Bolivia

After a night's stay in La Quiaca, we walked across the border and entered Bolivia. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the US visa cost recently changed from $135 per person to $60 per person...good omans for this new country! :) Bolivia was never really on our radar prior to this trip--a place made famous by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, as well as being a partner country included in the ¨Dakar¨, a long distence race for various off-road vehicles. The race was originally run in Dakar, but due to instability in the region it was moved to northwestern South America. Upon entering the country we saw many signs, statues and tricked out off-road jeeps and trucks emblazoned with the Dakar symbol. We would soon learn that there is so much more to this country that sits almost entirely above 2000 meters.

That same morning we jumped on a train with our travel companions, Tiago and Helene, to Tupiza. Tupiza is one of the jumping off points for the world renowned Salar de Uyuni (Salt Flats) tour.  The three night/four day tour brought us through the most remote regions of southern Bolivia--a high altitude desert so barren, you spent hours at a time wondering if you had landed on another planet.

 

Quebrada de Palala

Awanapampa Region

We peed outside...A LOT!

Hot spring! 

Back on the road. Very stark landscape.

Laguna Verde

GoH Team!

Zorro sighting

Super hot geiser at around 5000m. Need air...cough cough!

Deep Red Laguna Colorada

Arbol rock formations in the desert

Hotel made of salt

Best part of the tour THE SALT FLATS!

Sunrise over the flats

Playing with perspective

 

Another hotel and statues made with salt

Salt collection and drying

A train graveyard outside Uyuni

Uyuni local market

After four solid days of being in a jeep traveling for 12 hours at a time, traveling over rugged back country trails, we were completely sick of being on the road. Even so, Uyuni wasn't much of a town, so we were eager to get out and head to La Paz for the next leg of our Bolivia tour. So, we arrived to Uyuni around 1pm and were on a night bus out of town by 8pm. Talk about torture! We were already so exhausted and uncomfortable from sitting for so long...I think our muscles were on the verge of atrophy, and then the driver told us to buckle up, it was going to be a bumpy ride for a bit. For four straight hours, we bounced around like a pinball machine over some of the worst roads we have experienced in all our travels. It wasn't until about 1am when the roads smoothed out and we could actually get something resembling a night's sleep. At 5am we arrived in La Paz and began our search for lodging. Once we landed in a place, we didn't do much of anything for the rest of the day.

The highlight of our stay in La Paz was the Death Road bike tour. There was only one way to describe our bike tour...SMASHING! The tour consists of a full day of downhill biking on a combination of asphalt and loose gravel roads with the rocky mountain wall on one side and a 100 to 200m ledge with no guardrail on the other. Before embarking on this journey we signed our lives away and assured the company that we had our own travel insurance in case we hurt ourselves. We geared up in helmets, elbow and knee pads, and full biker suit. Also, the bikes were very advanced with full suspension and very good brakes. Even with all this gear, some 300 people die on this road each year! The trip was incredible! Gliding down thousands of meters of altitude was as exhilarating and adrenaline-filled as any other high thrill activity we have ever done. Despite the warnings to go slow and be particularly careful around the sharp turns, Blair's 12-year-old sense of adventure (and apparently invincibility) got the better of him. On the very last turn of the Death Road, Blair, unable to stop in time, did a ¨power slide¨ (his words) into the back of a parked tour van, smashing the window to pieces. Thankfully, all that was damaged was the window--the rider walking away with nothing more than a sore shoulder and bruised ego. Needless to say, the tour company was not happy about their broken window, and after checking that Blair was not in need of a hospital, proceeded to demand we pay for the damages. We basically laughed in their face because the van was parked in the worst possible spot--between the van and the bikers hanging around the van, there was barely space to get by. It's one thing to sign your life away to the dangers of the Death Road...but unexpected obstacles placed around blind corners by the tour company itself?? Get serious. 

See this ledge above? An Aussie guy fell off this exact spot a few days after our trip. He fell about 50 meters, breaking multiple ribs. He caught the whole thing on his GoPro...it's pretty ridiculous how it happened. Check it out HERE

La Paz Witches Market

From La Paz, we made our way to the border of Peru. We spent our last Bolivian night in the town of Copacabana on the shore of Lake Titicaca. At 3,812meters, Lake Titicaca is considered the highest navigable lake in the world, and in Andean beliefs, it is considered to be the birthplace of the sun. We caught a boat from Copacabana the next morning and arrived at Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) for a beautiful day of hiking before crossing the border into Peru that night!

 

 

Views of Isla del Sol