Ok I finally found wifi and uploaded my pictures to http://photosynth.net/
The problem is that when I uploaded from my iPod I selected "do not share." There's some copywrite stuff and other things I wanted to check out first before sharing the pictures. Sadly, in order to make the pictures public from the website, you have to select each individual picture, load it, then select "share." This is such a painfully slow process that there's just no way I'm doing it. If I get wifi here again, I'll try and remember to get on my iPod and try making the pictures public from there. Otherwise I'll be up until about 1:00 a.m. doing this from my laptop, as it takes a loooonnnngg time to load one of these panoramic pictures using the internet I have here. I did make one of them viewable though if you want to check it out. It's the first one I took, the famous "view behind the house in Mallasilla" picture. I think to find it you just click the link I already provided and search for pictures by KyleDLowry. That should work. If not.......I don't know. Sorry.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Copacabana / Isla del Sol: Day 2
I highly recommend reading day 1 first.
Ok you're done reading about day 1 at Isla del Sol. Day 2 consisted of lots of hiking and paying the occasional toll to the locals along the path to Yumani in the south end of the island. It was a good day.
We woke up to see the sunrise. Luckily this didn't require a hike, just a short walk to the other side of Challapampa.
This is the hostel we stayed at. It was pretty awesome, and somehow very warm in there at night, which was a real change from what we've gotten used to.
I think I took this same picture the day before but who cares. The water wasn't shimmering then.
Here's a view of Challapampa from way up on what we determined was the highest or at least very close to the highest point on the island. We seriously could not leave this place. Any direction you looked you would see just about the most amazing view of your life.
Way off in the back of this picture and to the left is about where we watched the sunset from the day before.
This is the path all the way back to the north end of the island. This is still pretty early in the hike south though. This was at a checkpoint where we had to buy tickets to continue.
Skip ahead 3 hours or so and we're in Copacabana again. While Caroline and Conrad ate dinner by the beach, I decided to climb Cerro Calvario instead. Copacabana is actually a site of pilgrimage due to the Basilica of Our Lady of Copacabana, the big white structure in the middle of the city on the left side of the picture. Because of all the pilgrims visiting the city, they built a site dedicated to the stations of the cross way up on the highest point overlooking the city. I was hungry, but I really wanted to go up there so I skipped dinner. It was worth it.
View of the bay from way up high.
Here's the basilica. I had to zoom in really far so it's a little blurry.
On top of Cerro Calvario.
How could a student at a Marianist university explain not seeing the famous statue of Mary if they found themselves in Copacabana? When I left for Cerro Calvario I had about an hour before I had to meet Caroline and Conrad to catch our bus. I hustled. This is in the courtyard outside of the basilica.
The entrance.
They were pretty big on no picture taking in there. There were people doing more than just touring the place who were praying so I decided to be as little of a disrespectful jerk as possible and just look. I'll try and google image some pictures for you. I didn't have much time either, so I asked a couple tourists where the statue of Mary was and weaved through hallways and up stairs until I found it. Then I had to peace out of there because I still needed to find some snacks to eat on the bus for dinner.
Here's a link to a picture with some info of the statue http://saints.sqpn.com/our-lady-of-copacabana/
More cool pictures I didn't take http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootsintheoven/5849715960/
Speaking of the bus, it broke down just outside Copacabana and we had to wait for another one to pick us up. Also, I got to play with my new panorama picture taking app on my iPod quite a bit on this trip. Pretty much all the best pictures were taken using that, but I still have yet to find a place with wifi where I can upload them to the internet. One day I'll post a link on here to a whole bunch of them.
Copacabana / Isla del Sol: Day 1
Ok so Sunday and Monday we went to Copacabana and Isla del Sol. It was a pretty quick trip. We took a bus from La Paz to Copacabana, then a 2 hour boat ride to the north end of Isla del Sol, or Island of the Sun in English, otherwise known as the most beautiful place I have ever seen. I seriously love this Island and could have easily spent a week there doing nothing but hiking and seeing all the amazing views. On the bus we met a guy from Belgium named Nikki that we actually already met a few nights ago at the Wild Rover Hostel and a German guy named Christian. We all decided to travel together and had a great time. Here's some highlights of the trip in order.
The bus has to stop in this small town on Lake Titicaca where the only way to keep going is to take a boat the short distance to the other side. We all got tickets to be taken across on one boat and our bus to another. We then got back on the bus and finished the drive to Copacabana.
This is one of the many spectacular views from the bus as you near Copacabana.
I have pictures of Copacabana from Sunday. For now we're skipping ahead to Challapampa, just about my favorite little pueblo ever. This is where we stayed on the north end of Isla del Sol. It's much smaller and less touristy than the southern village of Yumani that we walked to on Sunday, which we all liked about this place. We stayed here Monday night in a hostel right on the beach for the equivalent of about $3. I could probably stay in this place for a long time if given the opportunity.
