Thursday, November 22, 2007

Hostel First Bolivian Night

This is where we stayed the first night in Bolivia. Yes, all that you've seen is just one day's worth. Amazing huh? At this point everyone but me was suffering from a headache, including Sita. Everyone thought it was the altitude, but I suggested one reason I may not be suffering from a headache was because I had my Turban on which served to cover my ears from the ever-present and sometimes violent winds.
This sun room was so much warmer than the room in which we'd eventually sleep. You can see the entrance to that room behind Sita. People were worried that it'd be too cold, but I said that this sun room would serve to heat the adobe walls of the sleeping quarter and the thermal mass present in these walls would act as a battery which store the heat that they receive in the day and radiate it back out at night. I said all of this to reassure everybody, but having never stayed in a passive solar adobe home with no additional heat source this was all just in theory. Sure enough it turned out to be true, when we awoke in the morning our bedroom was significantly warmer than the leaky sun room, which was so cold that frost had formed in some places.
The man in the left was one of the other three passengers in the jeep with us, he was from Canada. I couldn't tell if the adobe structures behind him, were past ruins or future additions.
I spotted this bunny hanging out under our Land Cruiser. I had to take a picture because I thought it was cute but I also questioned it's origins and survival. I think it was introduced by the humans and lived off the human's waste which seemed to be strewn about. I don't think it was domesticated or anyone's pet as it seemed to be very scared of humans.
This is the whole settlement. Some people stay here on a permanent basis solely to serve the tourists as there really is no other reason why people would settle here or any way people could survive here. All of their supplies are trucked in. It's not just single people temporarily filling a job here there were full family's as evidenced by a whole pack of kids that ran around every so often. The kids were so filthy and some had tattered clothes but they seemed to be having the best time out there. I felt bad that they would probably never receive formal educations though.

Our Room. Notice the beds are concrete blocks with just some futon mattresses on top. I didn't worry about the comfort level, but I did have to suppress my thoughts which had me questioning how often the sheets were cleaned and how often they even had the resources, water or otherwise, to clean them.

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