An Overdue Ending

Ok, a promise is a promise (that and everyone keeps bugging me to finish the story).  When we last left off, we were winding up our salt flats trip to Uyuni when the laptop hard drive died and the blog went into hiding.  The rest of the salt flats trip was a long bumpy ride back to Uyuni followed by a long winding overnight bus trip back to Sucre where we spent the day wandering around, and then flew back to Santa Cruz the next morning feeling pretty much as exhausted as possible.

Since we were running out of days and we missed Jordan's birthday, we had went out for a big supper with everyone who could make it and then went back to Ken's house for birthday cake.

 What a beautiful cake we managed to get for her birthday.  It was a white cake with meringue cookies inside and a strawberry glaze on top.

Bolivia has a bit of a tradition around birthdays which we (including Jordan) were aware of.  It is tradition that as everybody sings happy birthday, that someone slams the birthday person's face into the cake.  When in Bolivia do as Bolivians is what they say.

 We did however somewhat deviate from the tradition because as everyone gathered around to take pictures, Logan was so pleased with Jordan getting her face smashed in the cake that Andres smashed his in the cake for good measure as well, which made everyone even more pleased with the situation.

We did learn one more thing from this experience.  Bright red glaze does not wash off very easily.

So our trip had come to an end and it was time for a long uneventful return home.  Unfortunately, that was not what ended up happening.  We departed Santa Cruz as planned, but about 3 hours into the 6 hour flight to Miami, there was the smell of jet fuel in the cabin of the plane, so the pilot came on the speaker system and announced we were deviating to Bogota, Colombia to do an emergency landing.  Everyone was pretty calm about it until the little Bolivian lady got up and started praying loudly for the next 10 minutes or so which instead of having a calming effect on people seemed to have the opposite effect.

20 minutes later, we landed in Bogota and the plane was surrounded by flashing lights, fire trucks, hazmat trucks and police cars.  The doors opened, and two guys in silver bomb suits boarded the plane with machines looking for the source of the smell.  We were all escorted off the plane, loaded onto buses and brought to a secure area of the terminal where we laid around for the next few hours.  Eventually, they figured out that everyone was hungry so they started handing out food vouchers for the food court that had 4 restaurants.  Since it was 9:00 at night and they had next to no staff working, it was not a smooth situation when the 300 of us showed up.  We pulled the "for the sake of the children, let them go first" card and were some of the first people to eat.

After a few more hours of waiting, they announced that they were going to put everyone up in a hotel for the night and then fly us out the next day.  Sounded good to us until we got to customs where they pulled all the Canadians to the side and informed them that as of December there was an 85USD fee to enter Colombia for Canadians.  I expected American Airlines to pony up since we were here because of their airplane, but oh no.  So if you can read this American Airlines, we were not amused!!!  I didn't have a spare $600 in my wallet so I put on my angry voice and politely accosted the American Airlines staff by informing them that I didn't care what they had to do, they were getting us home and flying us out tonight.

After a few minutes, they came back saying that they had managed to get us tickets to Dallas leaving at 1:00 am and then to Toronto and then Regina.  Since I know my geography pretty well, I informed them that no, they were going to get us to Dallas and then to Calgary and then Regina.  They came back a few minutes later with tickets in hand and big smiles.  Those smiles soon disappeared when I informed them that we needed all 5 of us to get home, not the 4 of us that they arranged tickets for.  Apparently Jordan didn't need to go home according to American Airlines.  They apologized again, and explained the flight to Dallas didn't have any more tickets.  I politely explained they would make a seat appear for her.  20 minutes later they miraculously came back with 5 tickets.

We got to Dallas and then waited it out there for our Calgary flight.  You would think that the airline would take good care of people that were in our situation, but once again American Airlines apparently doesn't work that way.  We were all to happy when we arrived at Calgary where the Westjet people were absolutely awesome and they provided us with blankets, free food and drinks and were ever so polite taking care of us before we boarded and on the plane back to Regina.  So just to summarize American Airlines bad...Westjet good.

