Closing Time in Bolivia

All good things must end. One must always return to the source. So it goes. Wipe your nose.

I am back in Santa Cruz for a limited engagement, having flown in from Sucre on Saturday. I leave Bolivia on Thursday for Buenos Aires, Argentina. I will be, for the first time on this trip, entering a country so far unknown to me.

Where have I been? Wait, shoot, right: where have I been? I went from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba to Sucre to Potosí to Sucre to La Paz and there I reunited with Trina, out and about on her own southern adventure. We kicked around La Paz. We rode mountain bikes down the world's most dangerous road, known affectionately as "La Carretera de Muerte." We visited Lake Titicaca and La Isla del Sol and La Paz again and Uyuni and its surrounding wonders and then to Potosí and Sucre. And I am here and she is there and soon we will be elsewhere.

I love Bolivia. Am I surprised? No... well, maybe a tiny bit. I would not say that Bolivia has a particularly strong reputation with people from the United States. Before Christmas, I was in Elliott Bay Book Company at the checkout and I said something in passing, to my companion or the cashier, regarding my upcoming time in Bolivia. Another customer, head on a swivel, turned abruptly to me and demanded if I was scared for my life to go there. No, no I was not: Bolivia is not all cocaleros and Scarface, actually.

Still, what did I expect? I truly had no idea—I had not been here in twenty years. I was caught a bit off-guard by the incredible warmth and hospitality of my family here. And I was not prepared, at all, for the wealth and diversity of the land and culture. Dude: this country has salteñas and chorizo and it has rustic little islands that would be just as well at home in the Mediterranean, you know, if not for all the llamas and 12,000 feet of elevation. What a wonderful thing, to have passed two months and discovered that I actually love Bolivia, my father's homeland.

I am not sure that I could ever live here permanently but I hold no uncertainty that I will be sad to leave, and that I will return. Bolivia visit: success!

Trust I will be featuring many more specific stories from Bolivia as I work through my backlog of photographs.