LA PAZ

December 19, 2018
             We met up with Kenny and Anton at the Lima airport. The four of us arrived at 2am to a very dark and rainy La Paz. Our driver met us at the airport, a young attractive woman named Pamela who speaks perfect English. The airport is just under 13k feet, and we all felt it right away. It was 3 am before we went to bed and we got up at 8am. I felt like shit all day, but I think a lot of it has to do with the lack of sleep.

The hotel is unbelievable! It is a "design" hotel, which means it has received an award for architectural and design excellence.

Every room is warm and welcoming.

The 360-degree view from the rooftop is stunning; I honestly don't ever recall staying at a hotel with this gorgeous of a view.

​ Our first task was to take care of basics - get a SIM card for Kenny, get Bolivianos, and things to drink. Even the slightest incline is taxing for all of us 50-somethings, but not so much for 14-year-old Anton. I think we walked about one and a half miles, and Kenny announced he was done. He definitely is having a harder time; he says his left leg just doesn't want to lift at all.

So it ended up being the three of us that went downtown for the city walking tour. Our first taxi driver was a crazy driver and very unfriendly even though Anton tried talking to him. Thankfully, Anton's original language is Spanish. We raced up the steep hills and rounded curves that should be at 25mph and he was probably going 50mph. I held on the whole time, because, of course, the seat belts don't work. It took us 35 minutes through the winding potholed roads to get to the mall where Anton was picking up a soccer shirt that he ordered. That 35-minute ride was about $2.90!

We then headed down to the chaotic downtown area. Robin found a TripAdvisor recommended restaurant called The Higher Ground and we had an excellent quinoa burger and really good Wi-Fi.

We walked back to the San Francisco Basilica to meet our tour group. It ended up being about fifteen people total, and Robin and I were older than everyone by at least 20 years. That's what usually happens on these "free" walking tours.

One observation about the dogs... They can sleep anywhere. These two never moved once despite 15 of us standing over them!

The Bolivian people are really short. Many of them, including men, are less than five feet tall. Of course, this is because of poor nutrition.

Some of the women dress like other South American women, tight clothes, fashionable boots, lots of makeup, while others dress in the traditional Bolivian wear. I did learn one new thing today. If a woman has her bowler hat tipped to one side, it means she is single and flirting. If it's straight up and down, it means she is married. There was also a third position that means “its complicated”. Match.com for Bolivians!

Our first stop was the Witches Market. We crowded into a stall and no one knew that baby llamas were hanging above us until our guide told us to look up. They use the fetuses for good luck especially when constructing a new home or business. These llamas haven't actually been killed by someone, but were stillborn. Llamas may have multiple babies but usually only one survives. (Plus they are considered sacred in Bolivia, so no one would purposely kill them).

​ It started raining and Robin put on a rain poncho. She looked hilarious. The humpback woman in the shiny blue trash bag. If only she had the selfie-stick she just bought... then I would really have to pretend like I didn't know her!

Next was San Pedro prison, the largest prison in La Paz. It is renowned for being a society within itself. Significantly different from most correctional facilities, inmates at San Pedro have jobs inside the community, buy or rent their accommodation, and often live with their families. The sale of cocaine to visiting tourists gives those inside a significant income and an unusual amount of freedom within the prison walls. Elected leaders enforce the laws of the community, commonly through stabbing. They have actually stoned to death pedophiles. The prison is home to nearly 3,000 inmates (not including the women and children that live inside the walls with their convicted husbands), with additional guests staying in the prison hotel. At one time the tours would go inside, but it became too dangerous. Unfortunately, we didn’t go very close to it and my only photo is from across the street.

The backwards clock in the large town square was installed by the current president to represent “new thinking and policy”. Also, the president believes that because Bolivia in in the Southern Hemisphere, the clock should run the opposite direction.

When I saw a man with a ski mask, my first thought was to be alarmed. But then I saw all the shoeshiners with masks and thought maybe it was the fumes (even though they are inches from the curb with exhaust fumes). It turns out that to be a shoeshiner is such a lowly position, that they hide their faces!

​ Across from the backwards clock is a building riddled with bullet holes. This incident happened in 2004 when a corrupt government was selling gas to Chile while the Bolivian people had none. The president sent the military in to quell the angry people, but the police sided with the people and so the military and the police fought each other for three days. The president was eventually ousted and now lives in Maryland on money he stole from the Bolivian people. The movie “Our Brand is Crisis” starring Sandra Bullock is loosely based on this particular president. The Bolivians left this specific building with the bullet holes as a remembrance.

