March 5, 2012

I am writing to tell you about our trip and safe arrival in Aucapata before I go down stairs and join Jim and Ernesto in unpacking boxes. At 2 pm yesterday, March 4th, we joined Yumey and Yvonne at the new Ivar Mendez Foundation office in LaPaz. A decrepid old bus sat empty in the driveway, (no heat, reclining seats or bano in this bus). In less than two hours, we had loaded the bus with beds on the roof, a refridgerator inside and boxes and boxes and boxes. There was barely room left in the bus for Jim and Ernesto and me. On we hopped. The bus wouldn´t start so our driver, Juan Carlos, fiddled under the hood to get the bus started. An ominious sign,I thought. The City of La Paz is at the bottom of a high mountain valley. The city has grown so that all the surrounding hills are narrow streets edged with layered buildings in adobe, brick and occationally finished with painted stucco. For some reason, we needed to take a back way up out of town. This necessitated Renesto jumping off the bus to scout the route, (not always successfully).At one point we pulled a uturn on a narrow steep streeet and Jim and I were both concerned that the bus might rool. After more than a hour, we reached El Alto, the large upper city. Roads here were flooded and traffic was detoured on rough muddy tracks. We made one stop to pick up the bus driver´s wife and young daughter. The ominous beginning faded because I felt with the drivers wife and daughter on board we were probably in good hands.

After we left El Alto and it´s conjestion and poverty, the landscape until it got dark and we were in the mountains was captivating; soft green hills, lamas, pigs and people and a sprinkling of brown adove homes with snow capped mountains in behind. At our only official pit stop, we quickly took out our coats and hats, long underwear and mits. Bundled up, we were as comfomfortable as one can be in the dark on a very rough, winding narrow mountain road. At three a.m., after tightly manouvering around a truck parked in a dark narrow street, we stopped and the bus driver immediately started unlading the bus. We were ¨home¨in Aucapata having made record time. The renovated I.M.I.F. House in Aucapata was waiting for us. Unfortunately, since we are the first people using this house, it is absolutely bare (or was until we filled the first room with beds and boxes). I had envisioned unpacking our food into kitchen cupboards and getting my clothes out of the back pack for three weeks, not cupboards or closets. At four AM as I was unloading boxes, I was mentally comparing this house to the one I had on Quirpon Island, Newfoundland.

This morning, I am again ready for adventure and hardwork. Tomorrow, we start teaching so today is our chance to make our house as much as a home as we can.