Blogs from Bolivia, South America - page 584

sucre is beautiful. only a 2 or 3 hour taxi ride from potosí, you drive into the town and pass by its white buildings and amazing central square. good things. daniel, the swiss, and i visited the casa de la libertad, the country´s old parliament. you see, the capital of bolivia used to be only in sucre, but as la paz grew in stature, it steadily sucked away all the parts of the central government until sucre was left as only the judicial capital. bolivia is the world´s only country with 2 capitals. the casa de la libertad is very interesting, though i won´t bore you with details. they have a very bitter exhibit explaining the war bolivia fought against chile when they were left with no access to the sea. bolivians are still extremely upset ... read more

Sorry folks, its been a while since i´ve written, but i am a lazy man on vacation. Lets begin with about 2 weeks ago when I embarked on a 4 day, 870 km tour of the southwest portion of Bolivia. i was alone for this leg of the trip - tom was nursing his death road wounds in la paz and chrissy was out galavanting with bolivia pcvs. this is known to us travellers here on the gringo circuit in south america as, ¨the salar trip,¨ because the highlight is supposed to be the ¨salar de uyuni,¨ a salt flat that is unbelievably white in the dry season and full of water in teh wet. right now is the wet season, so the pics you will see whenever i get around to adding them will be ... read more

Another day in La Paz, I took care of some administrative tasks (laundry, reservations for my upcoming trip to the Salar de Uyuni, wine) and took a day trip to the semi famous Moon Valley of La Paz. I took a micro (1.80Bs.) through the entire town to Mallasa (where the valle de la luna is located). The bus ride took me through a very rich looking district of La Paz and actually took almost an hour. La Paz is a lot bigger of a city than i had originally thought. Upon arrival at the valle I popped in my new Juanes CD (to those of you who don{t know who juanes is, you are losers) and rocked out while meandering through the paths in the valle. It is an odd sight. I didn{t have anyone ... read more

Carnaval in Oruro was eventful if nothing else. Chrissy and i took the 630am bus with Miguelito (bolivia pcv) and his sister. By 10 we were settled into a huge apartment with about 15 other people (all peace corps). There we would be sleeping on the floor for 110Bs (cheap by carnaval standards). Soon we were hard at work making water balloons - the chief attraction of carnaval in oruro. From our 4th floor balcony we rained down a storm of american firepower not seen since hiroshima. people scattered, we developed stealth techniques for more effective mayhem, and it was a lot of fun. . . . . . for about 30 minutes. Twas then that I had the bright idea to throw a water balloon at a passing car. I managed to peg it right ... read more

Chrissy and I took the 4 hour bus from La Paz to Copacabana to catch the big party they throw there on February 2. We were worried that there wouldn{t be any hotels with room for us as feb 2 is a big tourist day in Copacabana, but we easily found a hellhole to crash in for only 10Bs (a little more than a buck). Me being in a bad mood, we decided to finish off the gin we had purchased way back in arica a week earlier and hit the town. We quickly polished off a nalgene full of gin and tonic and proceeded to tequila shots and more beers. soon we found ourselves sitting on the floor of a bar (no, not because we were drunk but because they had some japanese motif going ... read more