So much to write and so little memory. I decided to tour the mines while in Potosi and boy am I glad I did. Imagine decending 100 meters underground in a space 2 feet high and 2 feet wide with so much dust in the air you literally choke the whole time and 110 degree heat. That is the mine in a nutshell. And the best part is that the people who work there do it 6 days a week for 12-14 hours! Of course they chew Coca leaves, which is what cocaine is derived from, but even with the aid of Coca leaves, it would be brutal. I was down there for 2 hours and felt like I was going to pass out and die. And not only do they work down there, they set off dynamite everyday in order to extract the mines. Unsafe you say? You have no idea. The mines collapse like monthly because they have asolutely no structure or organization and end up blasting into other people's mines causeing collapse and massive deaths. Such is life in Bolivia.

The next day I took a bus to Uyuni and on the bus a girl sitting behind me rather rudely asked me to move my seat forward because she didn't have enough room. I very bluntly told her that I was 6'3" and it's a tough world so deal with it.

When I arrived in Uyuni and booked a 3-day trip to the Salt Flats and Chile, I arrived to the agency the next morning and guess who was in my group of 6 people... the rude girl from the bus. We ended up laughing about it and making friends and the entire trip I hung out with her and her boyfriend who were from England. We saw the salt flats which were amazing, cactus island, red lagoons, pink flamingos, and steaming geysers. We ended the trip with a couple of days in San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro is a little tourist town in the world's driest desert and it was so different from Bolivia it seemed like a trip to a luxurious resort. The food in San Pedro was amazing, the wine amazing, the service amazing, and the people incredible. Met up with a Swiss guy named Alex and a serbian buy and we spent the next couple of days together partying and hanging out.

Left the next day for Santiago on a 24 hour bus ride. Sat next to a woman who was returning to Santiago after her eldest daughter's wedding. It was a fun bus trip trying to communicate with her and her 2 daughters who were 14 and 15 in broken spanish. The hostel I'm staying at now is called Casa Roja and is in the center of Barrio Brasil which is the party/college part of town. Should be a good night. Tomorrow I'm scouring the city looking for a place to watch the UGA vs USC game, and if I can't find a place here, I'll buy it off ESPN.com and watch it on the laptop!