Boliva is a lot more rugged than its neighbors. The roads are mostly packed dirt paths through the desert, the towns look like sets from a wild west movie and the women walk around in bowler hats and brightly colored ponchos.

We got an impromptu tour of some of the smaller towns when we made our way to lower altitudes after our desert adventure went a bit awry.

This women is walking in front of a church in a tiny middle of nowhere town that was built entirely by a mining company that came into to take advantage of the resources in the surrounding countryside. The church was originally on a hill but they moved it brick by brick and reassembled it after the town sprouted up.

This is a dusty car on the street in Uyuni. According to our guidebook the town exists almost solely on revenue from tourists. It was a strange ghostly kind of desert nowhere town that looked like something out of another place in time.

This is a cup of tea made from the same leaves that they make cocaine from. The tea doesn’t get you high or anything but it does give you a little energy and take the edge off if you’re hungry.

This is a pile of plastic bottles I saw behind a little shack restaurant on the edge of the salt flats that we ate in. I always wonder what countries without potable water do with all the plastic trash they generate.

This is the bus that I spent half of my birthday on. The front says Mercedes but I just don’t think I can believe it. Desert dust seeped in through the cracks in the windows and the little TV blared Bolivian pop ballads so loud that they were distorting. It rattled my bones all the way from Uyuni to Tupiza but I guess I really can’t complain for $8.

This is a little creature that we dubbed Dread Dogg. It’s a sad little long haired stray that after too much time in the desert has started to go a bit rasta.

And lastly, my Spanish sucks so I have no idea what this says. Do you?