Anyways, we got home and slept and then slept some more....

The Story Continues

We are home now, which was a story unto itself, which I will share in a few days.  I promised to finish the salt flats trip story once the laptop was repaired, so I need to complete that promise with this post.  We left off by tucking into bed in the salt flat hotel.  Days 2 and 3 of the tour consisted of spine breaking off road travel across Altiplano desert between rock formations and lagoons of salt water.  The drive was hard on both the passengers and the vehicle alike and I can't possibly imagine being the driver who does that trip twice per week.

The second day started off at 5:30 am where we piled into the Land Cruiser and headed off into the mountains and across rocky stretches of flat desert like areas.  The scenery is fantastic all along the way with constant views like the following:

The last picture is of what they referred to as a "dormant" volcano.  It seemed rather odd to us that there was a plume of smoke coming out of the top left of it but we were assured that it always does that.

Day 2 was also special because it was Jordan's 9th birthday and had several unique things happen to make it extra special.  The first was that we saw our first wild vicuna as in the picture above.  They are basically the wild cousin of the llama and wander around these remote parts like camels do in the Sahara.  The second unique thing was that while we were passing through a large desert stretch at around 13500 feet above sea level, we got a flat tire on the Land Cruiser.

The only real concerning part of the flat tire was that our driver liked to take alternate routes from the other tour drivers (we hadn't seen another vehicle for a while), and the spare tire had less tread on it than the one that went flat.  We got up and going again and continued on our way to a series of lagoons where flamingos and alpaca were wandering around looking all National Geographic.

 We greatly appreciated their signage requiring the flamingos to stay on the ground so we could take pictures of them.

We ended day two with the Ken, Andres and the kids going for a swim in the hot springs while Melody sat down for a while and I wandered about.  While wandering, a large bunch of alpacas came around the corner of the mountain and gave me a unique opportunity to get up close and personal.

Day two ended by returning to our hostel for the night to find our room full of young German gentlemen.  After working out the mixup (and removing the Germans), we had supper where we celebrated Jordan's birthday with a toast, and then by Ken sharing the last bag of Doritos with her.

We all slept very soundly after a very long day.

An Abrupt Ending

Well, I had been able to get the laptop working every once in a while, but I am afraid it has officially retired itself, so unfortunately, our complete tale with pictures cannot be told until we return home and either repair the laptop or replace it with something new and shiny.  I promise that I will complete the entire saga (and faster than it took to release 3 Hobbit movies I might add) in the first few days back in Canada.  It shouldn't be a problem since there is no way I am going outside in minus 30 weather after being in plus 30 weather for a month and a half.

The Middle of the Middle of Nowhere

Sorry for the lack of posts in the past week, but we have been busy having the experience of a lifetime.  Before we left, we had decided that we would pick a destination for a week once we arrived down here and had some discussions with Ken.  Around Christmas, we had narrowed it down to either going up to Lake Titicaca and La Paz or to go to the Uyuni Salt Flats.  In the end, we talked it over as a family and decided to go on a 3 day tour of the Salar de Uyuni with Ken and Andres.

For those who are not familiar with Bolivian geography, here is a link to a map.  If you don't feel up to clicking the link, Santa Cruz is on the eastern side of the country in the low lands and Uyuni is in the south west part of the country in some of the highest and most remote areas.  This unfortunate geographical situation meant that to get to Uyuni to start the tour meant that we had to take some crazy travel steps at the last minute.  We quickly figure out that we didn't want to go from our altitude in Santa Cruz to the altitude in Uyuni, and also didn't want to fly through La Paz because of the altitude sickness we experienced on the way in, so we needed to be a little creative and patient on the travel plans to allow for adjusting as we increased in altitude.

