Hasta Luago Bolivia, y Chile....Hola Argentina!

So in the course of three days Lynz and I will have left Bolivia, crossed into Chile and made it into Argentina, our final country! I think the last blog came to you from Sucre, Bolivia where we were taking a few days to recover from the Monkey park and some long bus rides. After three days in Sucre we hoped onto a nine hour bus to the town (if you can call it that) of Unuyi, where our Salt flat adventure began. The town of Unuyi was seriously in the MIDDLE of nowhere, I don't think I have ever seen anywhere so remote, our bus had not passed another sign of civilization for atleast five hours before we had arrived in Unuyi. The only way to know that you are getting close to the town is about two miles before the town you start to see trash stuck in the desert brush, and as you get closer the trash gets thicker until you are on the outskirts of the town where you can barley see the desert earth below all the trash, it was disgusting!
The only people who travel to Unuyi are those who are there to do the Salt flat tour, so no one stays more then a day there. We quickly found a company to go on the tour with, checked into a hostel, got a bite to eat and headed to bed because it was FREEZING outside, probably about 30 something degrees! Our tour picked us up in a big Toyota Land Cruiser and we headed off into the unknown.

As we looked out the window of the truck you see just how popular a destination the salt flats are, there were probably no less then 75 other Land Cruisers on all sides of us headed the same way, it looked a lot like that scene from ¨Independence Day¨ where are the R.V.s are coming across the desert to Area 51....
Our first stop was the train graveyard where I guess Bolivian trains come to die. It was actually really impressive to see these classic trains rusting in the desert, with a beautiful mountain backdrop. Since its Bolivia and you are allowed to do what ever you want, we climbed all over the trains and ran around like kids at a playground for about an hour.

We then loaded back into the Trucks and headed another hour or so across the desert where all of a sudden the dirt turned to salt beneath our tires and soon there was nothing else in sight.

There were a few dump trucks out on the salt flats scooping up pure profit and we couldn't´t help but think what an easy job, no mines to dig, no dirt to filter out, just scoop it up and sell it!
As our truck continued across the flats we got a opportunity to stop at one of the salt hotels that are made entirely of salt, from the tables to the beds to art on the walls and the walls themselves!

Little did we know where we would be staying for the next two nights or we would have saved ourselves the time of touring the place! Our group headed back out onto the salt for another few hours of driving and seeing NOTHING but salt until we arrived a ¨Fish Island¨ which is a rocky island that rises out of the salt flats and is probably the size of two football fields.

There we were able to climb up the rocks and get some amazing views of our surroundings, where the only living thing was cactus plants some over thirty feet tall!

After a lunch of Llama steaks we decided to take advantage of the amazing backdrop the salt flats created and got crazy with some perspective photos...

After ANOTHER five or so hours of driving across the salt flats (sorry I keep mentioning it, but I really want you to get the idea of how much salt is out there!!) we finally arrived at our hotel...made of salt. It was actually very luxury for a hotel made of salt, and just like the previous hotel we toured it was ENTIRELY made of salt. We settled in for the night and actually had a very good night sleep despite the fact that most of the bed was made of salt! I couldn't´t help but have dreams about it raining and the whole place melting all over me, fortunately it did not. The next morning we were up, fed and in the truck by about 630am to check out some volcano´s and lagoons.
Our first stop was was a huge active volcano that was smoking and spitting out some ash into the clear blue morning. Our next stop was the first of four lagoons that are home to Bolivia´s Flamingo population. If you have ever been to the Honolulu zoo, you know these are some stinky little creatures and when you arrive at these lagoons you know why. I'm pretty sure they eat rotten mud....The whole place stunk and was freezing cold, so we snapped a few quick pictures and were on our way again.

Each lagoon we came to offered an amazing backdrop, and each one was a different color depending on what kinds of natural elements and minerals were found nearby. One of the most impressive lagoons was colored red and white due to the high concentration of Borax (the cleaning chemical) and this is supposedly what makes the flamingos pink, because the consume so much red algae in their diet.

Our day ended at another hotel in the middle of nowhere, with not a cloud in the sky and a moon that had been up all day and went below the horizon at nightfall we had the most amazing view of the stars I have ever seen. The temperature was well below freezing, and every layer of clothes I had could not combat the hurricane force winds outside, but I still could not get myself to take my eyes off the stars and planets above. Because the landscape was so flat, the stars literally started at eye level right at the horizon line, and ended in the same place behind you. Because we are now in the southern hemisphere, everything was opposite, the little dipper was barley above the horizon and the southern cross was glowing brite above us, something I have never seen before.
The next morning we were up at 445am to head to the geysers for sunrise. We didn´t really know what to expect, but when we arrived a couple of hours later, there were literally ¨Old Faithful¨ type geysers erupting out of the earth, and pockets of bubbling mud and steam vents in all directions...I felt like a dinosaur about to meet his demise!

