Potosí, 16 julio

I was walking aroudn after dinner (great soup, but with raw egg included) and too much time online (er, to kill time...) with the specific mission of finding Maná brand galletas dulces, and I just looked at my surroundings, and heard the people in the streets, the young people walking aroudn in groups, the 16-year-olds getting their hairs cut to go out and impress, the already drunken miners, the wedding car witht the tin cans, the colonial church, the kiosko woman uphill fromt he bus station and next to the amazing colonial churches, the old corner building I hadn't noticed before, the cumbia blasting fromt he market and from passing cars, the micros and Potosi just buzzing, I though, what a great feeling to be here, expressing this, feeling energetic and content with my cookies and my full stomach and the crisp, rarified high-altitude air and my alpaca gloves, seeing old men and old women with brightly-colored shoulder pouches, some containing small children, gathered at the near street corner chatting in Quechua. And I felt: Boliva is my new friend. I love your energy and sounds and smells and fascinating grossness, and I like navigating all this while having only a very superficial knowledge of pretty much everthing (which is really about the best I can hope for, I think), all in the shadow of the most prolific and deadly mine in world history, the mine that sustained the Spanish empire for centuries, which, to use a trite but utterly appropriate phrase, certainly does tower over the city.

Anyway. I just got around to posting that, even though it's the 22nd now and I'm in La Paz right now. Talk about fascinating grossness. Though the city, I must admit, is absolutly spectacular in terms of geographic location, in a gigantic bowl of sorts, ringed by high plains and gi-normous mountains. I'm staying near the market*, which has, amoung other things, a lightbulb section/street, and dried llama fetuses available for purchase.**

I'm leaving the morning of hte 26th for Oruro, where I will catch a train the same day at 15.30 to the border at Villazòn/La Quiaca. I'll get there at 7.00ish on the 27th, cross the border as quickly as possible, get tickets to Jujuy on the next available bus, hope I can get a seat for the 2 hour trip, and then arrive and frantically look for a seat on the next bus to Buenos Aires, which I can with luck get the same day, to put me back in my metropolis in the afternoon of the 28th. Otherwise, ?

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*Really just a chunk of the city about a kilometer squared.
**Yes. Some complete with hair and everything.