Travel-Trotter

Strong last day in La Paz!!  The girls did great school work, lots of reading and we figured out where we need to work on math.  After a morning of work, including for Maddy, we all went out for lunch… we tried to find a vegetarian place for Maddy, but had the wrong address and were cruising around what had to be the most chaotic streets outside of Dehli.  We finally figured out that we were in the wrong place and went back to the old city and finally located our lunch destination.  Thank goodness it was amazing; the carrot noodles and veggie soup was incredible.  After lunch we had to acquire insurance for our new van so we visited what seemed like the business district.   After procuring our insurance I finagled some alone time, Maddy had work and nobody else wanted to wander the streets with me, so I got some freedom.  I wandered up to Plaza Murillo which was the parliament square and took a tour of the national art museum; trip advisor needs to update it top destinations, it was incredible art, I basically had the gallery to myself, sorry no pictures were allowed.

I wandered my way down out of the business district back passed Iglesia de San Francisco and wandered around the markets which were more alive now that the new years holiday was over.  I wandered into the Museo de la Coca not expecting much but it was full of neat stairways and eccentric wood carvings.  Running out of time I didn’t go into the museum but had a pint at the Restaurant Pub 1700 at the top of the museum before heading back to fetch Maddy and the kids for dinner.

I took them back to the restaurant after some errands and had a delightful dinner, the kids actually ate some food for once.  We headed back home and packed to leave La Paz for Copacabana on Lago Titicaca.

Our third day in La Paz was a warm one, we completed our school work in the morning and then went out exploring.  We slathered on the sunscreen because the sun is very intense at the high elevations of La Paz even though the temperature is only 60 degrees.  We took a taxi to the Valley of the Moon and had the taxi wait for us to complete our hike as there are not many taxi’s in the vicinity.  The valley of the moon was a complex of lacustrine (lake) sediments that were eroded like the hoodoos in Bryce Canyon.  The majority of La Paz seems to be built on this type of sediment.

Once we completed the our hike, which was about 15 min, the taxi took us to the Mega Mall, our first in South America, and hopefully our last.  We strategically ate lunch near the beginning of the teleferico system, we boarded the Verde (green) which took us to the Amarillo (yellow) then took a taxi to the top of the rojo (red) which leads to our hotel.  All in all we soared over the better part of the city.  It was very easy to navigate and cost us 50 cents per ride!!

We all had a great time, although the silence game was getting old for Julie by the end.  Great way to see La Paz.

We went out for dinner last night in La Paz, most of the city was shut down due to the holiday weekend but we found a restaurant after much searching.  We all ordered food and appetizers and beers and I was ready to pay an arm and a leg but it only cost $35.  What a deal!

The next day we started home school and one of the first things we did was choose the name and mascot of our school.  So after the girls wrote down lots of choices we winnowed down to a couple options:

The Cool School

The South American School

num num blegh school

Escuela de adventura

Maddy prevented me from padding the ballet box, so guess what the name of our new home school is…. on a vote of 3 to 2?  Who knows where they came up with that name.  Our new mascot is the ice cream cone, I think they are assuming lots of treats in our future.  The ice cream cones beat out Tortugas and Penguinos.  We set up the rules of home school and I think things went pretty well.

Just before noon we met up with a walking tour of the old town in La Paz for our first field trip.  We visited a vegetable market, plaza de San Francisco and the witches market. We enjoyed the walk and learning some history but the kids were worn out fairly quickly, even with snacks and cold drinks along the way. When Mimi decided to lay down on the cobblestones in front of the church in plaza de San Francisco we decided it was time to throw in the towel, mid-way through the tour…

We all took a long rest after that and then headed out again to a big park on the other side of town. We found a great area for kids with some rides and everyone had a fun time. We tried to go to this cool local restaurant and walked about 20 min uphill to get there only to find it closed (along with a majority of other stuff in this town the past 2 days with the new year holiday). We grabbed a taxi back to our hotel but still needed food. A nice tour guide we ran into on the street walked us to another one but it didn’t start serving til 7pm (waaaaay too late for these kiddos) so we had another street food meal. Empanadas and corn on the cob for the kids and Tamales (which have a Bolivian name I can’t remember) for the parents. It hit the spot and we trudged back to the hotel.

Walking around here is soooooo exhausting. Between the hills and the altitude affecting our lungs we are all perpetually huffing and puffing. But all in all it was a great day. Fewer meltdowns than yesterday. Think we are figuring out the right balance of getting out and about and having chill time at the hotel.

A couple of other interesting things from today. Two of the girls, separately, said “we are the only white people here.” I told them that it is because we are travellers and people from this country have darker skin than we do. But I also think it is a good experience for them to know what it is like to be different since so much of their lives have been spent in a predominantly white community. Some people have stared, a couple of older women pet their hair, but they seem to take it all in stride.

They also notice all of the stray dogs around (who luckily seem friendly enough) and have a particular fondness for pigeons and like to chase them all over the place. Ahhh childhood.

Mirabelle was excited for this Ferris wheel and talked Caroline and Mike into joining her

Mini merry go round

Views are ridiculous up in here!

Puffy clouds. Forecast always says chance of rain but we have yet to get rained on

Our first day in La Paz was pretty low key. After we checked into our hotel, we were all in various states of sleep depravity so we napped a bit and walked around the city a bit.