It was so cold out that the steam would land on everything around it and instantly turn to ice!

The next stop was a natural hot-spring that none of us really had high hopes for after seeing some of the other hot-springs across South America, but when we arrived we were greeted by perfect 100 degree, crystal clear water surrounded by huge mountains and another cloudless sky.

I hoped in while Lynz decided getting out of her clothes in below freezing water was just too painful. When we got out, I changed back into my warm clothes my wet board shorts froze solid, it was incredible! Our final tour stop was the green lagune that got its color from some mineral that I can not remember, but never the less it was a very green lagoon.

We then drove another few hours and were dropped off at the boarder of Chile and Bolivia, where we crossed and are now in San Pedro, in the heart of the Atacama desert (where those 33 miners just were rescued from). This town is pretty incredible, it looks like the old west on the outside, dirt roads and mud brick structures, but is actually really nice and super expensive! For that reason we are taking the next bus out of here (tonight) to Santiago, the capital of Chile, a 24 hour bus ride away. Four hours after that we will be getting on an eight hour bus from Santiago, across the boarder to Mendoza, Argentina. Yes that means we will spend Halloween in a bus, but I think it should be worth it! We will update you again after a few days in Mendoza, miss you all!

Sean & Lynz

All I do is pick up poo!!!

For the last two weeks Sean has been walking around Parque Machia with his six week beard dragging his rubber boots chanting ¨all i do is pick up poo!¨ so it only seemed fitting that it would be the title to this blog and give you a vague idea of what we have been doing for the past two weeks.

Not to lead you to the conclusion that we have been not enjoying ourselves. On the contrary we have been having an experience that will never be forgotten!

17 days ago we arrived in the humid Amazonian town Villa Tunari equipped with a duffel bag full of food and not a clue in the world of what to expect. The place was deserted and the park was closed. We had come 9 hours and hundreds of miles to volunteer at the animal refuge center of Parque Machia with very little guidance. We were told by the park (via email) to ¨just arrive¨ and see if there is availability and work for you. If there is you are placed where they need you most and if not, well then you leave. After scouring the park for someone, anyone, to give us some direction or information we encountered a tourist park agent who told us to go to the cafe below the park where we soon after met a passing through volunteer who gave us a bit of the low down - tour of the park at 5pm and job placement and introduction to the park at 7pm (something helpful they don´t mention to you on the website).

At 5 the tour came of the Parque. There were 9 departments to work in: the clinic (working with newly arrived monkeys and various animals), Quarantine (a transitional place for spider and capuchin monkeys), small animals (a housing for turtles, tyra´s and tehorns), birds (rehabilitating 50 types of various birds) and then there were 3 monkey parks where they had rehabilited wild monkeys, a Andean bear, and large cats (pumas and ocelots). The 3 latter are generally reserved for volunteers who are staying a month or longer. So in short there were only 4 options available for Sean and I, much more than we had thought or knew about.

Things really didn´t start out all that well for us. Two other girls wanting to volunteer had also arrived that day, in which we were all given the tour and taken into the office together. After an introduction of the Parque and its rules we were given job placements. Sean was given the job at the clinic because he was male (the park prefered males in that particular position because the newly arrived monkeys tended to be more aggressive towards females) and then Keith, the director of the park, turned to us three girls and told us there was only 2 positions available in the quarantine (working with the monkeys) and the other position was in birds. All three of us were admantly protesting that we didn´t want to work with birds so it came down to a hat draw - thankful I wasn´t picked for the bird position but the girl who was wasn´t happy in the slightest about it, so you can imagine that everything began quite awkwardly.

After that we were issued our room number and house and were sent off to find them in the dark. When we researched the Parque we knew what we were getting ourselves into - we knew that the living conditions weren´t great and that we were going to be working hard but at the same time we really didn´t know what to expect. Our room was bearable, for lack of a better word. Our first reaction was: how will we live in this place for 2 weeks but after a mosquito net, a fresh sheet and plugging the holes in the screens we made it our do-able ¨in the mean-time home¨. We still lived amongst the invading insects, duct-taped doors, odd smells, hay mattresses and electrical taped shower knob but after a couple days we no longer thought about it, that is until Sean was electricuted twice.

My first day of work my body was intensely shocked. We went from frolicking from city to city doing whatever we pleased when ever we pleased to 12 hours of hard labor for 15 days straight. I endured callouses on my hands, pained feet and aching back of a 90 year old but some how none of it mattered and after a couple days I just became a machine, robotically working like I had been doing it for years.

