I´m in Potosi- finally!

Hey Everybody,

So we got into La Paz two days ago, but after having taken two buses, a ferry, and a taxi, I was not up to blogging about it. La Paz is huge! I wasn´t expecting it. Huge, and polluted, and very chaotic. The first night we got there, it was pretty much sensory overload. For whatever reason, the bus we were on decided not to drop us at the bus terminal but instead on some random road, which was more stressful than you might imagine. After eventually stumbling upon some dingy, but decent hostal, we pretty much crashed for the night. The next morning we woke up feeling much more equipped to deal with the craziness of La Paz. I discovered my love of saltenas, which are the best meat pies ever made! actually! They are juicy, and spicy, and probably one of the only Bolivian foods with a decent amount of vegetables to accompany the meat :)
We also bought our bus tickets to Potosi, and we were all good to go when we got an e-mail from Felipe approximately two hours before our bus was scheduled to leave. (Felipe is the guy in charge of the volunteer organization in Potosi). We e'mailed him about a week and a half ago to let him know that we would most likely be arriving on the 28th or 29th. We of course didn´t hear back from him, but we were not overly concerned because he is not the most prompt e-mail responder. In retrospect, perhaps we should have been a little more concerned, lol. So whatever, we open the e-mail, and it is Felipe telling us that he is actually taking a bus to La Paz as we speak, and will be there by morning. Consequently, he thought we should delay our travels to Potosi, so that we could travel together. Well then! Not sure if any of you have traveled extensively in South America, but returning bus tickets is not the easiest thing to do when one speaks limited Spanish and the people at the train station work on commission :)
We decided it might be a good idea to call Felipe, and so we found a locutorio and dialled the number that was supposedly his cell phone. At first it went to voicemail, and so I was left stumbling trying to compose a message that would make sense to him. At some point during my ramblings, someone picked up the phone. I assumed it was Felipe, and so we started talking, except that his Spanish is much faster than my own, and so there was much confusion. However, then the person I was talking to got all confused about my travel plans to Potosi, because he thought we were going for a couple of days rather than a couple of months. At this point, I began to become a little suspicious. Just who exactly was I talking to? When I asked him this, he said something that might have been to the effect of "I am Felipe´s brother", possibly he told me that he was not Felipe and had no clue what I was talking about, or possibly it really was Felipe and we had just managed to be mutually confused. Honestly I have no idea. Unable to maintain my composure on the phone, I told whoever I was talking to that we were heading to Potosi, and would write an email to felipe with the details of this plan. Upon hanging up, Em and I laughed until we cried.
So yes, now we are in Potosi, waiting for Felipe to get back here, at which point who knows what will happen. Nothing like a good adventure :)