​ We walked down a narrow, picturesque street called Calle Jaen. The locals don't like it because it's supposedly haunted by slaves. People say that they hear the screams at night and if they actually live on this street, they hire priests to bless their house.

We caught another three-dollar taxi back to our fabulous hotel. Kenny did not go with us because of the difficulty walking. Thank God he made the decision to stay behind, because it was a very taxing walking tour. We met him up at the rooftop bar for the amazing views.

Dinner at the hotel was by far, the best dinner yet!

EL ALTO/TIWANAKU/LAKE TITICACA

​December 20, 2018

We did our trip Tiwanaku and Lake Titicaca today, with Pamela driving a giant passenger van.

It wouldn’t be a long trip in terms of distance (51 miles), but once you figure in giant potholes, slow moving trucks and traffic jams, it takes way longer.

         Some of the facts we learned on the way:

• Bolivia has 36 cultures and 12 languages. It is 60% indigenous.
• It’s a requirement to learn an indigenous language of the region if you are a politician and lives in that area. The laws also require that schools teach an indigenous language.
• The current Bolivian president had ties to coca. Because of tension with the DEA, they have a strained relationship with the United States. (Maybe that’s why our two Visas were $320?)  

The buses and cable cars were paid for by two opposing political parties. Because they compete with each other, it’s been good for the city. The buses currently have their indigenous logo (a puma) in a Santa hat on the back.

The wealthiest Bolivians live in very colorful “chalets” that can run up to 2.5 million dollars. They are very colorful and featured in some travel magazines.

Like the ride through rural areas in most countries, there was a lot of poverty and trash. We found LaPaz to be fairly clean, but filthy in the countryside.

Homeless dogs are everywhere! They all lie just a few feet from the road like they are watching a parade. Thankfully, Robin has become somewhat desensitized to it and doesn’t say “that poor dog” every time she sees one.

​ After about an hour and a half drive, we finally arrived at Tiwanaku. This a large ruins that goes back to before the time of Christ. Walls are over 2500 years old. Some things date back 15k years. No one knows how these ancient cultures moved these massive stones to this area, but the theory is that Lake Titicaca was higher and came this far inland. Tiwanaku was influential to many later cultures.

The light comes through the doorway on the spring and fall equinox. The rock at the top of the archway weighs 60 tons and is all one piece.

We were at the ruins for hours. Both Kenny and Anton really enjoyed it and Anton in particular loved conversing with our toothless guide (he spoke no English, so Anton had to translate). As a consequence of the time we spent there, both were quite sunburned. I'm so glad that I put on 50 spf before we left!

Some other tidbits: It is believed that 70,000 people lived here at one time. The number seven was a very important number because there were seven chakras, so there are seven stones between each pillar.

The History Channel visited recently and shot an episode because the alien chasers believe that aliens built this place.

For lunch, we ended up at a farm restaurant next to the ruins that screamed "food poisoning" to me.

That was not the case and it was an excellent lunch.

Robin and I played it safe by having an omelet instead of having a meat dish.

Before we left, our driver said she had a surprise for us. We walked through the cows on our way to a small shed.

Inside were thousand-year-old dead bodies (mostly just the skulls). We certainly weren't expecting skulls! For the upcoming Christmas holiday, people leave items for these dead people of what they think they want for Christmas. So some of these skulls had little bowls of cigarettes next to them!

From the dead shed, it was only 20 minutes to Lake Titicaca.

For about nine dollars, two Bolivian naval officers took us out on a small boat. It was nice being out in the fresh air, even if it wasn't for very long.

Now it was time for our long 2+ hour drive back. Pamela had told us there was nowhere to go to the bathroom, but with all the water we are drinking (because of the altitude) Robin was not going to make it. We had to stop in El Alto, which is a really rough city of one million people. Pamela even escorted her since it's not the greatest area. Robin described it as a really bad US gas station, complete with shit all over the floor.

I tried to capture the roughness of El Alto, but one must be there to experience it.

The altitude is about 13,000 feet, so I was glad when we were descending to 11,000+ feet. (Plus the drive into La Paz is much more beautiful!)

It's such a contrast that the chalets sit right in the middle of all the poverty!

