The Llama Chronicles: Farewell Edition

Hello all,

This will be my last llama chronicle as I´ll be arriving in Seattle on Thursday after three days of traveling to get there.

There isn´t too much interesting at this point, I´ve finished my work and passed the torch to a couple of new volunteers, I´m in the midst of a ton of goodbyes, and the house is slowly getting cleaned out in preparation for my departure on Monday night.

I´ve spent this last few weeks getting some travel in, I spent a week in La Paz exploring museums and bundling up against the terrible, freezing cold. With the altitude and the fact that La Paz is just a series of hills and staircases, it was a rough week but I saw some great art and interesting museums. The Coca Museum is tiny but fascinating and they have a whole museum about the loss of the coastline to Chile. It was great.

That trip was followed by a week in Santa Cruz where heat and humidity reigned. I took an expedition from Santa Cruz out to a couple of the Jesuit missions of Chiquitos. I only made it as far as San Javier and Concepción, but I´m told that they´re the important ones anyway. There were beautiful and very very strange, these enormous church complexes out in the middle of a bunch of cow towns six hours out of Santa Cruz. I took a bunch of pictures, but I don´t think anything can really capture what it´s like to walk down a dirt road in a tiny town, turn a corner and see one of these things after hours of seeing nothing but cows and haciendas from a bus. It´s very impressive.

I´m sad to be leaving Bolivia, to live for nine months anywhere makes that place important to you forever, I suppose and I´ve learned and grown so much during my time here that it´s hard to get ready to leave it behind. BUT I am so so very excited to come home, drink out of the tap, see people I haven´t seen in so very long and enjoy my family before I´m off for the next adventure. I hope to see those of you who are in Seattle while I´m home. I´ll be around until the very first days of August and I plan on enjoying every bit of my time home. Come enjoy it with me!

So, much love to all of you. Thank you for reading the chronicles, and who knows, there may be a Thailand series as well...

LOVE!

Mollie