Marci Soifer

After packing the dirty laundry, scattered gifts, and filthy hiking boots into my backpack, I took the final shower in my house. Once I emerged from the bathroom, Fabrizio and Belen had returned home from school. I hadn't time to put on clothes before they were already asking me if I wanted to play or if I was going out at all on my final night. I urged them to allow me to change into something other than the giant orange towel I recently purchased at the Supermercado, and jokingly, I said that I may stay or go out for a short while.

Belen got really into it, and asked me over and over-was I leaving? When would I come back that evening? After a couple of times, I thought...she must be kidding me. She asked and asked, no matter how times I answered her maybe, again and again...in front of me, to the resting Chris and Fiona on the couch, through the door of my room---is Marci leaving the house before she goes back to her country for always? It got rediculous.

Belen. So, when Chris and Fiona asked me if I would like to go out for a short while to get some Chinese food, I didn't flinch. I grabbed my leftover Bolivianos and said, "let's go".

As soon as Belen got wind that I would be leaving, she vanished. The house is not THAT big, so we immediately noticed her having locked herself in the bathroom. Fabrizio did not hesitate to tell us where she had gone and why - "she is crying in the bathroom. She is sad because you are leaving."

This was when I remembered that kids under 10 do not kid.

Giving them a little money, I told Chris and Fiona to go on to the restaurant without me and place bring some food back. I had to yell through the bathroom door for 20 minutes before Belen would listen-she was far more upset than I realized. Only when I got on a chair to show her my face through the bathroom window (on the top of the bathroom door) for her to see my face (and actually believe that I had remained in the house and was staying there) did she emerge, red faced and arms outstretched for a hug.

I helped the kids with their homework, we read a book in English, and we sang a few songs. By then, not only had Chris and Fiona returned with styrofoam containers full of fried rice, vegetables in light sauce, and dumplings, but Marisel and Willy also came home, with food in hand as well. They carried an enormous chocolate/cherry cake, with "Feliz viaje Marci" (Happy/good travels/trip Marci) written with dulce de leche. As a family, we all sat at the living room table, as we had done on the evening when I arrived.

We ate cake, told stories, and exchanged gifts. They gave me a beautiful woven bag, I gave the kids art supplies (including 2 full copies of English teaching coloring books they had come to love), and I gave the adults beautiful mugs I found in the market (because we drink so much tea). We took pictures, and swapped e-mail addresses and birthdays.

When it was time to go to bed, I slithered in and out rooms, hugging and thanking everyone for everything. Cleidy and Patricio told me not to go, and told me of how they really hope to come to New York one day. Fabrizio hugged me grudgingly, a frown prominent on his face and tears welling up in his eyes. Sebastian told me that he was going to practice his English for the tests we prepped a for in his school. Belen was no where to be found.

I left the house at 4:30 AM, and Willy and Marisel were up to see me out. They hugged me and told me to come back soon, please. I left a note on Belen's unfinished homework, "you didn't say goodbye/see you later. Write to me, and do art projects! I will miss you!-Hugs and kisses, Marci".

The streets were bare at this time of day-except, of course, a random couple passionately kissing on a street corner (classic Bolivia). As my taxi ascended the hills toward El Alto and the airport, I looked out onto the city-covered by patches of fog. Still, the city shone. The evening street lights up and down the Andean mountains illuminated the valley, the hills, and surely, all the way to Zona Sur (southern La Paz) and Obrajes, where the kids from my volunteer placements remained, now all fast asleep.

And now? I write this final blog entry from my aunt and uncle's home in New York, as I have returned. I can hardly believe that this adventure happened and ended, and I am back in the United States.

When I think back to Bolivia, I remember the energy, the hills, and the people. I can and will forever picture the traditionally dressed women-the cholitas-sitting on the sidewalks, street corners, and in marketplaces. Under a tarp or in a steel covered small hut, with all of their goods (toiletries, snacks, bread, or fruit) on display, these women are a staple of Bolivia. Their brightly colored skirts meet brightly colored mantas (blankets) at their backs, continuously carrying goods or perhaps a child, and their weathered hands and faces display patches of redness, smudges of dirt, and wrinkle kissed years much beyond them. Their eyes are wise and deep, their smiles missing teeth, and their short-brimmed hats resting atop pig-tailed, long braids, down their backs. They sit all day and into the night, waiting for a patron. All the while, they watch Bolivia pass by; the minibuses, policemen, kids en route to school, politicians, trucks with deliveries, men and women en route to work, the backpackers (many of them with rapid Hebrew), the buses pulling into town after traveling through blockades the night from Uyuni (haha), the show shining boys from the streets, and the volunteers. The volunteers who live atop one peak in Cristo Ray, La Paz, with a family who feels like family, and the volunteer who spends days holding hands, feeding, learning, singing, teaching, and laughing.

These cholitas see it all, and even though I have now gone, a piece of me feels good to know that volunteers will keep coming to La Paz and to Bolivia. If those volunteers are lucky, they will have an experience as meaningful as mine was. And, the cholitas will watch them pass by as well...maybe even sell them a banana.

