Roxette CD. It didn´t help, either, that the landcruiser overheated before we made it to our first stop. The ¨roads,¨ in the loosest sense of the word, were partially or completely washed out by the rain in some places. On more than one occasion, we had to drive through places where the river crossed the road or to pull up brush to put over the deep mud so that the landcruiser didn´t get stuck. But the trip turned out to be a very adventurous and an eye-opening experience.
Our first day was mostly driving. It was so beautiful and colorful. It´s strange, but even the sky seems bluer here. Maybe it is because we are so much closer to it; during the course of the trip we climbed to an elevation of over 5,000 meters. Also, the mountains are red, green, blue, and mustard colored. On some of the mountains, these colors are folded together in such a way that you wonder what happened to make them that way.
We only had two real stops. First, the Sillars, which are giant red rock formations. Unlike the formations in Cafayate, however, we followed the mountains up over them and had an amazing view of them from the top. The second stop was lunch in a field full of llamas. It was a bit disturbing, though, that our lunch consisted of tamales made with llama meat.
We also drove through several small towns. It was strange to see children dressed in knock-off American clothes (Boss and Fox are really popular) come running out of the mud buildings with straw roofs. The children are running and waving as if you are celebrities, but then scatter as soon as you whip out your camera. Our guide explained that they still believe that people can steal their souls with cameras.
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