Some Work Results and Horse Riding, but first......

Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur........I miss Big Bang Theory, among many other things.

Yeah this is Lupe. I don't think I've posted a picture of her yet. She sleeps on my UDXC bookbag pretty much all day every day.

This is really disgusting water. I never ever want to know what is actually in here, but it probably doesn't take much imagination to guess pretty accurately what is.

You pour it in one of these......

.....using a janky funnel you made by cutting up a water bottle and putting a little hole in one of the little bumps on the bottom.....

......then much less disgusting looking water comes out of the bottom and is collected here....

....so that it looks like this.....

....and this....

....but it's still a far cry from clean tap water (on the left). 

Disclaimer: these filters are small scale and don't treat the water nearly as much as is needed. They just take care of most of the turbidity. If you smell this water, you'll know pretty easily that you shouldn't drink it. It still needs some activated carbon treatment, which I'm working on, and some disinfection.

Horseback riding!!

This is the city from wayyyyy up on a mountain.

I don't know why this picture had to rotate itself, but that's the Devil's Molar peak, which I believe I posted a picture of a long time ago as seen from way down in Mallasilla.

We think this is Mallasa, the place beyond Mallasilla.

The path we took on the mountain

This is Missi. She's crazy and competitive and like to go fast. She made things a bit scary at times, but she also made the experience a lot of fun.

And here's some more pictures of the path we took through the mountains. 

These pictures are all actually 2 weeks old. We rode horses on June 23rd and the work pictures are earlier than that. Since then I've made 4 more filters to compare retention time and treatment when using different amounts of filter sand. Right now I'm trying to use this oven we have in the workshop to activate some carbon to further treat the water with. We've been doing things around La Paz and I've been trying to get my report on the sand filters written. This is almost certainly going to be my last blog post unless I decide to write one more when I get home that summarizes the whole trip. My flight home leaves super early Wednesday morning. I hope you enjoyed reading and seeing all the pictures. I guess I'll see you soon.