Where to begin...

I guess I will start with the few days before we left. After we got back from the language school we were only in Montero for a few days. We worked for one day in which we went to the Montero jail (which hosts men and women). We saw many patients that had various illnesses. The nurses explain to us that many inmates were sick because of the very tight living quarters. This was very interesting and very different from a jail in the States. For one it seemed that the inmates were free to roam about the "yard" and do basically what ever they pleased. They had little old ladies come in and sell candy and empanadas which brings me to another question. Where did the inmates get money from? This was a very good experience in which we learned about many differences between our country and Bolivia.

We departed from Montero at 7:45 Sunday night and eventually arrived in Cafayate at 11:30 pm Monday night. We were on a bus for over twenty hours but were actually not as bad as it sounds. We were starving when we got off the bus but that was no problem because Argentineans don’t usually start dinner until 10:30 or 11 anyways. We finished dinner up about two AM. We went to out hostel and met some of the other people that were staying there most of whom were from Buenos Aires.

The next day we went hiked to a waterfall (cascada) with some of the people from our hostel. We were led by two Argentineans Jose and Andres who claimed they knew where it was and we did not need a guide (we regretted this decision). We creek hopped up about a mile until one of our "guides" (José) disappeared, his friend was not at all worried and we continued on without him. At one point a group (that had a guide) was clearly on a trail about 50 feet up as we creek hopped. The guide from the other group stopped his group and then proceeded to comment and laugh at our expense. We did make it and it was quite incredible.

Finally after dinner about 11:00 Kt and Daniel arrived!!! We were all very excited to see them. The next day we took our ATVs around the town we went through some forests and roads but the coolest were the sand dunes. We started off the trip a little iffy about how safe it was since the guide asked us if we wanted helmets or would prefer to go without them. Obviously we took them, however; we never ended up needing them. We had a very fun and safe day.

The next day we saw lots of cool rock formations and spent the day walking around. We left the next day for Salta in which we would meet a friend from the language school (Camille). We arrived at the hostel about midnight but once again food was not a problem. I have decided hostels are the way to travel they are so much fun, cheap, and you always get to meet lots of interesting people. They are great as long as you don’t mind sharing a room with seven or eight other people. We went to a very cool museum with a preserved body of a child who had been sacrificed by the Incas. The body was preserved so well because of the extremely cool climate where they left these sacrifices (kids) to die. It was on a peak of over 6000 meters.

We have been back in Montero for a week and have been working very hard. We have been doing home visits with the nurses. We have been giving shots to kids and dogs. An odd combination but nonetheless very important. I got to give a shot to a puppy and instead of pinching his skin and pushing the needle through I managed to push it all the way through and have the needle come out the other side. The nurses and owners of the dog thought this was hilarious I was quite embarrassed however. It goes without saying that they did not let me do anymore shots that day.

Yesterday we went to the all girls orphanage which was awesome and a whole lot of fun. Some of the workers at the clinics were nice enough to let me join their soccer team and today was our first game. We lost 4-2 unfortunately but it was also a lot of fun. Monday through Wednesday we are going to be doing construction on one of the clinics. I am going to link a site where you can view all of our pictures so hopefully they will finish uploading today and I can get that worked out.