***************************
We headed south from Peru into Bolivia - a land-locked country with two distinct sections, the Andean highlands, which contain many "world's highest" things, and the jungle-filled lowlands.Lake Titicaca
Keeping to our rapid travel pace, we mainly saw the world's highest navigable lake from the windows of our bus as we skirted the west shore to cross over from Peru to Bolivia. Once in Bolivia, we enjoyed lunch on the beach in Copacabana followed by a brief ferry crossing (of us and our bus). Also, we enjoyed some great views of snow-capped mountains (including Huyani Potosi, 6,088 meters, which Ben and travel buddy, Mike, climbed five years ago - crazy!)
La Paz
The highest capital city in the world is first viewed as an immense sprawling city completely covering the canyon under the massive Illumani mountain (which mainly stayed hidden behind clouds). We based our Bolivian travels with Norm out of La Paz, and when in the city, we mainly stayed in the witch doctor's market section of La Paz - cheap rooms, near the markets and travel agents, and complete with strange incense and dried llama fetuses to greet us on our way home (no pictures, sorry). Bolivia, like all of the South American countries that we've been traveling to, has slightly different levels of safety standards than we're used to, and this was brought home to us when Karen sprained her ankle on the less than even and steep sidewalks (not badly, thankfully) and Ben and Norm got to enjoy the city's creative use of electrical wiring (see photo). Many of the women in the town wore traditional dress, and we became very used to seeing their bright clothes and bowler hats wandering through the streets. During the inaguration of the new Bolivian president, Evo Morales, the indiginous people were out in force in their best dress to support this first ever indiginous leader.
Rurrenabaque
To explore the lowlands of Bolivia, we decided to take a tour of the Pampas region outside of Rurrenabaque. To get there, we needed a flight out of La Paz, so we engaged the help of Evelyn at Eco Jungle Tours (she speaks excellent English and is super helpful, so if you're ever in town...). Our flight out from the world's highest airport was delayed a day due to rain, and this probably should have clued us in to what was to come, but we pushed on anyway. The airplane was a 12 seater, reached a maximum altitude of 17,500 feet, and there was no cabin pressurization! We were gasping a little bit for air, but it was only for 20 min or so. We had a wonderful 3-day, 2-night trip into the Pampas (which were completely flooded at this time of the year - we did all of our touring from a 30-ft long motorized canoe which occasionally needed some bailing due to all the rain) where we saw tons of animals: 3.5 types of monkeys (squirrel, capuchin, and red and black howlers - the howlers put on a morning symphony for us...it sounded like something out of Jurassic Park), pink freshwater dolphins (Ben and Norm swam in the river with them), alligators (we had a resident gator at our campsite, Frederico, we fed him leftovers), big and colorful birds, and pirahnas (we fished for them). We also saw one anaconda, it was about 1 foot long...not so impressive.
We got a lot of rain during our trip, and when we returned to Rurre, the river had overflowed its banks to reach a three-year high - this involved flooding of the first block of town and our hostel (not really a worry, as the rooms were elevated...we just had to wade to breakfast). The rain had a serious downside, as the runways in Rurre are just grass, and they won't fly planes if they're wet. After two days of waiting and hoping for a flight, we gave in and hired a 4WD jeep for the supposedly 10-12 hour drive up to La Paz which included part of El Camino del Muerto (the Death Road) - the most dangerous road in Bolivia, averaging over 20 vehicles falling off the edge per year. It ended up a 17-hour nightmare sleepless night on the world's most uncomfortable seats...a grand adventure which we never want to repeat!
Potosi
We decided to use the remaining time to visit Potosi, a mining town. After spending an extra 4 hours on the bus due to a road blockade, we made it into Potosi and were instantly breathing hard, as this town is at a staggering 4,070 meters above sea level. They've been mining Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain) there for over 400 years - first for silver (which supported the Spanish Monarchy for two centuries) and now for other things such as tin, zinc, and lead. We took a tour of the mines, which started with a trip to the miner's market, where we could purchase gifts for the miners such as soda, coca leaves, 96% cane alcohol, and dynamite kits (dynamite stick, bag of ammonium nitrate, and 4-min fuse and detonator for only US$2). We then headed to a mineral processing plant to see how they extract the metals from the rocks. Let's just say it involved big, open, bubbling vats filled with such fun chemicals as hydrochloric and sulfuric acid, as well as cyanide. That, coupled with the huge, rotating drums and belt drives with no protective guards really had us on our toes.
The mine tour was no less exciting, involving a grueling 2-km underground hike/crawl through dark (only headlamps for light), low-ceilinged (sometimes on hands and knees over sharp rocks), muddy, dusty, arsenic-filled tunnels. We descended (and re-ascended) through 4 levels of the mine (about 45 meters), and several pockets of foul-smelling gas, rampant humidity, and high temperatures. Due to the altitude we were really gasping for breath at the slightest exertion, which was so nice given the extrodinary amount of dust in the air. After the tour, Karen sounded like Marge Simpson. It was an interesting insight into the mining conditions, as we were flat out, and we weren't even doing any work - we could also somewhat understand why they make offerings to paper mache "devils" (called El Tio) throughout the mine. The highlight of the tour was at the end when the guides showed us how to make a bomb out of the dynamite kit and an empty water bottle. Three brave souls from the tour made some, lit the fuses, ran off to put them down, and then you've never seen guys running/falling as fast as they could back up the hill to safety. The 4-minute fuses went off after about 2 minutes....but who's counting? Only in Bolivia! After this trip, we said goodbye to Norm and sent him off an a grand adventure of his own containing 50+ hours of bus and flight connections back to Australia.
Uyuni
In La Paz, we met up with Bernadijn and Anne-Maria, two Dutch girls we met way back at Spanish school in Quito and have randomly bumped into many times during our 3 months here. They were also interested in doing a Uyuni tour, so we decided to go together. Lucky for us, they got to Uyuni before we did and took care of all the hard work of selecting a tour (thanks again!). We were joined on our tour by three fun Brazilians, and the seven of us really enjoyed the amazing scenery that the altiplano around Uyuni has to offer, despite the fact that we spent the majority of our time stuffed into another Toyota Landcruiser. Our first day, we drove across a bit of the vast salt flat, which is currently covered by water (surprise, surprise) and visited a hotel completely constructed of salt. Heading out of town, we visited the train cemetery and were amazed at the skyscapes as we drove deeper into the desert.
Waking up to enormous volcanoes, we saw many wonderful vistas during day two. We drove through a valley containing strange lava rock landscapes spotted with massive, bright green, bulbous growths. We also saw our first of many flamingos, which populate the multi-colored lagoons in this region (they huddle together when it gets cold….and man did it got cold on this trip). We stopped at the “rock tree” for a picture before heading to the rosy red Laguna Colorado for the evening.
On our last day, we had an early morning start to see some steaming geysers next to burbling, multi-colored mud pots (the craziest thing was that they let us wander at will through the unmarked geyser field). Here we reached our max altitude for the trip at roughly 5000 meters (cold!). Our final stop of the trip was the scenic Laguna Verde whose volcano backdrop is shared with Chile. During these three days, we spotted a fair bit of life in the desert (besides the flamingos) such as the vicuñas, ever-present llamas, and funny rock bunnies (whose proper name we can't spell).
From Uyuni, we took a marathon three-bus, 33-hour journey back into the lowlands to Santa Cruz. We then headed into the jungle for two weeks of volunteering at an animal park - this turned out to be one of the most amazing experiences of our trip thus far....stay tuned for our next blog!
