If you read my itinerary you might have realized that I was supposed to fly out on the 10th of July from Santiago de Chile. I realized a couple of weeks ago that I might have some extra time in Bolivia with nothing left to do. As my schedule in Europe was a bit tight anyway I decided to fly a bit earlier. Unfortunately (or luckily) there were no earlier flights out of Santiago so I decided to visit my favourite city Buenos Aires again and fly from there. Another nice side effect was that I could arrive in Germany just in time for the semi final of the world cup. Dur to the tight schedule and the silly departure times of the busses I was not able to watch the Germany Argentina game. At the ... read more

Potosi owns a couple of superlatives. It’s the world’s highest city at 4070m, was once the riches city in South America and once had more inhabitants than London or Paris. That Potosi was founded in 1545 is thanks to the Cerro Rico “Rich Mountain” which contained huge amounts of Silver. The Silver content of the ore mined exceeded up to 70 percent. Today the content of metals is a maximum of 30 percent and always a mixture of different metals. Millions of Indian labourers were forced to work in the mines and many of them died young due to appealing conditions and mercury poisoning (Mercury was used to separate the silver from the stone.) The good silver ore depleted sometime around 1800 which led to a steady decline of the city. Today there are still over ... read more

La Paz is the worlds highest capital city at a altitude of 3,600. That means three things. First the city is in the Guinness book of world records, second it's cold and third you are out of breath if you walk up two stairs or a steep road of which they have plenty here. Not much to report from here as I spent most of the time either shopping, trying to send a parcel home, in my hotel room in my bed trying to get rid of the cold I got at Lake Titicaca or sitting in internet cafes writing travel blogs. My hotel is quite nice and I even have international cable TV but when you step out you feel like you are in Israel. The area around the hotel was completely taken over by ... read more

Lake Titicaca is (and here comes another superlative) the highest commercially navigable lake in the world at over 3800m. It is also mentioned as one of the highlights of Peru in my guidebook. What they don’t mention that it’s also a freaking cold place and not that interesting. Did I mention that I disagree with my guidebook? Ok it’s not such a bad place as it might have some attraction to some but let's start from the beginning. I arrived in Puno after a nice 8 hour bus ride from Cusco. You really have to say that some South American countries have the bus system figured out. There are busses going left right and centre all the time and you can go from cheap cattle class (speak no leg room, dirty and slow) to super luxury ... read more

Cusco is the longest continuously inhabited city in South America. It was the capital of the Inca empire and the seat of the last free Inca before the Spanish disposed of him (speak murdered). One of the literal translations of the word Cusco is "Centre or navel of the world". The city was planned to be shaped like a puma and with a little imagination you can see that. It had four quarters each representing one of the Inca provinces. A road was build from each province to the capital and each province leader had to have a house in Cusco and live in it for a while each year. The city must have been quite impressive and must have had many well build buildings. None of them survived as the Spaniards tried to erase the ... read more