To stick with my pattern from the last closing of my blog and adventure, and to quote "Madeline", "that's all...there isn't anymore."

Thanks for reading. Happy Passover, Easter, or any other holiday you may celebrate.

When I got the call that my bus company was going to depart for Uyuni, the entry point for the salt desert, I hurried home for an instant replay of the day before. I took a shower, the last I would have in a while, grabbed my packed backpack and my snacks, and headed off to the bus station.

When I got there, I stepped over groups of people sleeping on the floor, who had surely been stuck overnight, and I trudged back to the bus counter. The counter was flooded this time by tourists...tons and tons of white people, speaking English and using one hand to play with a braided, blonde pigtail or to take deep drags of their cigarettes. However, I looked around to notice that no other bus counter had any patrons. The blockade was on, but somehow, this company, OMAR, planned to take the assembled 50 tourists to Uyuni regardless. We would leave at 7 pm.

We waited, and some people started to visit. I listened to stories from traveling through Peru, hiking the Inca Trail, spending time in the Galapagos Islands. These people were merging with others, hauling backpacks in the other direction...people coming from the Perito Moreno glacier, Torres del Paine in the bottom of Chile, or Buenos Aires. I chuckled to myself, knowing that this...Bolivia is the center of all of these South American adventures. And I? Well, I have done all above and below, and on my final few days left below the Equator, I was just waiting to do the one outstanding attraction I had missed.

7:20. We were still standing there, idly.

7:35. Beads of sweat started to form between my fingers, grasping onto a plastic grocery bag full of bread, cheese, apples, and chocolate. I contemplated shedding one of my 5 layers. I heard it was going to be cold in the salt desert.

7:45. The main bus company woman who had checked all of us in motioned for us to follow her. Together, as the group of gringos (which we were), we walked behind this woman.

Normally, you board a bus in the bus station. Not this day, and not with blockades. All of the tourists quietly eyed each other as we continued to follow this woman, trudging in silence. We walked away from the bus counters, past the bathrooms, out the back of the uncovered building, across the street, down a hill, and around a bend. Fifteen minutes of walking. We finally reached a bus, which did not bear the company name OMAR...or any other name at that.

I got on, knowing that we must have had to do this secretive boarding due to the blockades. Seat 13. A window. My favorite. The bus was crowded, and tourists jabbed one another to get to their non-reclining, hardly padded seat...where we would sit for the next 11 hours.

As I unfastened my sleeping bag from the bottom of my pack, took off my fleece, and got my Swiss Army knife out to prepare for cutting the bread and cheese (not a pun) for my dinner sandwiches, I heard a voice asking me to move into the row. Ah, the person who would share my seat. I had no interest in conversing...just moving in, abiding, sitting to eat, and then promptly place my IPOD over my ears, cutting myself off from the rest of the bus for the evening.

The ride began, and the light buzz of English immediately started to fade, as the lights darkened. Using the bits of La Paz and El Alto street light lumination that still leaked through my window, I cut my food up and ate, staring out the window aimlessly.

¨So, you come prepared.¨ The man sitting next to me said, from under his blue eyes and dark beard, covering his chin thoroughly. He could not be more than 27 years old. ´Oh great...if I talk to him now, it will never end´. ¨Yeah, well, I have done this a few times before. Night buses.¨ Try not to make eye contact. No eye contact.

¨Oh? Where have you traveled?¨ His English was not like mine. I immadiately recognized an accent...broken syllables...mispronounciation. He is a Spanish speaker---native.

¨Just around. In South America, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.¨

¨I am from Argentina.¨ Of course you are.

Somehow, he kept talking to me. Asking questions. Responding to answers. He told me about how he is traveling without a passport, hiked the Inca Trail (of sorts) without a permit, and has been trying to improve his English for the last two months throughout Peru and Bolivia. This trip to the salt desert is en route home for him.

Before I knew it, the bus was slowing and we kept talking. Talking and talking. Laughing, even. The bus came to a stop here and there, facing blockades. clearly, the bus driver didn´t know the way as well as he had hoped. We waited at one blockade for an hour, in the mix of a slew of other buses and trucks. Pulling away bckwards, we found another way out. But, I could have cared less. Me and my new Argentine friend were discussing the English language and it´s vague-ness. What does whether really mean?

At one point in the midst of our very present delay, I sent my native Spanish speaking friend to find out what was going on. A girl on the bus was sick...no bathroom on board...some lost their luggage in La Paz...the blockades were really delaying our route because the driver admitted not knowing where he was going at all...and, you know, it was nearing 12 pm at this point. We hadn´t made much progress at all, and I stopped caring.

I talked through most of the night, and slept a little here and there. When we pulled into Uyuni in the morning, it put an end to our 15 hour bus ride (4 hours longer than intended). But, I finally got to the entry point of the salt desert, and I had made a new friend as well.