Maddy took the girls out in the morning, and took a ride up the teleferico – basically a gondola system that goes from the lower part of the city of La Paz to the higher part up the mountain. Julie was a bit nervous at first but they all loved it! At the top was a neat open-air market, with lots of families and stalls selling everything from underwear to car parts. Kids were most excited about the food. We tried a lot of new and some familiar snacks – dried corn, banana chips, chicken and rice in a bag, watermelon, grapes, and ice cream. I love street food! Also had some good conversations with locals where I got to practice my crappy-but-rapidly-improving Spanish.

Pictures include Christmas trees made from tires & water bottles, shots on the teleferico, view from teleferico, obligatory baby llama shot #1, remains of the street food, and the girls with ice cream in the market.

Later in the afternoon Mike took Caroline and Julie out while Maddy and Mimi napped. They had fun exploring some streets near our hotel.

Tomorrow we start homeschool!

After a redeye we arrived in La Paz on January 1; our great adventure has truly begun.  We celebrated new years on the plane with a bit of a sleepless night.  We are all a bit tired but Visas were not a problem we just needed crisp bills and our ride into town was on time.  We had our first cup of coca mate tea and a South American breakfast of banana juice, cereal and animal crackers.

Oh my gosh. We leave for Bolivia tomorrow. I’m feeling awash in both excitement and anxiety. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know everything will be great. Really, really great! But I also know there will be lots of challenges and hiccups along the way. And… I just hope I’m not forgetting anything important!

Its been great to be in Santa Fe this past week for all sorts of reasons. It has been absolutely perfect to spend the last week in the US with my family, celebrating Christmas. All of my brothers and their families are just great people, and really fun to be around. And we had lots of quality family bonding over ice skating, cooking classes, x-mas eve farolito walk, exchanging gifts, shared meals, and more. My mom was a wonderful host, putting together three tables all the way across her small living room to seat a party of 15! And booking extra houses for many of us to stay in since we couldn’t fit in her awesome (but cozy) three bedroom place.

Its also been nice to know we are all packed up, have a test run with our first airbnb renters in our house, and the opportunity to pick up any forgotten items (and send others home). We also got the chance to meet the lovely family who will live in our house most of the time we’re gone, starting in late Jan. How funny that they just happen to be moving from Santa Fe! Our kiddos (all girls) got along smashingly, and hopefully we’ll be able to spend time with them in Madison when we get back (and hopefully they will have bought their own home by then).

So… why do I wake up at four every morning in a mild panic? I just have crazy visions of things going wrong, of us struggling with our mound of luggage (3 big suitcases, 2 other smaller checked bags, and a backpack for each of us…), of our thoroughly American kids refusing the food so foreign to their taste buds (tienes nuggets de pollo o mac y queso?), of not being able to find places to stay, of running out of gas or breaking down in the middle of nowhere, of getting some weird tropical ailment, of kidnappings and car accidentsand the host of other clearly improbably things that won’t happen to us, but still occupy an unreasonable amount of my brain space.

Back in the land of reality, I have some real anxiety about balancing life on the road with trying to keep a business running and maintaining good service to vChief clients on the road. I’ve tried to offload a bunch of duties to other people on my team, which helps, but there is still lots on my plate. And I know I’ll be pinch hitting on teaching the kids once in a while too, when Mike needs a break. Never mind all of the actual traveling and seeing sights and such.

So yeah, lots on my mind these days. Such as the 18 hour journey from Santa Fe to Houston to Miami to La Paz ahead of us tomorrow. (a) Thank goodness for iPads (b) let’s hope this melatonin stuff helps the kids sleep (c) you can survive 1 day of just about anything, right?

Wish us luck!

After the ice skating on Wednesday Oma was nice enough to take all the kids overnight while the adults went off to the Spa.  We all met up at the 10,000 waves spa and several people got salt scrubs and facials but Maddy and I went straight to the hot pool.  After plunging in the 50 degree pool, the sauna and snoring in the meditation room, we went back to our house for an epic game of cards against humanity.

The next day we had family pictures, it was very cold and the twins did a great job hanging in there but had definitely had it by the end.  That night we had another experience gift of a cooking lessons.  It was a great time and we made some awesome Chile Rellenos.

In an attempt to reduce the amount of christmas stuff the girls will get we asked everyone to get us and the girls experience presents.  So Uncle Bryan and Aunt Melissa on Tuesday took all the kids for a day of ice skating and swimming.  Unfortunately Julie was having a melt down and stayed home with Maddy, but that allowed Maddy to complete some work.   Caroline was very good on skates, she has had lessons before and Mira did great for her first time, both were zooming around the ice by the end.  I didn’t hurt myself and only fell over once!

We went swimming after skating and ha

The day after Christmas we packed up all the kids and went to Meow Wolf which is a surreal fun house in an old bowling ally.  The kids climbed through a refrigerator, sat in an upside down bus and Mimi scared some poor woman who decided to follow her into the huge white mouse.  We had lunch with our the woman who is going to rent our house, which is strange that she is from Santa Fe, but she was lovely and we are excited for her to stay at our house.  We all met up for dinner at Oma’s house.

After an amazing Christmas Eve we all met up at Oma’s house to open presents, everybody waited until 9:30 which was amazing considering all the kids.  Julianne had a few melt downs during the day which made things difficult and I was sad to not be with my Mother this Christmas but we had facetime with her and had a wonderful feast and a full day with the Tregidga/Halaburka clans.