Adventures in Bolivia

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