Happy Holidays from La Paz  --  Dec. 20, 2001 Dear Family and Friends, We wish you a wonderful holiday season and a very happy New Year. Today is our last day in La Paz, Bolivia.  Tomorrow, we were supposed to go on to Argentina, but riots there have led the government to declare a State of Seige.  For the moment, we are diverting to Chile.  We hope to head to Buenos Aires in a week or so if the situation improves. Since our last update, we managed a whirlwind tour of Incan ruins near Cusco, Peru, and found that prefer volunteer work to bus tours and hurried sight-seeing.  We then spent a couple days on Lake Titicaca and visited some of the intersting islands there (see our website for photos.) We reached La Paz by bus and have spent a relaxing week with a high school classmate of Sherry's.  Kerri works for the US Embassy in La Paz and we found it very interesting to watch the visa process one day.  La Paz is a dynamic city built in an ancient lake bottom.  Bizarre towers of rock sediment ring the valley and make for great hiking.  Yesterday, we spent 5 hours walking down through a valley and narrow canyon to reach the pueblo of Palca.  Unfortunately, we missed the last bus back to La Paz and spent two hours waiting until we finally hitched a ride back. Also near La Paz are the ruins of a pre-Incan culture at the site of Tiwanaku.  We loved these ruins, because the carved faces on monoliths and the temple lined with stone heads gave them much more character than the cold gray stones found at most Incan sites. We have updated our website with photos from Tiwanaku and Palca Canyon.  Check them out at www.geocities.com/rauhjourney (they're on the second Bolivia page.) While we have enjoyed La Paz very much, we are looking forward to being near sea level again.  The air up here feels too thin (especially to miss Florida girl.)  Even people who have been living here for several years say they still get winded if they run up a flight of stairs -- it seems you can never get completely used to this altitude if you're not born here.