First Impressions of Medellín, Colombia

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BOLIVIA

I'm in Brazil! In Bonito, which has not been so bonito because it has been raining through out our whole stay here but finally, I have gotten the chance to upload some photos that I took during my trip in Bolivia!

After four days in Bolivia, we embarked on this four day 4x4 adventure through the south of Bolivia (the first day of it was through the Salt flats pictured below) and it was the most WILD car ride of my life. As I mentioned in an earlier post- Bolivia does not have paved roads, all in all, I traveled on a paved road for a total of about twenty minutes through out my whole trip in Bolivia. Instead, dirt roads covered in crevaces and unimaginably deep holes weave through Bolivia. I just realized its seven and not six and I have to be on a night bus to Iguassu in ten minutes! I hope everyone is doing well and miss you all terribly! This is sunrise at 4am through Bolivia on one of the 4x4 road trip days!

The most beautiful place I have ever been to in South America (other than parts of the Inca Trail, I just can't decide) is a place in Bolivia that to me, reminds me of what heaven must look like. This place is the Salt flat region of Bolivia, which is made up of sprawling miles of pure white salt as far as the eye can see. January, when I was in Bolivia, is one of the months during Bolivia's rainy season which is a MAGICAL time in the salt flats because two or three inches of rain lie on the perfectly white surface so that an illusion of perfectly reflected sky is created (see picture below). I couldn't attempt to do justice to the experience of seeing this heaven on earth through words or photos but I can say that nothing I have ever seen compared..

This is a photo I took as we were driving for three hours (a car ride that not once anyone asked 'when are we going to get there?'), you can see the salt floor through the shawdow of the cloud and in the distance the perfect reflection of the sky.

This is our 4x4 driving through the flats, it seemed as if we were floating.

In a section of the salt flats that was not flooded with rain, we were playing around with illusion photos for about an hour. This is Alex in front from England and Adel on the other side from Sydney, Australia (she's back in Buenos Aires now and I miss her!).

That night we stayed at a hostel made entirely of salt.. the beds, the tables, the chairs, the walls, it was insane. (And we had a surprise birthday party for James' who's 24th birthday it was!!)

After a ten hour (ROUGH AND RUGGED- I had to run out of the car at one point because I was in the front seat when the engine started smoking. The driver had stuffed grass around the engine to keep the salt out it as we drove through the salt flats and a flame caught, I didn't know the word chance or explosion in Spanish but I understood the sign language well enough to get the hell out) car ride through dirt ditches and roads of sand we made a detour to see the Red Lake which is a much deeper color than this photo resolution shows- the water was a Coca-Cola-can red and the lake was absolutely enormous. I'm smiling in this photo but I was actually completely out of breath after having run/rolled down this STEEP hill with John and then having had to run back up it to get to the car before we left this lake.

Although mostly covered by ice, this is the Green Lake that we saw the next day, at the tip of the most southern part of Bolivia (and my friends and I trying to do something else other than stand and smile).

The word 'diverse' describes Bolivia perfectly. I found diversity in their language, which was perfectly clear to understand in La Paz, the unofficial capital, but hardly decipherable outside the major cities where primarily Spanish serves as a second language and is spoken with a scratchy and thick accent. Another diverse aspect is the landscape. By driving through what seemed like the entire country but was only half of it, I saw landscapes that looked like the moon, the desert, a snowcovered valley, a never ending abyss of salt, fields of flowers and crops, high mountains, rivers, the different landscapes never seemed to end.. the cities themselves were quite diverse, Sucre was a beautiful white city with cleanliness and plazas while every other city (this picture I took in Potosi) had streets lined with garbage and homeless people..

While walking through Potosi, I passed this and took a picture to show how people are living in the very center of the city. I was surprised to find that in one of the main cities of Bolivia, there was this much undevelopment two blocks from the main square, I was expecting to find it ten blocks away but I imagine it is even worse there.

There are some things I have yet to figure out in Bolivia- scratch that- many things. For one, on my morning walk exploring Potosi, I passed these four women sitting in the middle of the street knitting. Another is the valor purple track suit our tour guide wore every day. More importantly though, I found Bolivia to be very, very unorganized, and for the most part, rather filthy.

Bolivia is a great place to travel if you are on a budget because the exchange rate (currently) is one dollar to seven bolivianos, so divide every price by seven. Furthermore, everything can be negotiated down in terms of prices.. everything, anywhere. For lunch in Potosi, I wandered off by myself and went to one of the nicest french/bolivian cuisine restaurants in the city that was recommended in the Lonely Planet Bolivia and this plate was.. $4.75, with my tomato soup to start with, two waters and the tip, the meal was less than $10. Unbelievable, right?? Now I'm in Brazil where you can barely find a soup for less than ten dollars!