This is the number one example I have of a picture doing the real thing absolutely no justice at all. On Monday we walked about 45 minutes to see the Inca Ruins on the north end of the island and the sunset. This picture was taken pretty early in that walk and it was the first of many places on this island where our jaws just dropped and we had to stop to take it all in.
There were animals everywhere on this walk. Pigs, cows, donkeys, sheep, and some dogs. This picture is taken back at where we were standing when the previous picture was taken.
Did I mention how beautiful this island is?
These are some Inca ruins know as "Laberinto" or "Chincana". It's this cool maze-like structure with all these little passageways leading all over the place and intersecting each other. I really wanted to take this picture because before I left the U.S. I looked up pictures from Isla del Sol on my iPod and I wound up setting one just like this as my background. My goal when I got here was to find the exact same place and take the same picture. I just though that would be cool. Going inside and running around through these ruins is cooler.
More of Laberinto.
You could see a couple really big mountains from Isla del Sol. These are the ones you can see from pretty much anywhere on the north side of the island. They looked sooooo cool when the sun was setting, but my camera couldn't quite capture it because they were so far away.
The sun setting from the western tip of the island that we walked to. The Inca believed that this island was the birthplace of the sun. It's easy to see why when you watch the sun set and rise here.
Taken on the way back after the sun went down. Laberinto is in the very bottom left corner for reference.
When we got back to Challapampa we found a place to get dinner (more delicious fish with quinoa soup), then we played some interesting card games at the hostel for the rest of the night.
Ok now check out day 2 for the sunrise, the highest point on the island that we couldn't force ourselves to leave, and Copacabana.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Project Update, Panoramas, and.......it's a surprise
Ok first, project stuff. So I'm still working on filtration of potable water. There's been a ton of research done and I'm finally starting to try some things in the workshop downstairs. This week I put together my first sand filter using a plastic water bottle and some sand and gravel I found around the yard. I used some horrifyingly dirty water I collected from the river that runs through the canyon behind the house. As it turns out, that water is about a couple thousand times too dirty and turbid for sand filters to handle without getting clogged. So whatever system I come up with, it needs a small settling tank in case the water has too many large particles floating around in it. Since then, I have realized that I need to use material with known sizes if I'm going to make multiple filters with different dimensions and compare results. I'm also going to eventually need to chemical indicators that can tell me how much of whatever nasty stuff is in the water before and after treatment. I need the help of the local university on both of these issues. We're working on it. Working on the projects has been pretty stressful and slow going for all of us so far, and for the same reasons: lack of necessary materials and some communication issues. Hopefully they can be resolved soon, because scooping up gravel from the backyard with my hand and saying "yeah that looks like about the right size" doesn't exactly produce valid results if you're comparing filters that have been assumed to use the same size gravel in the bottom of the filter.
When we were at Salar de Uyuni, some of the guys we were travelling with had this awesome panoramic picture taking app on their iPhones, so I downloaded it the other day and it's pretty sweet. You can actually take a whole bunch of pictures all around you, left, right, up, and down, and if you did an ok job the app will stitch all the images together for you and they look really cool. It's called photosynth. You can share your pictures online and friends and family can look around at them as if they were right where you were standing when you took the pictures. However, this requires wifi, something I don't have here. For now, the best I can provide is a flat, panoramic picture. Here's a few:
Behind the house again.
The road leading out of Mallasilla (this one looks really goofy because I took more than 180 degrees of pictures so it's wrapped around in this U-shape)
and today............
after checking out the festival de Gran Poder, which includes a huge parade that goes on all day and night long with tons of dancers and crazy costumes..........
I went to.......
A WORLD CUP QUALIFYING SOCCER MATCH BETWEEN BOLIVIA AND CHILE!!!!
This is the view from the 4th row seats we got tickets for about 3 hours before kickoff.
They unrolled two enormous Bolivian flags from the upper decks almost all they way down to where we were sitting.
I decided to go up the stairs a few rows and help hold it up anyway.
The game was a lot of fun but Bolivia lost 2-0. They had so many good goal scoring opportunities in the first half, but then Chile scored on a sloppy goal right at the end of the first half's stoppage time. After that happened, the second half consisted of lots of Chilean players wasting time rolling around on the ground pretending to be injured and a Bolivian player getting red carded to pretty much seal the game's result. Chile scored their second goal while half of the Bolivian defenders were complaining to the ref about a handball they saw that didn't get called. Maybe they should have been playing defense instead. Still very exciting though, at least the first half was. It was fun to finally experience a big soccer game in another country. It's like no sporting event you'll see in the states. The fans are seriously organized and they go nuts over just about anything that happens. We learned some of the Bolivian cheers and stuff which was fun too.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Salar de Uyuni: Day 3
So waking up at 5 a.m. in a hostel with toilets that are flushed maybe once or twice a day that otherwise has no running water isn't really the best way to start a day. If it's about -10 or -15 degrees Celsius that doesn't help either. (Aunt Char, I kept the temperature in Celsius so Grandma won't realize how freezing cold it is in this place when the sun isn't up. Don't spill the beans by converting this for her ok. Thank you.) But this really was an awesome day, particularly due to the hot springs at Laguna Colorado. Honestly one of the best feelings I can remember was getting in that hot water while it was still freezing outside. It was like when a hot tub overflows into a pool, but instead of a pool, it's a lake with the sun rising over it that was under consideration for the list of the new 7 natural wonders of the world. (I checked. The voting is over and it didn't make the cut. Bummer I know.) Anyway, it was a pretty awesome place. We started out in the morning with the geyers.
