Blogs from Bolivia, South America - page 571

After Sucre the girls and I headed to Cochabamba. We had a spectacular light show on the bus trip, as we watched lightning constantly striking the distant hills. Cochabamba wasn't the nicest place I've been to in Bolivia but it gave us a chance to work out Visas and search, rather exhaustively, for places to eat (it's a pretty sad day when the finest dining experience you can have is in a restaurant called 'Dumbo', that has a giant elephant attached to the roof). From Cocahabamba to the most amazing experience so far; 3 weeks spent doing volunteer work at an animal refuge in Villa Tunari. ''Inti Wara Yassi' ' houses Capuchin, Spider, Squirrel and Howler monkeys, many pumas, ocelots, birds and tortoises, all of which were rescued from lives in captivity, often where they were ... read more

The next day, I got a bus to the town of Potosí. This was actually my first “proper” bus in Bolivia and I had been dreading it as I had heard so many tales of people getting robbed. I can understand why a dirt-poor Bolivian would see my stuff and want to rob me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want it to happen! I’m travelling by myself so would be particularly stuffed if something did go missing. As my bag is too big for me to have it with me on the bus, I thought I’d experiment and buy a cloth shopping bag (like everyone uses round here), put into it the stuff that I could replace relatively easily if it got nicked into it, and put that on the roof of the bus. This ... read more

Arrived in Uyuni early in the morning. The bus trip was relatively relaxing and I slept OK. I now had time to kill before my three day tour began. Uyuni is a railway junction in the middle of the deserts of SW Bolivia. The railways have declined in use, but now the town does a trade in taking tourists to see the incredible scenery nearby. I walked just outside the town in the “Train Cemetery’ where I got some nice photographs of old trains and carriages that have been dumped here. At about 11, we left on our tour. The first day was the incredible Salar de Uyuni. This is the world’s largest salt flat and is a huge expanse of white salt. Quite an incredible place! You just drive and drive and drive over this ... read more

You left us in Santa Cruz in the east of Bolivia. It´s a bustling metropolis where American cultural influence is quite apparent. Only 10 years ago it was still a regional town. However, it has now grown bigger than La Paz. The hotel that we chose proved to be our saviour. Hotel Globetrotter is an oasis of calm in the surrounding maelstrom. The proprietor used to work for the Scandie airline SAS. He had travelled throughout Europe and much of the rest of the world, picking up five languages on the way. The name Globetrotter came from an old SAS offshoot business, but he is the real globetrotter. He had resettled in the city of his youth and now spent his time running a very comfortable hotel in the centre of Santa Cruz and tending to ... read more

The Cordillera Real is a mountain range that sits between the high lands and the jungles of Bolivia. It is only 40 km across but drops from 6000 m to nearly sea level in the jungles. We decided to take one of the famous treks here known as “El Choro” trek. Again we just packed our bags and off we go. No more donkeys, guides and cooks. We started off at 4900 m in a near white out blizzard and walked a very old Inca route that dropped down to 1300 m near the jungle. Most interesting point about this trek is some great unrestored ruins and Inca steps. The change in weather from the altitude difference also left something to the imagination. Really pretty walk but very hard as a lot of the down was ... read more