Feb 4, 2011
I have never been on a quad before but in all honesty, I don´t really have any fears of anything that I have not tried before. Fear of quading hadn´t even crossed my mind when I heard that it was an option for the next day because all I had heard before was that it is loads of fun. In fact, when a tour guide came to our hotel and was telling us different things we could do; rock climbing, visit dinosaur footprints, go mountain biking, etc. I coughed and yelled quading to try to sway some of my friends to go with me. I would like to think that I had no way of knowing what was coming but I guess I should have thought back to the four day 4x4 Uyuni Salt Flats crossing we had just done and the conditions of the roads.. roads? No, I´ve been on one paved road in Bolivia and it was for twenty minutes. Roads here are dirt paths that are filled with massive bumps and holes as if every meter you had to slow down for a speedbump, but since there are so many, there is no slowing down (people have jumped so high from their bus seats while the driver hit one of these ¨speedbumps¨ at such a high speed that they hit their head on the ceiling, that was two feet higher, so suddenly that tears started coming).

Have to run to a night train to brazil now, (goodbye BOLIVIA!) but will continue what happened once I have internet again in a few days.. includes flipping, tears and a little blood, not on my end but my friend´s.. miss you all! Xo alexa


Feb 2, 2011
I am running as fast as I can towards a moving bus. The problem is, I should be on that bus instead of running after it. The thought of being left in Potosi, Bolivia, instead of sitting comfortably on that three hour bus to Sucre, is probably the cause for my terror that I can see reflected on the faces of the local women around me. Moments before, they idled in traditional skirts by their doorways but suddenly they are breaking into a sprint only meters ahead, flailing their arms in hopes of catching the attention of the bus driver as this vehicle rides on forward down the narrow street steeped on both sides with garbage and litter, something I´ve found to expect of every Bolivian city. Running with the weight of a four year old child on my back (the backpack that I have been traveling with for the past four weeks) through a Bolivian city alongside women selling homebaked cakes and electric converters on the street, I am wondering what the hell I am going to do if I get left. I am traveling with 16 people.. on a three week trip through Bolivia to Brazil. I´ve been with them since the 27th of January where I met up with them in La Paz, the unofficial capital of Bolivia. For the most part, they are a year older or younger than twenty-two and from Australia or England, with the exception of a couple from Canada. Whats complicated is that each of them are on that bus.

After exploring the city of Potosi on my own all morning, I met up with the group at 2pm back at the hotel to catch our two thirty bus. When our not-so-fearless-but-attempts-to-look-it-everyday-in-his-purple-valore-track-suit-and-Brooklyn-hat leader said the bus was pulling up soon, a line quickly formed for the bathroom. On the first bus from La Paz to Uyuni days before, I learned my lesson about Bolivian buses the hard way.. after downing two liters of wáter due to the altitude that we were climbing, I desperately needed to pee. I waited but finally tried to nudge my neighbor John awake, who I had just met that morning and who was sitting in the aisle seat. No success, so I tried to go over him, a bit worried he would wake up at the moment it would seem I was straddling him to get to the aisle, I risked it and was lucky, but completely unprepared for what I was about to walk into. The bathroom, although I would prefer not use that word to describe what this unfathamble place was, was a hole clogged with a sweater and diarreah, toilet seat glued to the wall. A watergun sat in the ¨sink¨ under a dirty backpack and socks. I had to grasp both sides of the wall to make sure I didnt fall in, what I can only imagine would be one of the worst moments of anyone´s life. Which brings me back to today and why I waited, last on line, to use the bathroom at the hotel before getting on the bus. Sadly, once out, I picked up my bag from the luggage storage and walked out to find the bus sitting a block away. I was walking towards it when its doors locked and black smoke erupted from its pipes as it drove away. Running as fast as I could, I tried to wave it down but there were no windows in the back to see any of my desperate attempts. Luckily, one of the local women who had recognized my distress caught the attention of the bus driver who slammed to a halt and opened the doors. When our tour leader saw it was me running up and we had not stopped because of local women trying to sell juices and sweets to us on the bus, his mouth dropped in horror and embarressment. I got on and stretched out for the ride but my heart was still beating so fast for at least ten minutes afterwards at how close I had been to being stuck in Potosi.

What I've been up to..

Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires

Hello, world. Sorry I have been out of touch.. Since my last blog post, I went through the stressful two-week-without-sleep-period of finals at my University- here in Cordoba, the final exam for each class accounts for 45% of your final grade so there is an incredible amount of weight on how you do, ate alpaca in Peru- very common there, probably because they're as tasty as they are cute.. have tried my first official attempt with Salsa lessons, sat on top of an Inca temple at 12am surrounded by darkness, mountains, and the most beautiful stars I have seen yet and then proceeded to wake at 3:30am to run through the mountains in the dark to arrive at the Sun temple to see the most incredible view of Macchu Pichu by 6:30am.

Alpaca!

Some weeks before that, I went to Buenos Aires with my friend Kathryn. Her stepmom invited her and I for the weekend to go to the horse races that were being held that weekend and I saw the city for the first time since I went two years ago over winter break with my parents. INCREDIBLE weekend, four days that I would not change one moment of. We visited Plaza de Mayo, Puente de la Mujer, and had the best time at the horse races and enjoyed all of the delicious little finger foods that came with it.

