Malia Obama went on a secret three-month tour of South America late last year, and was eating pizza with friends when Donald Trump won the election.
A photo surfaced on Thursday showing the first daughter smiling on a mountainside with a group of other young people during an excursion in Bolivia.
The 18-year-old, who graduated from high school last summer, is currently taking a gap year before starting at Harvard next fall.
President Obama’s eldest daughter traveled with a Colorado-based group called Where There Be Dragons.
She spent spent 83 days exploring the Andes mountains and the jungles of Peru and Bolivia.
A description of the trip online says young minds get a chance to ‘examine current political trends, social movements and environmental conservation efforts in the two countries.
Gregorio Mamani, one of the three brothers who runs a five-day hike through Bolivia on the trip, said they were notified in November that they would be hosting an important American dignitary – but they had no idea the VIP was Malia.
‘There was a blond girl and we assumed she was the important one,’ Mr Mamani told the New York Times.
Mr Mamani said the first daughter received no special treatment during the trip, and that she pitched in just like everyone else with the chores, including cooking.
The only sign that there was someone of importance on the trip, was the added security detail.
‘She was very humble, chatty, spoke Spanish very well,’ Mr Mamani said. ‘She was mesmerized by the Bolivian landscape.’
The trip coincided with the final weeks of the election, and Malia was reportedly out for pizza in the town of Tiquipaya the night that Donald Trump clinched the presidency.
At his last press conference on Wednesday, President Obama revealed that his daughters had been disappointed with Trump’s election.
‘They were disappointed,’ he said. ‘They paid attention to what their mom said during the campaign and believed it because it’s consistent with what we’ve tried to teach them in our household, what I’ve tried to model as a father with their mom and what we’ve asked them to expect from future boyfriends or spouses.’
Bolivian news outlets reported that President Obama called Bolivian President Evo Morales personally, asking for extra security for his daughter.
The White House has not commented on the trip, or confirmed whether Obama and Morales spoke.
Morales, the country’s first leader of indigenous ethnicity, has tried to meet with Obama for several times but has been rebuffed.
He has claimed several times that the U.S. conspires to undermine leftist governments like his own. The two countries have not exchanged ambassadors since 2008.
SOURCE: Daily Mail – Ashley Collman
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