la paz ... how does one describe la paz ? one could start with the meaning of the word in english ¨the peace¨ but that hardly comes close to describing the city. if i use my own words, then this is how is would start: hustling, bustling, pumping, grinding, people walking up the street, across the street, down the street, jumping on buses, jumping off buses, people yelling at you to get on their buses, people asking to to buy things from them, things like, watches, laptop bags, jewellry, hats, gloves, fresh orange juice, pirated CD's, DVD´s, VCD´s, packs of [View Full Entry]

---

---

Uyuni is a town not very close to anywhere else. In fact its a long and windy dirt road from most places, which in a bus with a driver who may or may not have had any previous driving experience can be a terrifying or an exhilerating experience. depending on how you look at things. Uyuni was our next destination due to the intrigue of the amazing salt plains and the vast countryside that we would experience out there in the surrounding Salar de Uyuni. We dusted ourselves off after our bus experience out of Potosi and we were warmly welcomed [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well, this was a strategic decision. As the whole salt flats and lagunes experience was overfilled with natural beauty, we thought it best to create a separate story for all the frustration built up during the 3 day journey...... So here goes. There's only so many things you can do as a tourist to safeguard yourself from any sort of bad/mal-practice, fraud, robbery (not that that happened so far), lies, etc etc, and we thought we had many of our i's dotted and t's crossed. Not in this one. OK, it was a Toyota LandCruiser, generally the most reliable 4WD [View Full Entry]

---

---

Potosi is memorable for a number of different things. its the world´s highest city. this means that the natural process of "breath" becomes something to be treasured and wandering around the city streets is something that takes a little more time than usual. opening a bottle of anything fizzy is a timely and humorous process. being the world´s highest city, Potosi also boasts things like, the world´s highest museum (the mint building) and the world´s coldest museum (the same building). things can also be exaggerated for fun and soon one finds oneself at the world´s highest cafe, drin [View Full Entry]

---

---

As promised, some more pics from Sucre! Our last full day there was spent doing a day hike toward rock painting, an old local Inca Trail, and pretty much enjoying great vistas all the way. As said before, as pretty as the white city is, it´s surroundings are possibly even more spectacular! Some pics are attached here of this hike, together with Jen and local JoyRide guide Charlie. Also some pics from our second game of "walley", which is a sort of volleyball game, except it´s played in a squash court, and you´re pretty much allo [View Full Entry]

---

---

The long awaited "break" from travelling, finally, we got to a point where we just had to unpack the bag, hang everything up in a wardrobe (it´s the simple things that matter here), and just not move..... Sucre. I don´t think we could have picked a better city for it. It´s big enough to have decent facilities, but not too big (like Santa Cruz) to have way too much anoying traffic. That, and it´s pretty too, most buildings in blinding white, and world heritage listed! Last but not least, it´s cheap as chips!!! We stayed in quite a lovely hotel the [View Full Entry]

---

---

Oh well, might as well write this of my chest whilst I´m still feeling the coffee-buzz amplifying 5 days (excluding Good friday and the weekend) of pure frustration. I´m not good dealing with idiots at the best of times and thankfully I´ve never realy had to deal with any in a work situation. So far we´ve experienced Bolivians as friendly and heavilly underpaid. I think by now we have discovered there´s a reason why most of them are underpaid: - They have no sense of urgency. - They have no concept of service, or helping people in any simple way. - [View Full Entry]

---

---

As mentioned before in Santa Cruz, being off the organised tour now, we more or less make up our plans as we go along. This was another example. After a very nice stay at La Vispera, we got excited about NOT getting on a long distance bus to Sucre. Also, there was word that some of the roads to Sucre were closed for large vehicles as parts of the roads were washed away with the heavy rains at the begining of the year. And this is how we end up in another one of these old converted Japanese taxis to take [View Full Entry]

---

---

There were several reasons why we didn´t jump in one hop from Santa Cruz to Sucre. One being that we´d heard some interesting things about the town and some old Inca ruins at El Fuerte (the fort). The second being the "Splurge" caption in the S American Lonely Planet. Now by now, we´ve come to loathe this very out of date piece of travel guide, however we did check the website of Finca la Vispera and Bin was taken with the idea to kick back for a few days in a very large herb garden! Considering we got straight of the [View Full Entry]

---

---

So trip No. 2 then, courtesy of a Bolivian travel agent, who´s name we have forgotten, but it´s also the name of an indigenous tree (in case you´re looking in Santa Cruz, it´s in the Andrea jewelry shop, near the main plaza, but they´re not open between 12 and 3pm). The whole trip seemed a bit chaotic when booking, but made more sense after more questions. One reservation was that we´d be backtracking in the direction of the Brazilian border, and also doing it with the infamous "death train". We still haven´t found out why it´s called this, though have a [View Full Entry]

---

---