| As a graduate student, I finally had the opportunity to | | | | airport over the lip of the high desert, the city was |
| work on a project in southern Bolivia. Although I had | | | | spread out below, partially obscured through a haze of |
| spent previous summers camping alone while | | | | heavy smog. After finding the company office, a driver |
| conducting fieldwork in remote areas, this was to be | | | | took me to a hotel in the old part of the city, popular |
| my first journey overseas, to a country known | | | | with young, dominantly British and Spanish |
| variously for coca growing, revolution, and the final | | | | backpackers. Left to my own devices for several |
| resting place of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance | | | | days, I taught myself the phrases and words to order |
| Kid.La Paz is nestled in a series of steep valleys that | | | | breakfast and dinner, and wandered through the |
| are eroded in a jagged, blasted moonscape of | | | | open-air market to practice my nascent Spanish skills |
| sun-baked volcanic rock. One of the city parks is | | | | on vendors of flashlights, jeans, and trilobite fossils. I |
| called "Valle de la Lunas" or Valley of the Moon. The | | | | found Bolivians to be the friendliest of people, who |
| city has sprawled up the valley slopes onto the | | | | seemed to delight in talking to a Norteamericano. |
| Altiplano, or high desert. As my taxi drove from the | | | | |