We stayed in the hotel again that evening and used room service. One of the downsides to staying in these beautiful hotels is that it is such a welcome reprieve from the chaos of the city; it sometimes becomes too easy not to venture out.

UYUNI and Salar de uyuni

​December 21, 2018
        

Pamela picked us up at 5:30am for our 30-minute drive to the airport. We checked our bags since Amaszonas Airlines had very limited size/weight restrictions. It was only 45 minutes to Uyuni; the tiny airport only has four flights a day.

After walking around the very poor town looking for a place to eat, we ended up at this awful restaurant named Sal Negra (Black Salt).

The room was probably 90 degrees, and the propane they were cooking with filled the airless room.

They never brought my pancake with caramel, but Robin's pancake with honey was undercooked and tasted like eggs. I was happy that I never got my food.

The Salt Hotel is interesting, but certainly all rooms aren't created equal. Robin and I were able to check in early, but the room smelled of sewer gas.

Meanwhile, Kenny and Anton got this fabulous room and appear to have one of the only rooms with an exterior window.

Everything in the hotel is made of salt!

While it looks like I'm standing on sand... it's all salt.

I asked if we could move, so we now have a non-sewer room that is much better but instead feels like a sauna inside.

We walked around the small town. Kenny and Anton bought a colorful baby llama wool sweater for Olga.

Some workers were putting up a large Christmas tree made with liter size empty plastic soda bottles.

Over the next few days the plastic bottle tree was spray-painted green and then had lights hung. Very innovative!

Smart to have a sun UV rating monitor.

Robin was VERY concerned about the hot dogs in the package with no refrigeration!

Later, we went to this excellent restaurant called Tika. Compared to the awful lunch earlier, it was heaven!

​December 22, 2018

What an amazing day! The others got up at 3am to do the stars/sunrise tour, but I knew it would be too cold and too tiring.

Although they took some great pictures, the moon was very full so the stars weren’t as bright.

Robin said I would have hated it out there... if she was feeling the cold, it was cold!

         

I got up at 6am and Robin arrived back at the hotel about 15 minutes later. We walked down to Tika for breakfast and had an excellent buffet breakfast.

We took some photos of the art in the “median” of the gravel road. The town is very small and you can see most of it in an hour.

We shopped at some of the stalls and bought a few T-shirts.

​ Our guide, Jose, picked us up at 11 for our Salt Flats tour. Our first stop was the train cemetery.The trains were once used between Uyuni and La Paz for mining silver and other metals. Now there is only one train that comes through twice a week. The trains date back to the 1880’s and the Bolivians created the cemetary as a tourist attraction. Something like this would never work in the US, because it’s many accidents waiting to happen. Robin and Anton climbed to the top of several, but Kenny and I did not.

This was as high as I was going to climb...!

There were so many people there... interesting attraction (for about twenty minutes).

From there, we drove quite a while until we got to the actual Salt Flats.

​ There are no words to describe them. It’s so vast and bright; you only see white in all directions.

The salt is in hexagonal patterns and the salt is really hard in some places, but full of moisture in others.

Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flats in the world, about 7200 square miles. It’s SO bright, that when I stepped out of our tinted window vehicle, I thought I had my regular glasses on and not my sunglasses. You think that you are on a frozen lake. In climate mapping, satellites recognize the flats as ice.

The mountainous areas in the distance look like islands (and they do call them islands). There is a mirage-like quality, as if the islands are floating in air.

​ Our first stop (with 40 other Toyota land cruisers) was at a salt mine owned by several families.

They showed us the drying out process and where a few women bag approximately 5000 bags EACH per day.

However, this stop was mostly to sell us something, since many of these people rely entirely on tourism.

We were glad there were bathrooms since there are very few on the all-day tour, but these were closed.

We stopped next at a few places where the water bubbles up from the earth. Really, no need to stop here at all.

After a few pictures at the Dakar monument (an off-road endurance race) we continued on to lunch at the original Salt Hotel.

Fun fact about the hotel - There is a rule against licking the walls to prevent its degradation. But why would you ever lick where a thousand others have?

Other tour groups setting up lunch inside the old hotel.

While all the other tours were eating inside, Jose was setting up for us outside.

Lunch consisted of cooked vegetables, tomatoes and cucumbers, quinoa and beef. I didn’t expect it to be much of anything but was pleasantly surprised!

​ In front of the hotel there are many flags. Apparently the tourists hang them; the Bolivians do not officially hang them.

