Nuestro Compañero en la Playa

We're back online on the lower campus, but it will still take some time before I can get the photographic highlights from Chile (and all of Adrian's visit) up. In the mean time, who can resist this dog? He accompanied us during the entirety of our long beach walk. Adrian was seriously considering bringing him home: he was curious without being annoying, affectionate without being clingy, persistent without being petulant and energetic without being demanding. He'd make the perfect running partner and he didn't even have fleas. The sand did though. Wait 'til you see those pictures. Wow.

Semana Santa

I'm not sure what to make theologically of the strong emphasis placed on Jesus' passion and suffering and the almost after-thought status that the Easter resurrection itself gets here in rural Bolivia. But I know that carrying the cross between stations (it was only a few dozen yards probably -- but it was heavier than I thought so my walking speed was one of efficacy rather than meditation) and seeing the gathered community alight with velas during the Vigil are memories I won't soon forget.

View from the top of the world (sort of)

Before we flew to Chile, Adrian and I got a ride up to La Paz from my comrade Moises (who, in addition to being a professor of Psychology and English here is a sci-fi author and the doctor who stitched up Adrian's thumb).

Here we are on our way to checking out an ancient Inca Road. The elevation is somewhere around 14 or 15,000 ft but its effect on Adrian merited the title he gave it: "the top of the world."

[There are more photo essays coming: Adrian's thumb gash, the vineyards of Chile, a long hike on an impossibly long beach, and lots from Semana Santa here in Carmen Pampa. They'll be coming slowly since our web connection is gone on the lower campus. Thanks for your patience.]

Yes I was hiking in the freezing cold without socks but no Moises and I didn't hike the ridges with our eyes closed. (All our cameras' batteries were drained so, combined with the cold, the timing was a little goofy. I had to resort to the very-personal battery-warming trick I learned in Antarctica.)