Oruro

Now that I have finished language school I don't have much to do. Just hang out with Sally. Which isn't bad but I don't get a chance to practice what I've learned. So when Doug invited me to Oruro with him for a day I said yes! Oruro is a city South of LaPaz up in the altiplano. Flat, flat land. It is 3 hours from LaPaz by bus and the road is paved and actually pretty nice for Bolivia. It is much colder than LaPaz and 12,159ft altitude which is higher then where we live. Its about 11,000. We had to wake up at 5 to get to the bus station by 6 o'clock departure. So we got ready and got Sally up (and left her in her jammies) right before we left. I covered her head with a small blanket and Doug grabbed the clothes that I set out for her. We hailed a taxi at a very dark and cold 545am and 3 blocks up the hill Doug said, "Did you grab shoes for her". Fooey! Nope. When we got to the bus station it was still dark and really chilly. The bus we were going to buy a ticket for was still closed, there was a man opposite the counter we went to was calling out 'Oruro! Oruro!' So we went over and bought tickets $3 each! Crazy huh. Everything is so cheap here. The bus was cold and drafty, because we were in the second row. The driver like to take frequent passing opportunities around semis and slow old rusted out beaters...Scarry! He had the curtain pulled so we couldn't see out the front. I didn't like that. Sally was awake the whole time. Too cold and new. Half way we picked up a native woman who had a basket full of hot meat pies! They smelled so good but we didn't dare buy one, didn't want to be sick in a new town. We arrived to Oruro around 9:00. The entrance to the Departament (Province) Had a toll booth. The Province was also named Oruro. After the toll booth, we came to a round about with a GIANT steel miner's hat in the center. It had pictures bent into it. Very cool. We went completely around it and drove through some shanty homes and stone homes. Then came into the town center. There were some women serving hot soup for breakfast. I went in to use the bano publico (public bathroom) that you have to pay to use. 1 boliviano. When you pay, they hand you your very own wadd of toilet paper. FYI in South America you can't flush the toilet paper. In this particular bathroom there wasn't any heat, so it was drafy and freezing in there. The water didn't run in the sinks. For this reason I always have sanitizer... A co-worker of Doug's who lives there, picked us up. We took a taxi from the bus station to an out door market and bought Little miss Sal pal some shoes. The guys then left me at a hamburger place with a play area for kids. They had meetings to attend. After playing Sally and I walked down the main street and found a plaza. There was a woman selling corn for the pigeons. Sally had fun with that until Kate met us and we walked back to the hamburger place for lunch. We walked to the outside of town where the hill starts to climb. Up the hill there was a giant concrete slide alongside stairs. A lot of stairs. The kids were out of school for winter break so the slide was full of kids going down it on cardboard. So fun. We didn't try to climb it. There was a large white church nessled in the hill. It had a royal blue ceiling with bright yellow portruding stars. The dome in the center looking up had the apostles painted fullscale around. At the farend of the sanctuary there was a black gate that opened to a tunnel into a mine. Tours weren't open until 3. It looked cool though. Oruro used to be a thriving mining town. They mined tin mostly, but also silver and copper. We met up with the guys and walked to Save the Children's office there. Kate stayed at work and they took me and Sally to Fernando's house to put Sally down for a nap while they went for another meeting. She didn't sleep a lick. It was too exciting to be in a new place. Fernando's 13 year old son, Adrian, got home after a while and played with Sally. We spoke spanish and I taught him some english words. I felt like I knew so much Spanish! Yay. His mom and younger brother got home about a half an our before the guys did. And again, we conversed in spanish! It was so good for me. They offered us coffee and some (blah) cake (I needed the coffee!) and we accepted. Sally and Fabrizio played with plastic zoo animals while Doug talked and I zoned. Adrian offered his E.T. doll to Sally and we headed to the bus station around 545pm. The bus we took home was warm and comfortable and sally zonked the minute we pulled out of the 'terminal' and slept the whole way home. What an adventurous, tiring day.