The city is small without any buildings taller than a first floor. Most buildings are mud huts, with either mud or tin roofs. The sun penetrates in a way that brightly jolts you into the desert, and the air is crisp, dry, and trying to be cool, but still brings a little sweat to your brow. I unloaded the bus quickly after the ride came to a halt, and quickly went into the bus company office to call my tour agency and let them know that I had arrived and was exhaustedly ready to begin the tour. Grateful to have made it.

I came out to find that the hustle surrounding the unloading of backpacks from under the bus had expired. The people were gone. Including my Argentine friend. I didn´t even ever ask his name.

Staying directed and knowing that backpackers always come and go, I walked over to the travel agency, noticing how small the Uyuni streets are and how the marketplaces pack the streets with little tarps for just a few stands. Stands that sell bananas at the point that those from North America would likely throw them away.

I arrived at the tour agency and was quickly hustled into my tour group. Two girls, Canadian, friends from school and life, had never left Canada before, volunteered in Peru and were now backpacking, 20 years old. One man, Canadian, retired, white hair under his ¨safari¨ hat, traveling in the wake of his late wife´s recent death, likes to talk...a lot. A couple from Germany, in their 60s, also retired, not much to say, broken English, the woman immediately told us that she had traveler´s diaherria. Party on.

We met in front of our car, a Toyota Land Cruiser, which we would throw our backpacks and belongings on top of...to the driver, who stood on top, waiting to wrap everything together in a blue tarp and tie it to the roof...together, with assorted cooking equipment. His name is Juan, our driver and guide with a classicaly small Bolivian height and even smaller eyes...speaking only Spanish. The cook, a woman under 30 with a protrouding belly, long, flowing hair, and deep eyes, named Beatrice. We loaded into the jeep quickly, the girls and myself sitting in the way back, the elders, as I called them, sitting in the middle bench, and the driver and cook in front. These became our assigned seats.

We started off the tour in the Salt Flats, which is basically a natural, vast, expansive plane of salt. Imagine white, white, white for miles...looks like snow, but is in fact salt. Every so often, we would see men harvesting the salt in trucks. But mostly, we drove, drove, drove and it was just white. The water on top of the salt created a splash of salt on the bottom of the car, and the salt stuck to the bottom of our shoes in and out. This is one of the most incredible things I have seen. Miles and miles of salt. It hurt my eyes to stare at.

We climbed in and out of the car, stopping at a hotel made entirely of condensed salt blocks, a salt production center, and an island of cacti in the middle of the salt. I noticed that we kept going at the same pace, beginning and moving along, with tons of other jeeps coming along on the same tour. These groups were mixes of men, women, old, young, Israelis shouting in Hebrew to one another, and French adults with their own French speaking guide. I started to meet people...a Texan from Dallas who told me all about his Mamma...Israelis from Tel Aviv who thought the salt flats weren´t as great as any one thing in Israel, obviously...Belgians who thought that taking stunt pictures with the white and blue background was the best thing they ever did...

At the first stop, someone tapped on my shoulder. My Argentine friend. We found each other. Immadiately, I asked him his name...Francisco. Haha. I told him that I am Marci.

The day continued, following the other jeeps and traveling over the salt for an hour or so, stopping to eat lunch which Beatrice would whip out of no where. We were getting into the pattern of this tour...we would drive for an hour, stop and enjoy a trememdous sight or scenery, and then drive again for another while to the next landmark.

The next four days are sort of blurred together. The land changed from salt vastness to desert, proper. I saw rocks and boulders that towered over our jeep for miles. Natural hot springs. Hundreds of geyers in close proximity...a community, together. Lagoon after lagoon that both sparkled, bubbled with borax and salt, showed off a green, a white, a red, or an orange color, and reflected nearby mountains and clouds perfectly. Flamingos by the pack of hundreds. Lllamas crossing our road, in another herd of over a hundred. Desert mountains in reds, yellows, and browns, mixed together. A live, real, active volcano, oozing smoke. Military posts in the middle of no where, with nothing to show, other than Beatrice´s brother at one point...who she left with a bottle of coke and a bag of popcorn. Random, small villages that offered one room with six beds for all of us...which was a nice refuge from the freezing nighttime temperatures. And, much more.

I met a million people, saw things that are so incredible...they are better left to pictures, and got to know those in my jeep really well. I will try to upload the photos, so you can get a better sense.

4 days and 3 nights...ending with another all night bus ride (unfortunately without a good seat partner), in which my sister described to me the ending of the US reailty TV show, ¨Grease, You´re the One that I Want¨, and I ate pizza from a nearby Uyuni-based place that features tastes of NY (real ones...seriously)...because sometimes, you just want a little of your other life in your mind, ear, and tastes.

I got in at 7:30 this morning, and was greeted by my eager family...waiting to hear about how I changed my flight, how my adventure went, and how many more nights of art projects I had for the kids. I told them, only two more nights. And, perhaps we could watch a movie instead. I am exhausted.

But, overall, this was a perfect ending to the trip. Now I really have done everything I came for, everything. The next two days will be spent getting my last minute things in La Paz, visiting my favorite spots one more time, processing the end of my volunteering, and saying goodbye to my family. My flight is on Wednesday morning. I cannot believe that was five weeks. Over.