Bolivia 2012

My first travel to another continent all alone. Well, not exactly, because I went to visit J who was living for one year in La Paz. La Paz is located at an elevation of roughly 3500 m about sea level. While the rich people in other cities prefer to live on top of the hills to have a better view, here it is the other way round. They prefer to live in the valley, because the higher you get the less oxygen is in the air. 

On day we did a hike to the Muela del Diablo. Because I am not used to the air it was really exhausting for me, while my bolivian companion was kind of running up the hill. 

Our first weekend trip lead us to Sorata, a small village in the Andes. We were not that lucky with the weather, but at least our small bus didn’t stuck in the mud like others did.

J was dancing some traditional Bolivian dances, so we went with her group to the carnival in Cochabamba afterwards. It’s really fun this south American Carnival and I like that the weather is much more warmer than at the Carnival in Germany. 

Did you know that there is not only a Cristo staute in Rio de Janeiro, but Cochabamba has one too?

From Cochabamba we continued our adventure to the south of the country - Tupiza. It looks like the wild west there. We did horse riding and felt like cowgirls.

We wanted to see the salar de uyuni and decided to participate in a guided jeep tour that lasted four days. But we had to wait one more day in Tupiza for that. There is not much to see in Tupiza, so we did a daytrip to Argentinia.

On our jeep trip we got to see so many nice landscapes and I think the pictures are speaking for themselves. 

 

Finally we arrived at the salar de uyuni, which is the biggest salt desert of the world. We have been there during the rainy season, so parts of the desert were covered with some centimeters of water.

The last thing we got to see on our tour was the cemetery of trains which is located close to Uyuni.

J didn't have any holidays anymore, so we went back to La Paz. It was quite an adventurous bus trip. In the middle of the night we just stopped in the middle of nowhere. No one did tell us what is going on, so we were sitting for hours in the bus. In the end it turned out that the street was going through a small river and a bus before us got stucked. Our bus driver was afraid to go through the river and wanted to wait until the other bus was towed. But it was a difficult buisness to get out the bus of the mud. So he decided to pass the river. For not being that heavy, we all had to get out of the bus and walk barfoot through the river...

Back in La Paz I decided to visit Rurrenabaque and spend some days in the jungle there. I fed monkeys and alligators, tried to catch piranhas, swam with pink dolfines and searched for snakes.

My last weekend in Bolivia I spend with J at the lake of Titicaca, which was a really nice end of my visit.