This place reeked of sulfur, but it was pretty cool. There were bubbling pools of whatever kind of nasty liquid it is that gets hot and boils at geysers.
As you can see in the background, the stuff was splashing all over the place.
Laguna Colorado. I could have stayed here all day. This is the natural hot spring in the bottom left corner that overflows into the little streams in the middle and out to the lagoon way off in the back. It's supposed to be red at a certain time of day. I believe it's because of a kind of algae that lives there.
More Laguna Colorado.
This is the stream from the middle of the first picture.
Yeah I took a ton of pictures of this place. I was trying to take one that would do it justice but I guess you just can't.
On the road again.... I like how the clouds shadows are cast on the mountains. This is actually the only cloudy day we had.
Laguna Verde. It looks kinda green here, but under different conditions of sunlight and probably some other stuff, it's really really green. It gets its color from minerals in the water and apparently nothing can live in it.
And finally here's the whole group. From left to right: Conrad, Caroline, Brad, Ellis, Me, and Phil.
We drove through Laguna Colorado on the way back from Laguna Verde, which was good because I couldn't get enough of this place.
Ok so driving through this pueblo, seeing llamas literally all over the place, the hills around it, and this stream that ran through it made me feel like I was in the Bolivian Shire.
The Ringwraiths wouldn't dare cross this torrent.
Can't you just picture hobbits living in the sides of those hills?
"Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It'll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the llamas will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they'll be sowing the summer quinoa in the lower fields... and eating the first of the papayas with cream. Do you remember the taste of papayas?" J.R.R. Tolkien.
Ok I'm done now. I promise.
Alright! more fun rocks to climb all over!
We drove through this nice little area on the way back. There were llamas, alpacas, sheep, all kinds of birds, and these rare things that looked like deer crossed with llamas.
Look at the little guy!!!
Ok that's it though. There was a lot more to go of the drive back but we all pretty much passed out for a good part of it anyway. Once we hit the main roads there wasn't much more to take pictures of.
In conclusion: really cool trip, otherworldly experience at the salar, best view of the stars you'll ever see, lots of crazy rock formations to explore, geysers, hot springs, and amazing views literally wherever you are throughout the trip. Oh and there's a really good pizza place in Uyuni for when you get back.
I don't think I forgot anything big. I highly recommend checking this place out to anyone looking for a more exotic, out of the way sort of vacation. Some people keep going from Laguna Verde into Chile and continue on with more stuff. But bring warm clothes. Definitely bring warm clothes for when the sun goes down.
Next stop, almost certainly Isla del Sol, located in Lake Titicaca this weekend.
Salar de Uyuni: Day 2
I started day 2 off with a run. It was pretty cold but I could see the sun rising over the mountains beyond the salar so that was cool. The stars out here are amazing since it's pretty much as in the middle of nowhere as you can get. You could see the Milky Way and a shooting star about every 5 minutes or so if you were looking in the right place. It gets ridiculously cold at night though, but I had a sleeping bad my host parents let me borrow and the beds have about 5 or 6 thick blankets on them so it's not that bad.
Our first stop of the day was in this rocky area that was created by lava flows from volcanoes. Lots of fun stuff to climb all over and go 'sploring.
This is the first lake we came to. There were flamingos way on the other side.
One of the flamingos came over by all the people for some reason.
Another beautiful lake, more flamingos.
So apparently flamingos aren't allowed here? Or maybe they aren't allowed to fly away? I don't know. This guy in the background doesn't seem to care.
Yeah so this is a really really huge Bolivian flag we're underneath.
Apparently there's about 200 of these lakes and lagoons all around this region.
After a long bumpy ride through the desert we found this: el Arbol de Piedra. You're not allowed to climb on it :(
But you are allowed to climb on everything else!
Oh yeah climbing big rocks and stuff.
But what about the geysers? Laguna Colorado? Laguna Verde? and the pueblo that looks like it came from a Bolivian Lord of the Rings Middle Earth? (Go to Salar de Uyuni: Day 3) and yes I know these aren't in order when you look at the blog because they're in order of when they were posted. I'm just hoping the whole "Day 3" part will inspire all my readers (my mom) to go looking for day 1 first.
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