Bolivia

Alright, alright, here are finally the pictures from my trip. Its a lot of pictures and might be boring for some but if you are interested, heres a full recap!



Upon arriving (at 5:30 am and at 32 degrees!) Elsa met me at the airport, we checked in to our hotel and headed to a coffee shop and I had my first cup of coca tea. It was so good! It supposedly helps with altitude sickness. Coca is grown in Bolivia and is illegal in the US. I don't know all the history and details about it but it was used to flavor coca cola and is used to make cocaine. It makes a good tea though and thats all I cared about!


Some pictures of our time in La Paz. We spent a day and a half there exploring the markets, the public garden and just walking around to see the different public squares and interesting buildings.

Can you tell we are having fun? This slide was huge and so much fun!

A view of the mountains from the public park. La Paz was unlike any city I had seen before. It is basically built in a valley surrounded by mountains but everything is built all the way up the sides of the valley. Picture a bowl completely covered with houses all the way up. So interesting. It was hard to really get a good picture though, at least with my camera.

Feeding some pigeons. Notice the one that landed on my arm! Another one joined him too. It was really wierd and sort of scary to have them so close!

An old theater.

The next day, we headed on a bus to Copacabana, a small town on Lake Titicaca. On our way, we needed to cross a body of water with no bridge so we had to get off the bus and take a small boat while our bus was put on a barge and met us on the other side. An interesting process.

The barges

The bus just drove up on here, very high tech.

Our lovely hosts on the boat.

Several stands in town. Its amazing to me how they set up all these stands with the same exact stuff right next to each other. How do you decide who to buy from and how do they make any money?

Back on the bus, you can see the boats going back and forth.

A blury view of the mounatins.

A bunch of garbage on the way to our hotel. We thought it was sort of ironic that in a culture that historically has had so much respect for the environment, they would have so much garbage around. We took a hike up a mountain nearby (I forgot my camera, so I have no pictures from it) and that path was also just full of garbage all the way up.

Well, all the garbage is good for these guys :)

The view from the balcony at our hotel's common room.

The church on the main square in Copacabana. We happened to be there when the city was having a large religious festival so there were people who had come from all over Bolivia and Peru to celebrate. The most interesting part was the car blessings. Cars were lined up all the way down the street in front of the church waiting to have them blessed by the priest. They had decorated them with all sorts of colorful streamer-type decorations, butterflies and flowers. Then the priest would come and splash holy water all over the car, inside and even under the hood and then they would light fireworks in front of the car. Someone had told us that they would probably end up blessing 1000 cars by the time the festival was over. Later we saw cars parked by the lake all decorated and they were spraying them with beer and champagne. Don't think I'll be doing that any time soon :)

Starting the hike, then my camera battery died. I was really bummed because there were so many cool things to take pictures of. People would buy miniature versions of whatever they wanted to be blessed with (like if they wanted to open a restaurant, they would buy a miniature restaurant) and pray with it at a shrine of an important saint or make their own little display and then have a priest bless it and of course, spray beer on it.

The next day, we took a boat to Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) where the Incan's believe their culture first originated.

On our hike on the island, I liked this stick roof.

A Bolivian preschool!

The town on the north side of the island.

Another school.

A stone wall.

A back yard.

If you look on the bottom of this picture, you can see a house and yard. What a location, right on your own private beach!

Eric, Elsa and Matt with our guide, Jaime.

Our destination was these amazing stone structures and houses that were used to train priests in the Incan culture. People would take pilgrimages to get here and it was considered very holy ground. I can see why. For me, this was one of my favorite moments in Bolivia. The structures they had built were so gorgeous and the principles by which they lived their lives were beautiful as well. First their respect for the land but also their respect for each other and their community. Two important sayings they had were "half for me and half for you" and "what is mine today is yours tomorrow." Although they may not have worshiped the same God that we do, we can really learn so much from those simple truths.
This spot was my favorite. It was called the sunset gate because when the sun sets, it can be seen through that little window.

On the south side of the island, we climbed these stairs to another great spot with a great view of the lake and mountains.

This one's for Jed. You haven't said that in a while!

On the island, they still very much believe in the medicinal powers of herbs. It is especially important to them because there are no doctors on the island. The picures don't really do it justice but this is a large terraced herb garden.

With a llama.

Sunset at our hotel.

And we woke up to snow on the ground!

I was walking down the road towards the lake and noticed this pig in the grass. It was tied up but I had no idea that the rope was so long and it came right up to me. It seemed to really like people!

Next we spent a few days at Matt and Elsa's house in Cochabamba. It was nice to see where they live and also nice to relax a little in the comfort of someone's home. Cochabamba isn't really a big tourist town so it was nice not to have pressure to see all these things. We went to the markets there, visited The Center where Matt and Elsa work, ate good Bolivian food and visited the Christo, which is high on a hill in the middle of town. It is actually a replica of a similar Christo in Rio de Janiero. It was very beautiful and nice to see the city from that viewpoint.

We also got the chance to visit the orphanage from the ministry that Matt and Elsa used to work with. It was fun to meet the parents and kids and see what a great situation is for the kids. We brought some balls for them so we just hung out and played for a while.

Sheep in the playground!

And the next day, I left. It was such a great trip and Bolivia really was a beautiful country. The work that Matt and Elsa are doing is so great and you can tell that they have made such an impact on the kids that they work with and the others who they serve with. God has really blessed Bolivia with their presence there :) It was so nice to have them show us around and it would have definitely been hard for us had we not had their Spanish speaking skills! Thanks so much guys. I can't wait to have you home again!