Santa Cruz, Bolivia 2010

I know this post has been greatly anticipated by my abundant readers (Lauren)! Well I finally arrived home from Santa Cruz, Bolivia a little over a week ago. And it is a miracle I actually made it home. I will start with that.... So our last day in Santa Cruz was spent cuddled up, trying to stay warm in one hotel room until about 10:30 at night. Finally leaving to the airport, crammed in a van yet again with all our bags finally on our way home to a sunny, warm and dry place. Wrong! When checking in at the front desk of American Airlines we were all informed that our flight was delayed 3 hours! This meant instead of leaving at 1:30 a.m. we would be leaving at 3:30 a.m. and we would be miss our connecting flight in Miami to Dallas. That is only the beginning! Laughing and trying to stay up beat we finally boarded the plane at 3:30 and didn't take off until 5 am!!! At this point each and everyone of us had already taken our sleeping pills and were dreaming of America. Now Miami.... Luckily our flight Miami to Dallas we had some time to spare to get through customs and make our way to yet another terminal. Boarding, boarding, boarding.... yes we boarded the plane on time! Oh wait let's just sit on the runway for another hour and a half and make all 15 students and some adults miss their plane in Dallas to Salt Lake! Yep that is exactly what happened. Another hour wait on the runway and yet another connecting flight missed that's 2 and one more to go? So running to the next terminal in Dallas even though we all knew we missed our plane we got new tickets and would finally arrive in Salt Lake City at 11:45 pm instead of the 2 pm that was planned from the start. All in all I would never, ever recommend flying American unless you have, which in our case we did. Again I repeat do not fly American Airlines if you don't have to! We did finally make it home safely! I was sure glad and ready to be home and I was not the only one.

Ok so enough about the airport adventures I will dive into my trip and post the pictures that are extremely cool! 

For those of you who don't already know, this was suppose to be a service trip, a trip to honor and remember 6 Park City High School kids that were killed in a short 8 month period. One being my best friend, another a good friend and another a friend and long parkite acquaintance. Only 6 or 7 of us actually were representing those that we love and lost to early. There were 27 of us total, 8 adults and the rest were high school kids mostly juniors and seniors. I was not looking forward to being with high schoolers for 13 days even before the trip started, but I gained a lot of friendships and I hope that I can keep in touch with these kids, they were great for the most part! It definitely wasn't the experience I was expecting, but I gained a lot from my trip and I don't regret going one bit.

The first three days of our trip were spent in Amboro National Park aka the Jungle! We hiked to three different waterfalls, played mafia, got bug bites, and ticks (I will spare you the details), heard jaguars, jumped of cliffs and stayed in cabanas at a place I can only describe as just like The Swiss Family Robinson, awesome! This was a good time and the jungle was absolutely beautiful and green! 

Our Home for 3 Days

My Little Cabana ~ equipped with 5 bunks, a suite below and bathroom with shower and flushing toilet!

It was a long trip to the actual jungle... all crammed in the bus! 

We even got to get out and walk because of a political protest, luckily we were American and they let us walk through otherwise it could have been bad

More protest!

Buena Vista! My favorite town, we stopped here to transfer from our bus to the "jeeps" to 4 wheel up to our camp. 2 hours of 4 wheeling in an old land cruiser = sore butt!

Our ride... Can you see me?! We forged over rivers and I was like a little kid, happy as could be, it was radical!

The next pictures are of our hikes in the jungle to all the different waterfalls

There I go! First girl to make the jump!

The whole group making our way to our second waterfall, it was a grueling hike and it was raining!

This was my favorite waterfall... The last day, day of ticks!

It is like Lost!

The Cool Kids- Yes I was definitely the leader. The epitome of cool.

Cya Jungle!

The rest of the trip was spent in a nice 5 star hotel (yes I know) in Santa Cruz Bolivia. The school we were working on or suppose to to be working on was about a 30 minute bus ride from our hotel in a nice village. I was surprised by how nice the village was... I guess I was expecting woods huts, which we did see driving back from the jungle. The whole time we were in Santa Cruz it rained, non-stop and I guess until we came they were in a drought. To add to that it was the coldest it had been in 29 years! It was freezing! I cannot even describe how cold I was and I hate being cold! I could not feel my hands or my feet whenever we went out. The other thing is no one in Bolivia actually has heat... So you would go from the cold hotel room, to the cold car, to the cold restaurant or wherever, you could not escape it! The only times I was actually "warm" was when I was in the shower and right when you turned it off you were cold again. None of us were prepared for the sudden dip in temperature which made it worse. It was pretty funny you would see all of us with just hoodies (everyone wore the same one all week haha) and some jeans, but mostly shorts or capri pants and then all the locals would be in puff jackets, boots, scarves everything. It was miserable. The cold and rain also stopped us from making any progress on the school. We only were able to work to full days... moving wet heavy dirt, planting trees that I am sure will be replanted and painting walls and repainting walls because of the rain. They are no longer painted sadly. The next pictures are all of Santa Cruz, the school, Bolivia and also some from a Gala event we went to one night for the non-profit we were with Ascend. But enough words there is lots to tell about this trip, but in a nutshell it was an experience I wasn't expecting. It opened up a lot of my old wounds that have developed over two years and it was really hard. Life hasn't been easy and I hope that things will start looking up. Bolivia was a trip I won't forget!

Our hotel/compound

Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz

All around Santa Cruz

Next is the school, where we worked

Our painted walls, that got ruined from the rain

The boys and their machets to find hay for the roof, which we could not find

The rest of the pictures are from the Gala Event

There was a plaque dedicated to the 6 students who died that will be on the school. The man in the middle is the Mayor and he had us for lunch, pretty cool.

Alex, Blake and I 

I will post more pictures when I load them all! Sorry this post was so long, but now people (Lauren) can't get mad at me! Do enjoy!

I thought this picture was hilarious so I had to add it... we were all so hungry one night and we finally got pizza, there were 4 o5 of these things and we all devoured them!

On that note, it is good to be home!

xoxo, a