Cochabamba

I flew to Cochabamba rather than taking a bus. The overnight bus was $15 and the flight was $34. Plane please!

As soon as I checked into the hostel, I met my two new friend crushes Alex and Louise from London. We ate veggie food and imitated each other's accents and drank subpar Bolivian wine while smoking indoors. They told me their mom  quit her job and now travels in a van. Our first night we heard beautiful jazz, and Louise asked if we could follow the music. It was lady romance at its finest. I wanted to be their sister.

Louise is a photographer that worked in Chile on a project with an artist she had cold-emailed. She advised more than once never to underestimate the power of putting yourself out there and asking in an email. Alex works in marketing and decided to skip college to work the London Olympics. She has traveled everywhere is hiking Patagonia in two months. They were such qts.

I convinced them to go on a waterfall hike and picnic with me on Bolivian Valentine's Day. At the start of the hike, we saw a teen boy waiting with a card, bouquet of flowers, and a puppy. Hashtag relationship goals. 

We climbed rocks and followed the water until we found a secluded place nestled under the trees to eat our avocado sandwiches and trail mix. Louise forged ahead with our new dog friend that we named Juan Carlos who showed us which way was easier to navigate. We scaled slippery rocks and Louise talked us through the tougher/scarier parts of the hike. We peed in Inca toilets (aka outside) along the way and when we were done we took a collectivo back to the city to watch the soccer game. It was such a lovely day with strangers that quickly became friends. I already miss them so much. 

The next day my special friends were leaving, so I ventured on a solo hike, even though the prior day's fun times was a hard act to follow. I planned to do 20k, but when I got to 3k, a man scaled the hill quickly to come talk to me, which made me nervous. He asked in Spanish why I was hiking alone, and I lied and told him my boyfriend was learning Spanish in the city. He told me it was dangerous to hike because the youth do drugs at the 10k point of the hike. I ain't scared of no drugs! But then he said a word in Spanish I didn't understand, so he acted it out. He told me that if I went up, the boys would grab me (bear hug motion) and rape me (legs full spread and humping/thrusting motion with hands). He was inexplicably flexible, which made me laugh. "Do you want to get raped?" he asked. Obvi not dude. The best part of it all was that I realllllly wanted to do the hike so we ended up talking for ten or so minutes while I debated if I should continue. I said, "So you're telling me I should go back?" And he was like obvi girl! I hiked the 3k back rushed and worried. I took two rocks and pretended to use them as weights but really they were for murder. It was a moment where I hated that I was traveling alone.

I spent my final day avoiding a weird old retired man named Andrew who never married or had children, even though he wanted to. He tried to hold my hand and told me he was in love with every young girl he met at the hostel. I read an entire book on the hammock before my overnight bus and missed my friends. 

Sucre

"I was feeling very calm, and I was more aware of the importance of the Road to Santiago in my life and the question of what I was going to do after the pilgrimage had ended. The area we walked through was like a desert, the meals were seldom very good, and the long days on the Road were exhausting, but I was living my dream." - Paulo Coehlo 

A friend asked what I do all day, now that I have been traveling for six weeks. I told him I read, hike, yoga, eat, chat, and do whatever else my heart desires. There are glorious days.  But as I surpass my longest solo travel experience within these next few days, there are parts of the journey that aren't that fun. I'm homesick for routine, my culture, my fitness, my kitchen. You know when you book a plane ticket and check 200 times that your personal info and the dates are correct before pressing submit? Imagine that level of anxiety, but every three days. Decision paralysis is real. Even on the most trying day of travel though, I'm still living my dream. Shout out to my new job for giving me this time to travel. Tysm!

My four days in Sucre included all of the activities mentioned above - reading, hiking, meditating, eating, chatting. When Leonie and I arrived, there was a local festival happening, so we grabbed street food and watched the parade. The hostel book exchange had a book on my reading list so I borrowed that and read around town in between my visits to the market, the chocolate shop, the vegetarian restaurant, and the ice cream parlor.

I met two amazing German twins (my fav!) named Amelie and Franzie. I also met a cool American named Hannah. We explored and went to the market multiple times per day and laughed and ate too much and then ate ice cream after we ate too much. I liked the Germans so much I decided to join them in La Paz for the few days they are there. I felt serious cool girl travel vibes from Sucre. 

Leaving Sucre meant saying goodbye to Leonie, and afterwards I had a serious friend hangover. She is a wonderful human. I love that she has hippie vibes but is also real; she has undertones of oh hell no but is simultaneously warm. Her vulnerability drew you closer and her confidence was steady but disarming. I learned so much from her. She doubled my reading list, my podcast subscriptions, and my recipe list. Like Gil and John colored my Camino and Verena and Mack shaped Peru, my bar trip will largely be defined by the weeks I spent with Leonie. 

On a less serious note - I went to a DINO PARK. It was the dorkiest and most Brooke Murphy thing I have done in a long time. I took a DINO BUS from the main square and then did a DINO TOUR through a DINO MUSEUM where my tour guide demonstrated with DINO FIGURINES and watched a bad CGI/claymation DINO INFO movie and then walked through life size DINO REPLICAS. Cal Orck'o has the largest track of dino prints in the world. 

Uyuni

With my Bolivian visa in hand, Leonie and I took an overnight bus to the Argentianian and Bolivian border towns La Quiaca and Villazon, respectively. The immigration officers put my passport on the table, without looking at it, while we waited in the cold and I crossed my fingers and held my breath. Finally, the officers stamped the passport, indicating that we had left Argentina but with no indication that we entered Bolivia. We asked six different officers for the entry stamp but were unsuccessful. 

We took a cab to Tupiza, where we acclimated to the altitude for two days and ate at the same restaurant four times. When we told the hostel owner about our immigration worries, she suspected that the officers wanted us to pay a fine for not entering the country legally. We were bummed because we did everything right. We asked for the stamp and the green piece of paper and everything! 

We left for our four day, three night Uyuni Salt Flat Tour with our new familia - Leo Ventura the driver, Julia the cook, and two car mates Cassandre and Patrice from Switzerland. Another law student! I can't escape. 

The tour built each day, and we visited inca ruins, rock formations, the red, black, and white lakes, and saw flamingoes and llamas. I got to swim in my first hot spring! We stayed in basic accommodations (aka cold) and spent a night in a hotel made of salt. 

The salt hotel overlooked the edge of the flats. During tea time, I sat outside and watched one of the most beautiful sunsets of my life (I cried). I struggled to rank it in my top three, amongst the the sunset in Nafplio (I cried) and the sunset at the end of the Camino (I cried). I marveled at the differences between the three emotional outbursts. I cried in Nafplio because I was in love in a deeply and consuming way. I cried in Finisterra because I was overwhelmed by the incredible feat I had accomplished - happy that I did it alone but excited that someday I'd be sharing the sunset with someone else. I cried in Uyuni because I was content with every difficult decision I've ever made, because each difficult decision led me to exactly where I needed to be. With most sunsets I feel a tinge of sadness, thinking about what I haven't accomplished and what still needs to get done. But with this sunset I felt at peace with where I am and hopeful about what's to come. I was thankful I had the resources, friends, strength, courage, and faith to make those difficult decisions, which helped create this current version of me.

On the final day of the tour, we hiked before sunrise and took what Leo called "fotos locos" at the salt flats. We stayed the night in Uyuni and felt the glory of a hot shower and of wifi.

We learned at the Uyuni immigration office that the border crossing process changed its stamp policy three weeks ago, hence our crossing confusion. Bless! The guy even let me take a pic of the memo that was issued for when I exit Bolivia (such a wannabe lawyer move).