Ken and I did some digging over the last week of December and booked a return flight to Sucre from from Santa Cruz.  Sucre is a t 9,214 feet above sea level, or just above where most doctors say you should take altitude sickness pills before arriving.  We figured we would roll the dice, stay overnight and then continue from there.  We were lucky enough to have no illnesses upon landing and made our way to the Grand Hotel.  The Grand Hotel is a lovely simple little place and Ken was super excited to get the Che suite where Che Guevara had recuperated once upon a time.

The next morning, we left on the next leg of our journey by getting on a bus from Sucre to Uyuni.  The bus to Uyuni is an 8 hour experience of rising altitudes, switchback roads, and rocking back and forth through some of the greatest scenery in the world.  Uyuni is 377km from Sucre, but thanks to the difficult roads, climbs etc, it is an 8 hour ride.  By the time we wound our way out of Sucre, Logan was unfortunately not feeling well and spent most of the ride with his head out the window and threw up a couple of times due to the increasing altitude.  Everybody else was good to go.

About half way, we passed through Potosi at 13,420 feet above sea level and eventually arrived at Uyuni at 12,139 feet.  Uyuni is a small (some would say backwater) community that basically just exists as a launching point for tours of the Salt Flats.  We checked into our "hotel" which was a hostel where the 7 of us were split into 4 rooms after spending 15 minutes having the front desk clerk tell us that our rooms were not booked only to have the manager walk up and point to it on the page immediately.  Ah, the joys of travel.

The next morning at 10:30, our driver met us at the hotel and we piled into a late 90s Toyota Land Cruiser, piled our very limited luggage on top along with two large cans of gas and a spare tire to start the grand adventure.  The first stop on the tour was right outside of Uyuni at the train graveyard.  This is where Bolivia retired their trains over the course of the years, so there are trains from the 1890s up to fairly recent in various states of decomposition and graffiti.  I spent most of my time there looking for train number 5 which was the payroll train that Butch Cassidy robbed.  The kids loved this site because you can climb on all the trains as much as you want.  Sadly, in order to stay on schedule, we only had 20 minutes to spend.

 We then set off on the real adventure out in the direction of the salt flats.  The ground slowly transitioned from dirt, to salty dirt, to pure white salt and was completely amazing.  Our first stop was at the salt collection piles where they pile up the salt to dry in order to collect it.  We were lucky enough to have had rain the night before, so it meant an inch or two of water at the base of the piles which made for amazing pictures.  It also made for feet covered in salt and crusty pant bottoms.

After standing on several piles and taking a ton of pictures, we continued on to where the Dakar rally scheduled for a few days later was to start. Lucky for us, they had created some amazing carvings out of salt to prepare for the race.

Then we set off across white barren nothingness that frequently tricked us Saskatchewan folks into thinking we were driving across a barren prairie covered in snow, but in 20 degree above weather.  It was a strange sensation indeed.

Suddenly, our driver stopped the in the middle of nowhere and told us to get out.  This is where my spidey senses started tingling, but when he bent over near a small hole in the ground and started picking away, we all got a lot more interested.  It turns out that the salt flats, are only a relatively thin sheet of salt on top of about 2 or 3 meters of water and salt.  Just under the surface is water and in the water, salt crystals form.  Our driver was showing us how to dig for salt crystals to take home.

After digging for a while and finding some nice crystals (and cutting our hands on the sharp salt under the surface), we started taking perspective pictures.  Since the salt flat has no real items to measure distance by, you can take interesting pictures like these.

Of course you all look a little silly while trying to pull these cool pictures off as demonstrated by Ken and Andres as they try to walk into a mug directly in front of the the camera man.

After a bunch of pics, we piled back into the Land Cruiser and continued on to what the driver described as "the island".  We arrived at the island at around lunch time, so the driver made our lunch while we explored.  The island is a coral island covered in cacti in the middle of the salt flat.

