Missing Missing 7/31/9

No, don't worry, Woody is NOT missing. He writes to tell me stories but only a line here or there. Buenos Aires has been nice, good times with A*** and G***** and adventuring about. It is quite a large place and the SPOT, although working has been requiring over 40 minutes of "open sky" time which is hard to come by in a large city, especially when staying on the 9th floor of an apartment building above a busy street. I've assured him that we don't need the updated maps if he is in the same place. I'd probably be more worried if he were standing in Argentinian traffic just to notify us.

You may have seen the recent NY Times article about the fabulous historic district bars throughout the city. Very cool. Pa and I are hoping Wood has tried the delicacies, like blood sausage, canned eel and sweet and sour pork.
check it out at: http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/travel/12journeys.html?scp=2&sq=Buenos%20Aires&st=cse

Is Woody frequenting these places? Place your bets ladies and gentlemen...

Going back to the days of crossing the salt flats in Bolivia -- he wrote to say that he lost another camera (pretty sure this is number three but truthfully, I've lost count.) I'm going to try and post a picture here:





From Wikipedia:
"Salar de Uyuni (or Salar de Tunupa) is the world's largest salt flat at 10,582 km² (4,085 square miles). It is located in the Potosí and Oruro departments in southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes, 3,650 meters high. The major minerals in the salar are halite and gypsum. Some 40,000 years ago, the area was part of Lake Minchin, a giant prehistoric lake. When the lake dried, it left behind two modern lakes, Poopó Lake and Uru Uru Lake, and two major salt deserts, Salar de Coipasa and the larger Uyuni. Uyuni is roughly 25 times the size of the Bonneville Salt Flats in the United States. Also, Salar de Uyuni holds half of the world's reserves of lithium, a metal which is used in high energy density lithium batteries."

So Woody is bouncing along the flats, apparently keeping his camera strapped to the outside of one of the panniers. A*** and G**** are up ahead and pause for something like a flat, as I recall. Wood looks to take a photo and realizes his camera is missing! Most likely recognizing that I would skin him for losing another one, he decides he better "just run back a ways". Why not bike, you ask? Oh, because he was afraid he'd run out of gas. Wouldn't that be unfortunate? So he starts jogging through the salt (look at those mounds and read the stats, can you imagine finding ANYTHING out there?)

The charmed young traveler crests a mound and what does he see? You guessed it folks, he found the darn thing. It was filled with sand and didn't work for three or four days but has apparently since resumed its functions. What next, I must wonder, SPOT in the toilet, camera in the sand...

-- luludilly