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loss of freedom

next day I wake up to this puppy yelping like there's no tomorrow. there was a ¨whack¨, the puppy stopped and I'm wondering what horrible thing just happened. thankfully the puppy started whelping again in a few minutes. I'm glad that puppy is alive (of course I am!) but I'm also awake now...

we drop angela off at the road side to catch a bus back to putre and we start a day of ultimate dinking (no plan, no timeframe, no agenda and 2 bad maps). the farther up we drive, the more incredible the scenery gets. at the ¨top¨of the altiplano, we're in a massive valley (at 4500m) surrounded by vocanoes, lush green streams (especially strange after all the sand), vicuna's, llamas, and tons of WIND. we took loads of photos that I've now mostly deleted because we kept driving closer to that volcano and it kept getting more and more amazing.

we stopped in parinacota to see a cool church and look for a couple trails. a dude gave me directions in spanish. I caught ¨lapis¨and ¨derecho¨ so of course I knew this mean ¨follow the blue signs to the right¨...and sure enough we find a road road with blue signs to the right. it's fun & we get to test the clearance of our 4x2. we get stopped at a stream crossing - it's 6m wide and the road on the other side looks crappy. like a good coloradan, I get out to investigate before we plow ahead. the other side is impassable, so it's not worth trying the stream. I am signaling back to Guy and he's turning the car around - cool, we're on the same page. but actually, he's NOT turing the car around... I watch him floor it straight for the stream. the truck crashes into the water, plows into the muddy bank and comes to a dead stop, in the water. it's stuck...we're stuck. the left front tire is 3/4 in the mud, the back tires are skidding out (cause he's gunning it in reverse and digging it in even deeper).

¨crazy israeli, what the hell were you thinking??¨ (and I'm secretly wondering what I got myself into for 4 days). but I'm really not the angry type and there's no use yelling over something that's already happened. we walk back to town (thank GOD there's a town to walk to. tomorrow, is pure desolation) in semi silence. I start to feel better. I know this story is SO going on my website so what's not to love about it. and we have no agenda so maybe a day in parinacota wouldn't be so bad. but we actually find a dude with a truck and convince him to help us out. he loads a rope and a shovel, he asks ¨terra o rio¨, I say ¨terra Y rio¨...he shakes his head...

15 minutes later, he's pulled us out, Guy gives him a tip (clearly this was his expense, not mine) and we are on our way! are we really in south america, this got fixed way too fast?

we skip the hike - we have 2 hours drive in front of us (that we'll turn into 4 of course). we find smoldering volcanoes, SO many vicunas, a missing hot springs and with 1 hour of darkness decide to get to the salar de surire before sunset. cue 80km/hr on a dirt road - this won't be the last time. we catch another amazing sunset over the white salar, find the sulfer smelling hot springs and get ready for a night of car camping.

all in all a good, lucky, random day.

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