We climbed to the top and took some amazing pictures of the surrounding flats and then climbed back down and had a well deserved lunch.  The bottom picture above shows the view from the top and the little dots are some people walking around the base of the island for perspective. We drove for quite some time and ended the day by checking into our Hotel of Salt for the night in which, everything was made of salt including the tables, chairs and beds.  Thus ended day 1.

New Years Eve and Day

Happy New Years everybody.  Now that we have that out of the way, last night we attended a New Years Party at one of the church members place.  They had cooked up a pig for the event, and had lots of Coca Cola and cheese rice on hand to go with it.  They also had a little dance floor setup for anyone so inclined.  Everyone arrived promptly an hour or so late as is the custom, but we had a good crowd as midnight approached.  One of the guests is a Bolivian singer/rapper named Matamba who was kind enough to take a picture with us.

We all were given the usual goofy new years hats and had a great time.  There was of course the usual Bolivian fireworks war that went off at midnight as expected and lasted well into the wee hours of the morning.

Today we grabbed a bunch of chicken meals, some lawn chairs and some sunscreen and piled into the truck with Ken's boys and headed to the river to have lunch, play soccer and splash around a bit in the water to stay cool.  Thanks to Kevin Holness for donating a large amount of soccer balls that we have donated to needy kids all over the city as we drove through the neighborhoods over the last few weeks. I am sure the balls will all be put to good use until they can't be taped together any longer.

Lukas and I joined in the soccer game while the kids splashed in the river and Melody read a book in the sun.  We were as expected somewhat outclassed by our teammates and competition, but we did manage to put a couple of goals in as well.  I did note that they call a lot of fouls that we would not bat an eye at and we could have used some of the magic spray on a few rolling on the ground embellishments as well.

The rest of the day was spent trying to get the sand out of Logan and Jordan's hair following the sand fight in the river with Ivan.  Thanks for that Ivan....

P.S.  We did go to buy new glasses the other day when we had a few minutes to kill.  They will be ready on Saturday.  While we were doing so, the kids noted that they had a rather unusual pair of sunglasses and just had to try them on.  Logan has been begging me to put the pictures of them on here so....

Updates & Visits

I apologize for not the last day or so.  Things had been rolling along quite well on this trip but some of that initial good luck has started to balance out a bit with some bad luck.  To start off, there won't be many pictures on the blog for the next while and will probably only be much shorter posts than before.  It appears as though the hard drive in the laptop has decided to pack it in.  Luckily, I backed everything up before we left, and being paranoid, I had my computer set to backup all our trip photos nightly to my google account, so all we are out is the cost of a hard drive which may have to wait until we return home.

The second bit of bad luck was that I managed to burn a few fingers on my right hand fairly badly while lighting a gas oven that flared on me.  I wasn't sure how bad it was at the time, but now that the blisters have grown, popped and on one finger peeled off, it is a little worse than I had hoped.  I am taking care of it so there is no infection setting in but it is still pretty gross to look at.

We are just finalizing the plans to get to the salt flats with Ken but it looks like we will be flying up to Sucre and then taking a tour van to Uyuni for about 8 hours and then do a 3 day tour of the flats, geysers, lagoons etc.  if you haven't seen what the area looks like before, I really encourage you to google it and admire it for its sheer beauty.  We have had some issues getting logistics worked out because the Dakar rally is on the flats the second week of January so everything is pretty crazy around there right now.

As for New Years Eve, we have been invited to a party being put on by the church which includes the roasting of a whole pig and of course massive amounts of fireworks (to which I have generously donated due to how much I enjoy seeing things blow up).  Melody and Jordan will be dressing up a bit as all the ladies do, while I will be sporting jeans and one of my 4 new soccer jerseys.  It seems here that the women dress up and the guys wear pants and their newest jersey.  How do I choose between Bayern Munich, German National, Chelsea or Spain?

We have pretty much wrapped up delivering all the hampers to the families that we have left except for one who we will deliver this evening.  I am passing over the ipad to Melody to write a bit about our delivery and visit with Sandra who she had taught during our time down here in 2010.

