Setting the Scene...

It turns out, a number of people (including my parents and sister...oops) have been asking me where exactly I'm going. Therefore, I thought it would be useful to give y'all some of that info! Plus it'll be way easier to do this from the US than from Bolivia, or at least, I'm not paying for this time as directly here...

Tomorrow, I fly out of DC (where I am now) and into La Paz, Bolivia. (check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_paz). Its the highest altitude capital in the world and is in a part of the Andes called the altiplano. Which basically means, its really really freakin' high. I'll spend a few days- a week there until I at least partially adjust to the altitude and can successfully climb stairs, plus do some exploring of this really cool city! Here, I'll meet up with my friend/colleague Sara Becker and my advisor's colleague Sergio Chavez with whom I will be working.

From there, I tag along with Sergio and his gang of students to Copacabana (not the famed one of song but still. That song will be permanently in my head... be glad you won't be around to hear me humming it constantly!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copacabana,_Bolivia. Copa is on the shores of the best lake in the world, Lake Titicaca, which incidentally means Grey Puma in Aymara, the local Andean language. I'll be gathering some data from some skeletal collections in Copa for my advisor and definately be doing some exploring of the local sites. This town is pretty squarely set on the tourist path of South America, so compared to my prior experiences, this will be posh living!

After being in Copa for 2ish weeks, I'll meet back up with Sara and then we head into Peru together, to a small town in a really cool valley called Moquegua. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moquegua. I'll be doing more labwork here and bumming around seeing stuff. There are a ton of archaeological sites in this valley because it was basically the frontier line between two competing pre-Inca Andean empires, Wari and Tiwanaku, not to mention local people who always lived there. So there's a lot going on! I'll hang out around here and probably head into Arequipa, the 2nd largest city in Peru about 3 hrs away by bus, on weekends. Finally, I fly out of Arequipa on July 28 and arrive back in North Carolina July 29!

Phew, that was long. And I'm supposed to be showering... so... gotta go! Call me by tomorrow at 3 if you want to hear my lovely voice one last time before I leave :) Other than that, next time I'm writing I'll be in Bolivia!!

Love,

Sara