It's so nice to use an english keyboard. All the characters are in the right place.

So I made it to California, against all odds. To pick up where I left off, I flew into Lima and arived at 3:00AM. LAB (Bolivian Air) promised me transportation and accomodation once I got to Lima, but they were no where to be found in that airport. No one behimd the counter and no office. So while dodging the scavanger cabbies and allged security guards who wanted to take me outside (scarry) I found a travel agency and made arangenments for a hotel 15 minutes away from the airport. The hotel was in the old colonial district, but all I saw there were McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, major malls, grocery stores, hotels and about five casinos within a two block radius. The next day after returning to the airport my flights to the United States were surprisingly booked, so I hopped on the plane in Lima and it wisked me off to Los Angeles. And of course it was storming in San Fransisco so my flight there was delayed by 3 hours, which meant I would miss the greyhound to see Stephanie. So we made arangements that I would stay at Stephanie's parent's house and wait for her here. Once in San Fransisco I took the BART subway through Oakland, transfered onto a bus that took me to a train that took me to Tracy, California. I met an old black biker grandmother who was very sweet and helped me out a lot along the way. And thats what I did, and thats where I am now. A full day of planes, trains, and automobiles. And subway, and monorail to add to that list.

Now thats thats out of the way I would like to finally talk about my last few days in South America. The last part of the trip was in Sucre, Bolivia, where I did two things: Silver mining and more mountain biking. The mines were cool. They looked very dangerous and we were thinking that tourists shouldn't be let in there becasue of all the large ventilation holes where if we slipped we could have plumeted down through the mountain we were in. Anyway were all carying crackers, coca leaves, and dynamite to give as gifts to the miners we saw along the way. But we did save one stick of dynamite to blow up ourselves! It was lit in a cave about 100 metres away, and then we all sat together in silence covering our ears waiting for the explosion. And then we heard it, and it was so powerful that it shook our bones. Then we had to run out of there before the wave of dust hit us. It was fun.

I went mountain biking again on my very last day. It was different this time as we rode down dirt roads on the side of the mountains and not skinny trails. It was safer becasue of this, but we went really fast! We got the bottom of the mountain, loaded the bikes on the trailor, and then drove to another mountain to do it again. We did this five times and it was a blast. See my pictures of the mining and biking at
http://uwo.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2091295&l=8e0b5&id=58000349

Anyway that's it for Bolivia and Peru. I had a great time, had some amazing experiences, and met some incredible people from all around the world. It is something that I am really glad I did and I know that I will charish my memories forever. And I have the pictures to prove it. Now I am in California and I leave for the land down under on Saturday. See you there!