Into the heart of darkness

Today is my last full day in Sucre so I wanted to take some time to put up one last note. Today I learned why a lot of people do not eat food on the streets. I left my house today with a beefy tuna salad sandwich. Half a block from my house a large german shepherd mut started following me, then another joined, then another...I was starting to get nervous. I was so intent on keeping an eye over my shoulder that I stepped in a pile of dog crap...that pissed me off. I yelled at the dogs, they didn´t care. I finished the sandwich, they didn´t care. Finally I detoured up a really steep hill..they didn´t like that. Anyway, enough talk about dog shit. Tomorrow is my last lesson and then I catch a 7pm night bus to La Paz where I am going to try and catch a flight if they have room to the jungle village of Rurrenabaque where I will spend about 4 days, 2 nights on a jungle tour where I will actually be sleeping in a camp in the jungle. Orginally I had not planned on going to he jungle do wasn´t completely prepared but over the course of this week I picked up the essentials, msquit netting, bug spray. 32 tablets of doxycycline to help prevent malaria, sunscreen, plastic bags..etc...etc. Needless to say, i won´t be sending emails or making phone calls. But, i´ve always been intrqued by the jungles and enjoyed the discovery channel programs so whilst I am so close, I am going in. Thanks goodness my mom is still on the appalachian trail and can´t read this until i am already safely back from the jungle!

Its tough to leave sucre. have become very comfrtable here using the publc trans, shopping, living etc...its been really great and really affrdable..did mention the perfect weather every day.

To conclude this post I want to get into one of the many thoughts I have been pondering since being in Bolivia. Actually more of a hstory lesson I guess...i like history. Why is the US so big, wealthy and powerfull and what should we do with these attributes. The two continents (north and south america) are not really all that different. Both have tons of natural resources, similar weather, similar port access, etc etc. Both were settled in similar time periods. However, there are some marked differences between the histories. While all original settling of the new world were for greed, the explorers did not find a lot of wealth in north america. Our first settlers arrvived not with aspirations of wealth by means of precous metals but through religious freedom and starting new lives. In south america, the explorers found native indians with lots of gold and silver in additonal to wealthy mines. This led to settlers who were set on exploting the mineral resources and basically, stealing from and enslaving the natives. Now, I will pause for a moment because it is important to note that in NA the native indans were also slaughtered, enslaved and disregarded because they were inferor and lived on valuable land. I have read a little history on Bolvia which is named after Simon Bolivar who interestingly enough played a huge role in most of the currently establshed countries in SA battles for independence. Once independece was won, Bolivar wanted to create a ¨Grand Colombia¨essentialy another Uinted states of south america but the individual areas fought the effort and eventually formed what we now know as South America...but Boliva still wants back its coastline that Chile won from it some years ago. In fact many Bolvians feel it still belongs to them. So, from what I can tell once the grand colombia fell apart the history of most SA countries has been soiled with corruption, fraud and general mistrust of government. People here are very proud of their individual countries but almost no one totally trusts their gov´t officials. And I am not talking distrust like we have...but on a much greater scale. As shifty as we see our govt, people here have great respect for the integrity of our system and our generally sound political system. Anyway, when I look at the question of why we are so big, powerful and wealthy...I am not sure how to answer (except for the fact we have 15 Trillion in debt). People here work exceptionally hard and in substandard conditions...i don´t think I can say we work harder than them..maybe we work in a different way (smarter?) Anyway, I can only reach the conclusion that our success is somewhat based on our willingness to work together as a united country both in goverent, in business and in life so that we can continue to create an environment where anyone has the possibility of success. I think its a good campfire discussion. Think about it..........