“What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do – especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.” – William Least Heat Moon
I know I’ve skipped from Ecuador to Bolivia, missing out on a blog about Peru but as we are flying out of Lima in December, I will write about Peru and all its wonders later. So Bolivia…..we started our travels through Bolivia by visiting Copacabana and the island of Isla del Sol in Lake Titicaca. Isla del Sol was one of the most beautiful places we have visited on this trip, the sun shines brightly, the water is a vibrant sparkling blue and we saw the most amazing sunset and sunrise. It was a great place to relax, read and eat amazing trout!
Onto La Paz we went, capital city of Bolivia and the highest capital city in the world sitting at 3660m.a.s.l, Although the exhaust fumes of the many collectivos used to ferry people around the city can become hard on the lungs, La Paz surprised me with its beautiful Gothic buildings mixed with high-rises, indigenous people selling anything imaginable mixed with Mestizos going to work in their suits and great restaurants including one opened by the same guy who owns Nova in Copenhagen. Finally coming towards the end of our trip, we were also able to dabble in a bit of shopping (yes family there may be some xmas presents for you :)).
To break up the trip to Uyuni we decided to spend a night in Potosi, famous for their mines and once being the richest city in South America due to the copious amounts of silver being mined there. Although mining still occurs, the city has now become one of the poorest and a lot of the beautiful Spanish architecture has been covered in tagging. We chose not to visit the mines, as watching people work in appalling conditions didn’t really appeal to us, instead opting to have a relaxing day in the hot pools out of town and exploring the huge local market.
The biggest reason for me to come to Bolivia was to visit the Salt Flats (Salar de Uyuni) and get the obligatory photos. This area has the largest salt flats in the world and as it is dry season there was nothing there but us, vast white ground and the blinding blue sky. We were really lucky to be with a cool group of people with creative minds so we had a lot of fun making photos on the first day. As we chose to do the 3 day tour which finished in Chile, the second and third days consisted of visiting the most amazing, dramatic scenery I have ever seen – lagoons of all different colours, active volcanos, huge flocks of flamingos, geysers and hot pools.
We are now so excited to be off to Argentina. As their economy becomes worse and worse and now with the existence of a black market dollar ($1 = 15 pesos), we are going to have a lot of fun eating amazing steak, drinking fantastic wine and we are hoping to make it down to touch a little bit of Patagonia.
Explore-ゆめ-Descubrir 