Hola from 3454 or 3600m, depending which sign on the entry to La Quiaca you believe.
Last night we ended up looking at some art then hanging out on the hostel's covered patio with a bottle of wine (the most expensive in the store, security tagged and everything, and it set us back $11). We watched the new rainstorm come down and the lighning crash - impressive lightning. We had a snacky supper, since we'd eaten well at lunch, and packed and went to bed.
This morning was a bit of poking around before catching our bus, which took 5 hours to cover about 300km, mostly because it stopped in every single town, and a variety of places in between. Also becasue I{m not sure it ever got over 60km/hr! It was nice to cover some of the Quebrada territory more slowly, the colours are som different depending on the time of day, and then once we'd got past where we'd been it was more high plains, and mountains mixed between sediment and hard rock, river gorges, and actual llamas by the side of the road. There was a cute baby next to us too, who was completely obsessed with John. Sadly, there was no air conditioning.
We descended into the altitude and walked very slowly with our bags to find our hotel. Altitude sickness is a lot like having a hangover, but we've also not eaten much so we{re hoping it will improve after supper.
We found a place to drop off laundry (they charge by the item, which is super insane) and the laundress was also a teacher at the elementary school, who had us explain about halloween to a few kids who she had at the laundry working on decorations for the next day's party. Super-cute.
We also saw an artisan shop, where there were super cute, super soft, super fine alpaca (or vicuña?) sweaters for about $11! Good lord. And Bolivia should be even cheaper. Yesterday I bought a huge (about 200g) ball of chunky, supersoft, llama/silk yarn for just under $3. Depressed economies are depressingly great.
Ok. We're going to go see if we can rustle some food - it's still early, but surely SOMETHING will be open by now.
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5 comments:
is there a south american equivalent to the day of the dead (Nov 1, or is it 2?) festivities does where you guys are?
People seem to be buying a lot of flowers and wreathes, and there were special-looking person and mask shaped pastries in the market just now, but not the same sort of skull-fest as Mexico, by the looks of it.
That is crazy altitude! I just looked it up and the highest I've ever been was a glacier at 1900m. Nelson itself is at 534m, and some people think even that is high. :)
DON'T FALL OFF
oh the alpaca!! the llamas! you should send home lots and lots of pretty alpaca and llama yarn! just thinking of such yarn for such small prices kills me!!
I am trying to buy alpaca and llama yarn everywhere, but people really seem to only knit with cheap acryllic unless they are making things for tourist consumption. That said, we got alpaca sweaters last night for about $6 each.
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