Anton found both a Colombian and Russian flag, but surprisingly there was not one from the US.

However, Robin and I found our flag.

After paying and getting our toilet paper square to use the bathroom, we continued on. (Everywhere we’ve been so far doesn’t allow you to flush toilet paper, you must use the basket instead. However, I’ve remembered maybe 60% of the time).

Jose was a very fast driver and did not drive on the “roads” like the others. He owns the tour company and has 16 vehicles. Anyway, we were cruising along as fast as 75 miles per hour. It’s more crunchy than bumpy, and was not an unpleasant ride.

We stopped to do our trick photography shots, and again, thank God for Jose. He had to lie flat on his stomach on the hardened salt, because to get the correct angle you have to put your iPhone flush against the ground.

We had a lot of fun doing this... I know it’s touristy but it still was fun.

We drove a LONG way to the base of Tunupa Volcano. It’s 17,880 feet tall. The yellow is sulphur and the red is iron.

Next was Pia Pia Island (Pia” means cave). We were the only people there because only Quechua (Jose’s company) goes there.

We climbed up into the cave, and it was the first shade we had in five hours. I kept covered the entire time with 60 SPF. The Columbia sun hat I bought at one of the stalls was the best $5 I ever spent. If not, you are sunburned literally within minutes, being so close to the equator as well as 13k feet up.

The lone cactus at the mouth of the cave only recently died, it was 700 years old!

We did a YMCA photo, except Anton did an "O" instead of an "A".

​ Afterward Pia Pia, we drove to the nearby Incawsi island. It is by far the biggest tourist attraction in the Salt Flats.

The whole island is filled with cactuses; some species are nowhere else on earth.

The cactuses are slimmer at the top because of very little water.

We had an hour to explore the crowded island. I wasn’t going to do the loop around the island because it was quite high up, but I’m glad I did because the opposite side of the island was in the shade. I think I took as many pictures as Halong Bay!

When we returned to our vehicle, Jose had removed the bikes from the top and told us to “start riding”

We rounded the island and rode the road towards town. He said he’d pick us up in 30 minutes.

Within a few minutes, Kenny and Anton were just specks on the horizon. Robin probably would have liked to go faster, but I’ve rode a bike maybe three times in three years. Thankfully, it’s flat. About 35 minutes later Jose came flying up behind us and the bikes were loaded onto the truck.

It was now sunset and Jose showed us how to take other photos with the setting sun.

He even had us do a time-lapse video that no one seemed to get right.

​ Finally the sun disappeared on the horizon. It was an awesome end to one of the best days ever!

Jose dropped us off at Tika for our third meal at this wonderful restaurant. I finally got to try the peanut soup! I had ordered it at our first time at Tika, but evidently “peanut” and “quinoa” sounded too much alike. I seem to be the only one who is having things lost in translation.

We trudged the seven blocks back to our hotel through a large crowd celebrating Christmas. This is the plastic-bottle Christmas tree complete with lights.

La paz

December 23, 2018

Jose picked us up at 7am for our Amaszonas flight back to La Paz. I have no complaints at all about this airline. Everything was on time and Pamela was there to meet us for our ride back to the beautiful Atix hotel. We were able to catch the last 15 minutes of breakfast.

Kenny had some work to catch up on and so the three of us ventured out to Moon Valley. Anton had such a long conversation with our taxi driver that the driver insisted he would wait for us to take us downtown. (I'm sure we also paid for it, but who cares about a couple dollars).

Moon Valley is quite the bizarre place.

All the formations are caused by erosion, and it's really only made up of sand and gravel that change to mud during the rainy season.

There are giant holes that go way down just inches from the walkway. Some of the mud "bridges" are falling apart and also look dangerous.

They have appropriately named it because it does look otherworldly.

Anton again chatted up our taxi driver for the 20-minute drive downtown. I asked him later what they were talking about, and he told me they talked about the Bolivian government. Not surprising for my very bright 14-year-old nephew.

The driver dropped us off at the Witches Market so we could shop.

Anton bought a few items and then we stopped back in at Higher Ground for coffee and a very strange-tasting Apple Crisp made with quinoa.

​Instead of taking a taxi back though the chaotic La Paz traffic, we decided to take the Teleferico.

It's awesome... quiet, efficient, and fast.

Plus the view is the best view of La Paz.

I would honestly have to say that this city has the most diversified terrain of any city in the world (that I've personally visited). Next up... Colombia!