Bolivia (1)

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Well, another country down, so time for an update on our travels through Bolivia. This has been an amazingly diverse country to travel through, from the jungle regions to the north, to the large cities of La Paz and Sucre, to the highest city in the world Potosi at 4100m above sea level to the freezing lake salt named Salar de Uyuni and lagoons.

We started Bolivia in Copacabana, just over the border from Peru and still on the shores of Lake Titicaca. At the time, there was also a huge festival going on over the Virgin of Copacabana. It seemed like half of Peru had come across the border for the celebrations and we struggled to find some accommodation. The parties went on all night with music being blared from loud speakers until 4am, which went straight through the paper thin walls of our room, so we didn’t get much sleep while we were there. This festival was also a religious celebration, and the virgin is a huge statue on top of a nearby hill. All the people coming to the festival came to pray for what they wanted to happen in their lives over the coming year as well as get their fortunes told. It was quite funny the way they did this; if they wanted money, a house / car or some other item, they would buy a model size of it (cars/ truck / house), and / or fake money; and these were walked to the top of the hill, placed under the virgin statue and blessed by praying and then spraying beer over them & lighting fire crackers! The whole three days we where there, there was a huge line that snaked all the way up the hill of people waiting to take their turn to bless their items under the Virgin. We took a walk up the hill on our last day there to check it all out which was fascinating, however the hill was a disgusting mess as there were no toilets or bins to be seen anywhere, so you can imagine what it looked like after 3 days of the festival and thousands of people having passed through there.

Off the coast of Copacabana, about 1.5 hours by boat, there is also the Island of the Sun (Isla de Sol), mythological birthplace of the Universe according to the Incas. This island is about 8km in length, and there was a beautiful 3 hour walk we did from one end of the island to the other, before staying the night in one of the villages on the island. Unfortunately, Patty got quite sick not long after we started the walk (dizziness, no strength), so the walk became a marathon of endurance for Patty as we limped our way across the island, stopping every 20 minutes for her to rest, before finally reaching the village (where Patty then slept the rest of the day, and night away).

La Paz was our next stop, the largest city in Bolivia and the highest capital city in the world at 3600m above sea level. The city itself is built in a huge, steep valley with buildings perched all the way up the sides of it to the altiplano above. We used the city as our base for about 2 weeks. One of the strangest and most unique things we did here was visit San Pedro Prison, a fully functional prison in the middle of La Paz. This prison has been made famous by a book called “Marching Powder” written by an English inmate who was detained here for a number of years. The unique part about this prison is that the prisoners have to pay their own way to live inside the prison, not the government! The prisoners have to buy their own food, buy or rent their cell, pay their own medical expenses, etc. In the anecdotes below we have written a bit more about the prison and our bizarre experience during our visit. We also ventured down “the worlds most dangerous road” on mountain bikes, which is a 56km stretch of single lane dirt road dropping 3000m from the mountains above La Paz to the town of Coroico, with huge vertical drops in some sections. (To be truthful, it’s not that dangerous anymore as 4 years ago they opened an alternate paved road, so 99% of the traffic now uses this road and only tourists on bikes use the old road, however approximately 5 tourist manage to die per year). A little hair raising at times, but the views were spectacular!

From La Paz we took a flight to Rurrenabaque, to the north of Bolivia which is an Amazon jungle region. The highlight here was the 3 day pampas (wetlands) tour we did where we saw an incredible variety of animal life (alligators, black caimans, the biggest rodent called Capibara, turtles, piranhas, pink dolphins, monkeys, sloths, many types of birds including herons, tucans and much more), went fishing for piranhas, hunting for anacondas (found a 2m one), and swimming in the alligator and piranha infested waters!

Another city we visited was Potosi, the highest city in the world at 4100m above sea level. In colonial times, this city was the richest in the world, due to the huge deposits of silver and tin that were mined here. The mining continues, however the mining is no where near as rich as it once was, and Potosi is now one of the poorest cities in Bolivia. The main tourist activity to do here is visit the mines. It was a pretty amazing experience to see how the miners work; still using pretty much the same primitive methods they did 200 years ago. We bought some gifts of coca leaves, cigarettes and alcohol for the miners, as well as some dynamite. We were then rigged up in our miners outfits, complete with head torches, and had to walk hunched over (roof height is designed for the short Bolivians averaging about 1.5m high) about 500 metres into one of the shafts and down 4 levels by rickety wooden ladders to see the miners at work. The miners use dynamite and ammonium nitrate to blast the rock, and then picks and shovels to break it up. Every few days they haul out the rock using buckets and rope to raise it to the main level, and then a trolley on railway tracks to transfer it out of the shaft. Back breaking work! Many of the workers only have a life expectancy of 15 - 20 years due to the silicon laden dust they inhale when drilling holes for dynamite and blasting. After our 3 hour tour of one of the mine shafts, we then went outside the mine and then got to blow up the dynamite that we had bought!

Lastly, the most spectacular tour we did was a 5 day trip around the Salar de Uyuni by 4WD, the largest salt lake in the world, spanning 10,500 square kilometres. The top 30 - 40cm of the salt lake is dried out salt, so vehicles can drive across its surface without fear. Its an amazing experience to be out in the middle of this lake, with nothing but whiteness to be seen for miles. Absolutely surreal!! In some parts, there are also islands that have been formed from volcanic activity, and on these islands grow these huge cactuses that have taken hundreds of years to grow. We stayed in hotels on a couple of nights that were built completely out of bricks of salt, the most practical building material in these parts outside of volcanic rocks and mud (we didn’t see a single tree at these altitudes 3500 to 5000m above sea level, apart from scrubby little bushes and grass tussocks). The nights were very cold, dropping down to -15°C, but luckily this time we were prepared with plenty of blankets and our sleeping bags. Also on the tour we visited numerous lakes, each a different color depending on the algaes and minerals that were in the lake. These lakes are also a breeding and feeding ground for flamingos, with millions of them coming each year. We saw huges packs of them on all of the lakes that we visited.

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