From Bolivia

The last week has been a whirlwind. I arrived in Santa Cruz late at night on the 20th. (HOT) The next day Fr. Ramón Alaix, the Bolivian Jesuit Provincial and I flew to Sucre. (MUCH cooler.) Getting off the airplane I somehow managed to badly twist some muscle in my hip which caused great pain. (A week later, I still have a fair amount of difficulty moving around, but after a Doctor´s consult and some drugs, am doing much better.)

After two nights in Sucre, we drove up to Potosi, the worlds highest city at 14,090 feet. (Cold, windy and no heat in the house. Room temp when I woke in the morning was 50 degrees.) This was to visit a parish where Maryland Province Jesuit Fr. Bob Wiesenbaugh spent six year ministering to the miners in the parish. I don´t knokw how he did it. Twenty miners a month die in the mines there in Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain) which has been actively mined for the last 400 years.

From there we drove 10 hours through some of the curviest two lane road without guard rails I have ever seen to Cochabamba, where I am now preparing to depart from La Paz early tomorrow morning.

Here are some pictures from the early part of the trip. It is a small sample of the 900 I have taken so far. http://picasaweb.google.com/Bill.Rickle/Bolivia2007A