Tarija

After our two plus memorable months in Sucre, we headed on down further south to Tarija. We arrived early in the morning, arrived at the central plaza and with the advice from a local police officer, headed toward the central market for breakfast. Little did we know, that buy stepping into the breakfast area of the market we would also be stepping in to an addiction. For pastelles and sopapillas. They are nothing but deep-fried dough, one filled with cheese, the other just straight up deepfried.  Doesn´t sound special, but our unquenchable desire to consume them was. Fortunately we curbed back after a week bender, and continued onto a more healthy, routine breakfast diet.  Also what was noticable from the start, was how nice the citizens of Tarija were. Immediately upon sitting down with our first plate of pastelles and coffee, where we approached buy a couple who worked around the area, and they offered us any help they could, and from there it was just a taste of things to come, as everyone we came into contact with greeted you with a smile and sincere questions.  The hospitality of the people of Tarija will always be looked back upon as one of the highlights of our trip. One of the low points of our trip was the hostal we stayed at there, which was very unclean and underconstruction, but hey what the heck, we´re in Bolivia after all.  We stayed there two nights, and then after contacting our volunteer host, we headed a bit out of town to a little hostal ¨La Tribu¨ where we could camp in the yard at a lower cost.  We stayed there almost a week, and met many great people.  The place seemed to be a gathering point for vagabonding Argentines and they slowly taught us some artesenia weavings which kept us preoccupied while we waited for our volunteering to start.  El Jardin Saborati is where our volunteering to place, an urban organic garen run by Mauricio Chavez, who provided us with a place to sleep and breakfast in exchange for four hours of work, five days a week.  At first the work took a bit getting used to as we had been spending the last month and a half hiking nearly four days a week, and now were basically just stooped over in a lawn pulling out weeds. And my oh my were there weeds.  The actual area in Mauricios inclosed urban garden that was dedicated to growing plants was about 1/5th of the total area. The other 4/5th´s, weeds knee high. It took us the first week to pull the weeds, and sift the soil, but after that first week, we acclimated pretty well to our new enviroment, and then really were able to have some fun, planting and learning and expermementing with recipies of both Mauricio and our own. More to come later.....