Beautiful Bolivia

We arrived in Bolivia unsure of what to expect, with warnings from the guidebooks of a poor, crime-ridden country ringing in our ears. We didn't recognise what the described in our first stop, Sucre. It's a small, pretty town with whitewashed buildings and narrow streets.

One of Sucre's churches

Seat of Local Government

We arrived and tired but due to time contraints we had to organise a tour for the following day. We ended up with a whole day tour in a private car, with just us, driver and aguide. This meant Liz got lots of opportunity to practice her Spanish as we bounced along the dirt roads that constitute the mean highways in Bolivia. We visited an old waterfall which has sinced dried up, and a huge crater, which is believed to have been caused by a falling meteorite. This created cliffs of various colours of sand.


Liz inside the Devil's Mouth, an old waterfall



A Condor (we think)

Part of the huge Maragua crater we trekked in

  

Then we set off on a 45 minute walk to see some dinosaur footprints. At least, we thought it was a 45 minute walk. It turned out to be a 5 hour trek, none of which was flat, and that we'd misunderstood the guide. Once we got over the shock, the scenery was breathtaking, both for its beauty and for our lungs, as we had to climb to 3500m then descend back down to get to the footprints. We'd only arrived at 2750m the previous day. As a result we really struggled on the walk. Thankfully, the dinosaur prints were worth it once we reached them. They were left in the mud 64 million years ago, then covered in ash when the meteor hit and fossilised, only to become exposed recently due to erosion. They've been verified by the experts as belonging to a Tricerotops and a baby T-Rex. Pretty cool! It was especialy cool because we didn't see any other tourists or anyone other than the tribal people who lived in the area. This was verifiied by the visitor book, the  local lady asked us to sign, which showed that we were the only tourists who'd visited for couple of days! A truly authentic experience!

Typical Bolivian hill-farmer's house

Liz, local lady with her baby on her back and our guide

Baby T-Rex beat us here by 64million years

Once we made it down we also watched local lady doing some traditional weaving. They make fabrics with the most amazing patterns, which can take months each to complete. We bought ourselves a small one, but it wished we could have bought more - if only we didn't have to carry them for the next couple of months. We arrived back into the town as the worst thunderstorm imagineable started, with rivers running down the streets, making us very glad our journey on dirt roads snaking up and down the hillsides and wading across rivers was already complete.

Traditional weaving

Beetle splashes through the downpour

Next stop was La Paz - a big city in a valley at 3700m and sprawling up the sides. It was noisy, busy, conjested, polluted with diesel fumes, very edgy... and brilliant! The steep little roads are full of ancient, colourful buses, market stalls, and shops piled high with the usual tourist merchandise, but also with things only a local would want. In the Witch's Market this included dried llama feotuses for good luck!  Apparently, one placed the llama feotus in the foundations of a new house...nice! It was also the first place where we saw the Andean ladies dressed in their traditional clothes and bowler hats. The bowlers were brought over by British railway workers 100 years ago, and adopted by Bolivian women as a status symbol and they were them with pride until this very day :) We took an open top bus tour in the pouring rain, where we learned how poor the country is, but that the government ministers earn 40x the national average. They've recently brought in a pension for the over 65s, which would be quite generous if it wasn't for the fact that only 4% Bolivians lives to 64 years old or older....  

Dried llama feotuses - Anyone want a souvenir?

Looking down on the 3700m high city

Colourful La Paz

Fabrics waiting for tourists

Traditional local dress

We decided that mountain biking down the Death Road (supposedly the world's most dangerous road) in the pouring rain wouldn't be much fun, so we decided to leave that  event our next trip to South America, which we are already planning, and head to Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) instead.

Isla del Sol is on Lake Titicaca, South America's largest lake spanning 2 countries. We bused to Copacabana (the pretty little Bolivian one, not the famous Brazilian one) where we watched the local kids dressed in all types of costumes, during a parade to mark the beginning of summer. We then boarded the slowest boat EVER to the island. The island is incredibly steep, so we had to recruit a donkey to carry our packs up to the hotel at the top whilst we wheezed our way up on foot. Annoyingly, our tour operators did not inform us of anything useful that we needed to know, such as 'steep climb with heavy ruck sack at high altitude!!!' Sadly things went downhill for us from there. The hotel was FREEZING cold, Liz got ill and the food for the next 2 days was a choice of either of trout or chicken every mealtime.  Although we did manage to find a local restuarant that cooked mighty fine Pizza. Life saver!!! On the upside a couple of saving graces were the spectacular view from our hostel and the cutest, frueindliest baby donkey :) Marc also visited a small ruined Inca temple. We have to admit that we couldn't wait to get off the island. On the mainland we immediately crossed into Peru, the subject of our next posting.

Our coach crosses part of Lake Titicaca on a raft

Kids parading through the streets

Two residents of Isla del Sol enjoy the view

Isla del Sol sunset

 Although our time in Bolivia ended on a low, it's a beautiful place, but has almost no infrastructure, so getting anywhere takes forever and guides and trips aren't that professional - but that's the beauty of travelling, right?. Despite that, we'll definitely be back to visit again, to see more and to tackle Death Road and the Salinas del Uyuni.

It's cold in here! And I don't feel well!