Tango show in Buenos Aires

Standing at the horse races in Buenos Aires

Since I post the exciting things that I have come across in Argentina, I should probably post the not so fun experiences as well.. Several of my friends here, Argentine and American, have been robbed, although very infrequent, like any big city, things will happen and you have to be careful. Unfortunately, the same passed for me one night when I was walking home. I was with my friend Michael and walking past a park that I've probably only passed through twice in my time here, and five very young guys ran away with our cash and cell phones. The experience was difficult but at the moment, I didn't feel so anxious because Michael was so calm about it since similar things had passed with his friends where nothing bad had happened.

Soon I was too busy studying for my final exams to fret over the experience but I definitely will not forget it. My friends, Silvia and Sarah and I went to a small German town called La Cumbrecita for the day and trekked through beautiful lush forests to arrive at waterfalls and the clear, freezing cold, river. We loved it and spontaneously decided to stay the night. Some how, we each made it with the money we had brought for just the day to pay for the hostel and a delicious delicious steak grilled like a lomo with rosemary and some magical pepper. Although we had nothing to change into because staying the night was unplanned, we went to two boliches and found that Belgrano (the town next to La Cumbrecita where we stayed the night) has many preteens out late dancing, and we retired early to enjoy the city some more the next day before coming back to Cordoba and memorizing Spanish subjunctive tenses- yes!

Waterfall in La Cumbrecita

Penguin walk

I hurt my feet from walking around Cordoba in leather sandals the past few weeks instead of shoes.. The sidewalks all around the city are made up of different types of flooring that are patched together and are either slightly elevated or slightly downward so finally last night I was in a lot of pain when I was putting pressure on them and I went to the doctor here.. its going to take two weeks to get completely better mas o menos but for now I'm walking like a penguin around the city, so much so that Benjamin told me we didn't need to go to Puerto Madryn to see penguins because we had one walking around in our house.. haha hopefully getting better soon!

BTW.. planning my trip to Brazil and I can't wait.. I finish my exams at the end of november and then will be traveling through the end of december through Brazil with my friend. December-the end of February are summer months here so I have until March to travel through Patagonia (for three weeks in January) and then stay in Montevideo, Uruguay for a month before coming back for my second semester in Cordoba from March through July!

Zurich Orchestra

Saw the Zurich Youth Orchestra with Benjamin at the theatre next to Patio Olmos and it was such an impressive performance.. The conductor conducted the entire performance without any music in front of him and the theatre is something in itself, so beautiful inside. I want to go to another performance there before Benjamin leaves for France at the end of november and I go to Brazil..

Horseback riding with Marcelo

Marcelo con Joaquin looking at the sheep

My friend Marcelo invited me to go horseback riding at his family's place this past sunday.. I laughed and said I didn't know how to ride a horse and he replied that it would be easy.. I was so nervous but it was such a great day. I LOVED it. Him and his brother picked me up in the center and we drove about an hour and a half to el campo where his other brother lives with his family. Marcelo and his brother showed me how to ride Manela, Marcelo's beauutifull horse and they rode on two others with me past all the surrounding fields and fabricas, we went for about two hours and then came back and played with his nephew, Joaquin, who is soo cute.. Then Marcelo and I took a bus back to Cordoba. When we were horseback riding, there was no problem riding through other family's field's which was strange for me, but really nice to see how they're so open with their neighbors. We also saw some Argentines training dogs to chase rabbits and they go so fast I couldn't believe it. At one point we stopped to look for some white horses that they wanted to check up on and we came upon this vast field of purple flowers.. it was so beautiful, I think it might be one of my favorite places in Cordoba.

NY

Kenny, Francis, Tina (main actors) and me

In the beginning of the year I finished a short film called, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? It is a student production that I wrote with Grant Curatola, and directed and edited myself, based on the short story by Joyce Carol Oates. The chilling work of Oates was based on a true story of a serial murderer in Tuscon, Arizona. It is a cautionary tale that tells of a teenager who when acting provocatively attracts the attention of a sociopath who then proceeds to psychologically terrorize his victim.

Trailer: http://vimeo.com/8555442

I've submitted the film to several film festivals and am waiting to see where the film will be accepted. In April it won first place at the Guild Hall Student Film Festival which granted it entry to the Hamptons International Film Festival, which was AMAZING. The film had two screenings over the weekend of October 10th and I flew back to New York for a week to go to the festival and see my family. It was an incredible week. The film was chosen as one of the seven "picks" by The Independent to see at the festival, the only short on the list, and listed alongside recognized directors and actors. All of my friends came to the screening which meant everything to me.. And after the second screening, the manager of James Franco called Kenny (lead actor and producer) to request a copy of the film for James.. Could not have dreamed of a better week at home.

When I came back to Cordoba, Kathryn was waiting at the airport to pick me up, so sweet.. and it was really nice to be home. Although the cab driver took us the long way back to Cordoba, now I'll know to state which way I'd like to be taken in the future.