The monkeys were absolutely amazing, interesting, cute, funny, beautiful and every other like adjective (even the ones who bite me).

Every day they would do something so clever and so human like that I would be beside myself and enthralled with curiousity and eager just to sit there to watch and play with them for hours on end. Most of the time I loved watching them take on the average things like a bucket of water, a scrub brush or the noises that two rocks made banging together.

It was hilarious how much they loved empty plastic water bottles and learning how to screw and unscrew the tops on and off or climbing into my shirt and poking their heads out the other end.

It was easy to forget about time there and the hard work or long hours spent. And with every passing day they got to know me and trust me a bit more and every day was more rewarding than the last and by the end neither Sean or I were ready to say goodbye.

And saying goodbye was really hard to do. We had worked so hard for their trust and love and in so many ways our time was not up there. But I must admit that I know how incrediably lucky we were to have such a rare and hands on experience there being in this park. And the park itself had so much to offer from the occasional bear and sloth sighting, to monkeys swinging and cooing above you in the trees at every given moment, to baby ocelots wandering about the grass and jungle trails at your finger tips.

But I know you all (well those who know about it) are dying to hear the story of the monkey that pierced a hole through my ear... :-) The monkey´s name is William and he is notorious for biting people and leaving them with a memorable scar from Parque Machia (mostly girls since monkeys have this weird connection with males). William first bite me on my hand my first day, drawing first blood and giving him a taste of me. He left what I think will be a temporary scar on my hand but an obvious image of teeth. I did nothing to provoke this, he just merely decided that he didn´t like the look of my face and the next day decided to jump on my head, clawing at my face (yes he left another temporary scar on my left cheek) and attacking the closest thing to his face, my poor ear. He sunk his incisors so deep into the top cartilage of my ear that his teeth went in on the front side and came out through the back. I pulled him off of me which (I think) ultimately made it worse because he drug his teeth across the top part of my ear (not splitting skin or anything) but making two other little holes near it.

I was more startled than I was in pain and luckily it really didn´t hurt all that much there after. Only when the other curious monkeys would climb on my head and tear off the bandage and pick at it did the pain really set in. Needless to say, I stayed away from William who constantly lunged at me every chance he got, but he was on a rope and lead so most of the time I could just stay out of his reach. I got over it quick and couldn´t help but fall in love with monkeys despite all the other battle wounds we endured there (which was many little skin breaking bites and scratches) but really they are just people without a language and generally people without a language have to express their dislikes in other ways right?!?!

Sean had a very similar job to mine (cleaning cages, feeding and tending to the monkeys needs) though he worked alone (and I worked with 4 others tending to 80 monkeys).

He was in charge of 27 monkeys, all of which really liked him with the exception of one who constantly tore his shirt, making it shorter and shorter each day until he was almost showing his mid-drift (it was pretty hilarious) and gave him his deepest wound on his shoulder. I think his favorite monkey was a monkey named Monkey who groomed him everyday from head to toe, cleaning his finger nails and picking god knows what out of his hair.

At times Sean would call out to me (our departments were next to each other) and tell that Monkey was doing his laundry and so I would look over and see Monkey picking all the bits off of Seans shirt and searching his pants pockets. Everyone was amazed at how much this monkey loved Sean because supposively he is an impossible monkey for all the long timers who have the scars and stitches to prove it. So when we left you can imagine how much the Vets in the clinic were really sad to see him go.

We worked amongst 30-40 of the coolest people who were traveling and living just like us. There was a cafe at the edge of the park run by the sweetest family who made us breakfast, lunch and snacks and where all the volunteers congregated at breakfast and lunch to tell stories and share a laugh about their days.

Instantly we became part of this family and a member of the community. All the volunteers lived in three hostels not far from each other and at night we would all cross the scary bridge where large logging and petrolum trucks flew past to have dinner in the small town. Days before our departure we learned that an anconda lived in our house, two rooms over from us... So we poked our heads into the tiny hole made in the door and saw the largest anconda sleeping in a bucket of water pretty much next door to where we had been sleeping for the past two weeks. Apparently the anconda had been donated to the park but the park had no where to put him so in the time being they put him in room one until they could find a better suiting spot for him.

Now we are in the beautiful town of Sucre in the South of Bolivia where we are collecting ourselves, doing laundry and nursing our healing insect and monkey bites. We had a lounging day yesterday of sleep and movies while today we will tour the historic town where buildings and art have been standing since the 1600´s. From here we will head to Unuyi, the Salt Flats of Bolivia and then we are off to Argentina! So until then... Ciao! Lyndsay and Sean