As Ron said, I will tell you about our visit with Sandra.  We wanted to stop in to see if her husband could set up a visit as she doesn't have a functional phone right now.  To our luck and surprise she was home.  I knew I was going to be happy to see her after almost 5 years (I did private spa classes with her) but I had no idea I would be so emotional.  I walked into her front yard and started to cry.  They have done some work on the house but still have a long way to go before we would consider it complete.  As we sat and visited with her we found out that her husband got involved in a bad financial arrangement and is now responsible for 950 Bolivianos a month ($150 Canadian).  She is working in a spa but only gets to take home 50% of her actual income the rest goes to the spa owner.  As always I really wanted to help.  El Jordan is going to hire her husband to do some painting ( that is his trade but has to drive taxi because there is not enough work for painters), and we decided to give her one of our hampers.  She was very grateful and by the end of the visit we were both in tears, I feel very connected to this girl and would go to the ends of the earth for her.  Ron and I are still talking about other ways to help Sandra, her husband and her 4 kids.

Armadillo...It's whats for lunch and other random happenings

Thus far most of the blog has been about the work that we have been doing down here.  Since we have a few down days, it is a good opportunity to put some random happenings or other interesting tidbits up on the interwebs.

Let's start with today.  Being Sunday, we went to church this morning.  For those of you who haven't been to the Kairos Familia church, it involves a lot of good music, plenty of hugging (not something I like to do), and is very much a small community of people who care about and help each other out.  It is tradition with Ken that the boys get to go out for lunch after church each week.  Usually it is one of the many chicken restaurants (spoiler alert: there will be a post solely on the chicken restaurant names in the future), but since we are guests, we decided to go to Las Cabanas (anybody know how to put the squiggly line over the n in that word?).  Las Cabanas are basically thatched roof huts down by the river who all make traditional Bolivian cuisine and is one of the places to get the more distinctive dishes.  If you followed our first trip, this is the place we ate where the dog wandered in and urinated on the chair.

We chose a hut and basically ordered about half the menu because Ken let the boys order plus a couple of items that the Anderson crew really wanted, and then we waited while a band started playing loud horn and drum music and random people wandered by trying to sell us everything from chewing gum to inflatable cartoon balloons to sunglasses.  The food showed up after a few minutes and we had plates of pique macho (beef with hot dogs, french fries, sauce, boiled eggs and mayonnaise), roasted pork, a roasted duck and tatu.  Tatu translated to English is armadillo, and its something I have been waiting to taste for quite some time.  Gotta say, it was the best dish of the day and was a huge hit with the kids.  I made the pics a little extra large so you can see all the delicious detail in these ones.

After lunch, we went down to the plaza downtown where they have a Sunday market. Logan picked up a small ring and Melody got a lovely linen shirt with very finely detailed crocheted accents.  The shirt is very typical of the Santa Cruz area and was made by a nice older lady.  I almost purchased a leather satchel for work, but we were not able to negotiate a price I was happy with, so that will have to wait.  The other interesting things were the cayman skin belts with the heads as the buckle.

We decided to chill out a bit in the plaza after the market, so we got some bird feed and fed the pigeons and when Lukas ran out of feed, he tried to catch them but managed to get a bit scared when one flew at him.  Then we just had to have a picture taken with the scariest Santa Claus we have had the pleasure to meet.

That was about it for today, so here are a few other little items from our trip so far.  First off, Melody has a hatred for spiders, and we have had a couple of run ins since we got here.  The first was at Ken's house and was with the spider in the picture below.  The second was with a very similar spider who ran from under our bed into the dirty clothes pile and made her jump up on the bed and let me know in no uncertain terms that there was a spider that needed my attention.  We have also seen a number of other large insects along the way as well such as moths and large ants.

And to cap it off, here are some pictures of cute kids we have dealt with along the way.