Two weeks in Bolivia and that is all I needed. The road to Le Paz, via Copacabana (not worth an overnite stay- Barry Manilow was talking about the hottest nightclub in Havana), was filled with turns and twists to get out of Lake Titikaka, then it was smooth sailing for a couple hours into LePaz. Le Paz is a city in the bottom of a valley, which is impressive to look above, though a big pollution trap with over 2 million residents, an aging bus system with no pollution controls and no clean air laws.
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| border crossing into Bolivia |
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| statue of Che Guevara on the outskirts of Le Paz |
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| BK had Eurocup fever! Teevee inside as you chomp on a whopper |
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| the view of Le Paz from my hostel |
Leaving Le Paz was easy to do. I was meeting a friend from San Francisco that I had not seen for over a year, when she quit her job, sold her stuff and packed her bags for South America and eventually landed in Buenos Aires. Our destination was the salt flats of Uyuni.
We met in Tupiza, where we started a four day, three night tour that took us through the southern tip of Bolivia, almost touching the borders of Argentina and Chile, into a parked called Eduardo Avaroa National Reserve of Andean Fauna.
The first day was mainly driving to get to the national park. As the brochure wrote, "we will drive through moon-like terrain as we enter the national park". The only real highlight of the trip was going through rocky dirt roads and water patches. Since we were so high in elevation, ice was present along these water patches.
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| wild ostrich |
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| llamas |
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| abandoned town. the residents picked everything but rocks up and moved 5 kilometers away. |
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| a lake higher than Lake Titikaka, though shallow and frozen in the center |
Days two and three began really cold (it was actually cold every day, because of the high altitude and the fact that it is winter down in the Southern Hemisphere), but continued through rocky terrain. Some highlights include pink flamingos, hot springs and sulferic springs and lotsa rocks.
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| rocks that make up a road |
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| frozen lake |
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| this area is called the Dali Desert, not by Salvador Dali, but because his paintings look like these rock formations and desertscape. Needs some melting clocks alongside it, though. |
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| hot springs, but too hot. |
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| scratch the picture to smell the sulfur |
The next three photos are from a lake that turns red. Our guide explained that this is due to the reflections from the sky. The whole lake looked red with the naked eye, though the camera saw something different, based on the angle, as seen in the first picture here...
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| alongside the red lake was this terrain. I suspect it was lava spewed from a volcano |
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| In the middle of the desert, there are several rock formations gathered. Above and below is the Rock Tree. |
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| flamingo popsicles |
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| we had lunch overlooking a smoking volcano |
Day four was the climax of the whole tour. Finally we would get to see the salt flats! We spent the previous night in a hostel made entirely of salt. Then we woke up before dawn and drove to the flats.
In the middle of the salt flats, there is a park that is populated by cactus trees.
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| not sure if the lamas are hanging out or if they live on the cactus island. |
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| the big thing for people to do is to take goofy photos |
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| a hostel on the salt flats, made entirely of salt bricks |
The final stop of our tour was at the train cemetary. Skeletons of railcars and locomotives have been transformed into art and also as a playground. There was a seesaw, swing and a few other things that would cause a mother to yell at her kids if she saw them playing on them.
After the tour, we got dropped off at Uyuni for only a day. The problem with the tour was that it was at high elevations caused altitude sickness and the bumpy roads caused motion sickness. The two combined was too much to handle for some of the people in our tour. Of the nine people, five got sick one way or another... I was fine throughout the whole ordeal - maybe the three months in Cusco conditioned me.
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| street pizza is common around here. A small push cart is equiped with a hot surface and closed to create an oven. Above is a cheese pizza- it is the quality of a frozen pizza from Geno´s |
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| Uyuni is taking their ass-fetish too far |
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| an odd statue in the main stip of Sucre dedicated to all the breastfeeding moms |
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| found in the town of Sucre |
After Sucre, we took a bus to Sucre. It´s not much of a town, mainly a college town. But hey, they have a Krusty Burger, which says a lot. The one touristy thing we did was go to a museum which housed a couple mummies...
Back in Le Paz, we hung out for a couple more days before returning to Peru. Below are a few scenes in the San Francisco church.
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| blue Jesus was painted for asthetics to go along with the blue paint job of the chuch´s walls |
