Amazing Adventures: Josh Renaud in Bolivia
Part travelogue, part love story, this weblog follows Josh Renaud's trips to Bolivia. Since marrying his Bolivian fianceé, Yoli Zegarra, they have had four kids — with whom they now travel to Bolivia.
My father-in-law recently bought a laptop. He has used it to Skype with us occasionally while we were in the States, and that was good. I think it help the kids get ready for the trip to Bolivia.
Now that we are here, we have been trying to help him set up the laptop: adding favorites to his web browser, creating a Facebook account, and adding games to his hard drive (so he doesn’t waste money playing internet games).
We brought a bunch of DVDs to watch with family here… but since I don’t have a power cord for my PowerBook, we are unable to watch them. But, we did bring four short movies we filmed on our video camera showing Jadzia and my parents. Since these were on the camera and not the computer, we were able to show them.
We hadn’t intended to stay in Oruro more than overnight, but our train turned out to be leaving a day later than we expected. Here are some photos from Oruro.
Well, just wanted to let everyone know that we are safe and sound in Santa Cruz. We arrived Thursday morning, and it is hot and humid here (it just rained tonight). We are staying at El Jordan, the same place where we were married in 2003.
After having found out that we would have to stay in Oruro an extra day before moving on, we decided to check out some local attractions. The first place we went was the mirador at the top of the Faro, a sort of lighthouse or beacon set on top of a huge rock near one of the edges of town. From there we had a spectacular view of Oruro. The city begins against several yellow-brown mountains, and then spreads across the plain below them. It was a long walk to get there, but from that high place we spotted some interesting buildings far off that we later walked past.
Monday was a tough day at the Seminary. They’ve been facing an incredibly tight budget and now they have a personnel problem as well.
It was frustrating for me, because I wanted to purchase web hosting and get the site online before the day was over. But Rusty, the rector of the seminary, was busy most of the day and couldn’t come until late in the afternoon.
On the lighter side, Louise took a photo of Yoli and I with her digital camera, so enjoy!
On Monday I grappled with a PC and came away from the battle victorious.
The problem computer belonged to Rusty. Our goal was to get digital photos he had on his home computer onto my computer. The easiest way to do that, I thought, would be to hook up a CD burner to his computer and burn a CD.
But in a typical illustration of why PCs are inferior to Macs, his home computer had trouble understanding “plug-n-play.” Rusty had trouble getting the drivers for the CD burner installed by himself, so in the morning Yoli and I went over to give it a try.
I forgot to post one of my entries from last week when I visited the Santa Cruz Zoo. If you’d like to read about it, click here.
Anyway, I’m no longer “wrestling” with the electric shower. Instead, we’ve settled into a strange sort of daily dance.
Tuesday was “Eat For Free Day” for me. For breakfast, I ate again with Arnold and Greta Wry, who have basically told me that any time I want to eat breakfast with them is fine. Then for lunch, Yoli and I were supposed to eat with Glennie and Marilyn Wry, but Marilyn was sick, so someone else cooked. And for dinner, Yoli took me to see her friend Gina and her husband for dinner.
But much more happened throughout the day.
Day two of my Bolivian experience ran the gamut. This entry was written Friday night, but I couldn’t post it until Saturday (today).
I woke up early Friday morning and prepared to take a shower. Thankfully the guest shower has hot water. It doesn’t use a hot water heater like in the U.S. Instead it is an electric shower head that heats the water as it flows through the head. I was a little scared of the thing, truth be told. I envisioned being electrocuted or something. Actually, it worked well. The problem was that the water pressure was too high and caused the bottom of the head to pop off. I had to screw it on several times before I got it tight enough to stay.
Continue reading “The Club, Bolivia-style”
