La Paz, Bolivia

On Wednesday night we took a train from Tupiza to Oruro. We had read that the train is much more comfortable and much safer than the bus and, considering that Tupiza doesn't have an airport, we decided that the train was our best option. We bought the most expensive train tickets available on the most luxurious train service in Bolivia and it only set us back 50 euros. The train would take 12 hours to get to Oruro but we were not worried - we had semi-cama chairs, a dining cart and surprisingly clean bathrooms. What we weren't prepared for, however, was the extreme cold at night. Somewhat frozen, then, we arrived in Oruro at 7 AM. Oruro didn't seem like a nice town and is mainly known for throwing quite the extravagant Carnaval party (not really our scene), so we took a taxi to the bus terminal and were on a bus en route to La Paz at 7.30 AM. 4 hours later we arrived in Bolivia's capital.



When you read about La Paz in your Lonely Planet you kind of want to go straight back into the other direction. You read about taxi drivers who work together with local gangs and who will kindnap you to extort pin numbers. You read about fake police officers who will demand to see your passport (before stealing it, one presumes). You read about children spitting you in the face, distracting you so that they have the opportunity to slice your bag with a knife and steal your belongings. I even heard stories about women who had their earrings forcefully pulled from their ear lobes - auch! Add to that the fact that we had just come from the country and were a little bit intimidated by the thought of a big city and we decided that we would only stay in La Paz for 2 days. Now that I'm here, though, I wish that we hadn't already booked bus tickets to Lake Titicaca because La Paz is actually kind of great.

When you arrive in La Paz you see quite an amazing sight. I can best explain it like this: it is like you are staring at the Grand Canyon, and inside of the canyon there are millions of brick houses running from the bottom of the canyon up to the hills on the edge of the canyon, like a modern-day Zion hidden away in a crack in the Andean Altiplano. It also kind of reminds me of Valparaíso, although it is certainly not as colorful. Still, when the millions of lights come out at night, the city feels quite magical. As always I read up on safety issues, beware my surroundings and everything was fine. I have come to believe that a smart head on your shoulders is all you need to travel safely through South America. That, and ear studs.

On our first afternoon we walked around town a little bit and had lunch at Alexander Coffee, not exactly the most authentic Bolivian lunch experience, but their coffee is good. La Paz has such a great vibe and truly seems to be a mix between the old and the new. You will see men in suits walk next to older Bolivian women wearing traditional weavings and bowler hats. You can find a popular coffee chain in the same street as the Witches' Market where vendors sell llama fetuses for locals to bury near their homes for good luck. And unlike in, say, Buenos Aires, I feel that this mix doesn't make the city ugly but all the more interesting and beautiful (we still appear to be the only ones not in love with Buenos Aires, but it had to be mentioned). After lunch we visited the Coca Museum, which houses a small but very informative exhibition about the history and use of the coca leaf. Coca leaves and maté de coca are widely available in the Andes, but its use is being severely undermined by the US because coca leaves are also used to produce this nasty little thing called cocaine. The museum clearly promotes a message about being very pissed about all this, and although I wouldn't claim to be any sort of expert on the subject, the chewing of coca leaves and the drinking of maté de coca do seem pretty harmless to me. I had coca leaves on the South West Circuit and have really been enjoying drinking maté de coca. I leave the politics of it all to the politicians.







Today we went on a tour to Tiwanaku, which is an important archeological site in Bolovia and very close to La Paz. We were guided by a an insightful local guide who told us story after story about this pre-Incan civilization. There are not many ruins to visit, but we felt that it was a great introduction to what is to come at Lake Titicaca and, of course, Peru.







Tomorrow (already!) we take an early bus to Copacabana, which is not Rio de Janeiro's tropical beach in our case, but a Bolivian town close to the Peruvian border. We are staying at an amazing hotel overlooking Lake Titicaca in order to celebrate Jochem's 26th birthday in style. My 28th birthday in Phnom Penh seems like such a long time ago! We hope to explore Isla del Sol when we're there, which is supposed to be a real gem. But for now I'm still a little sad to leave La Paz already.



If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!

Tupiza, Bolivia

We stayed in Tupiza for 10 days, but I must admit that we haven't seen as much of it as we would have liked. We first arrived in Tupiza 2 days before our trip to the South West Circuit and used those 2 days to acclimatize to the altitude (and what good it did me too!). When we came back from the South West Circuit we were both ill for days. At first we thought we had the stomach flu, but now we think that we caught some kind of intestinal parasite through the contaminated water that we used to make tea during the trip. It took us 3 days to get at least somewhat back to normal. By then we still hadn't seen much of Tupiza and its surroundings. We did walk into town one day and it's really very pretty. It has the usual components of any cute South American town: a leafy plaza, an imposing church and many colonial buildings. Tupiza also has a lot of small shops where you can buy absolutely everything and, with us conveniently located near the Chilean border, we were even able to buy some Chilean dulce de leche, which we have decided is the best dulce de leche on the continent. Most of our time, though, was spent at Hotel Mitru, where we stayed during the 10 days.





I wrote in my previous blog that Tupiza is considered to be the wild west of Bolivia and that it is surrounded by red rocks, cacti and dusty mountains. We had planned an epic 2-day horseback ride through the region, but with us being sick, this really wasn't possible. In the end we only had 1 day left before we had to leave Tupiza, so we decided on a 3-hour horseback ride. I believe that we successfully turned from Patagonian gauchos into Bolivian cowboys on that day.







After 10 days it is time to leave the south west of Bolivia and head north.

If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!

South West Circuit, Bolivia

After Nusa Tenggara in Indonesia and Easter Island in Polynesia, the South West Circuit in Bolivia has been my favorite destination during this world trip. We spent 4 days on the South West Circuit and it is certainly the most beautiful place in South America that I have seen thus far. Around every turn (literally!) there is something new to be discovered. There are so many magical places to explore that the South West Circuit becomes a geological wonderland of epic proportions.

DAY 1. On Tuesday morning at 8.30 AM it was time to climb aboard our Jeep with our driver/guide Zuben, our cook Rosilla, and an Australian couple called Nick and Catherine. We drove for 7 hours on winding gravel roads and were able to see some amazing sights on the way. Tupiza and its surroundings are like the wild west of Bolivia and it features a lot of red rock, cactus and dusty mountains. At the end of the afternoon we arrived in San Antonio de Lipez at 4200 meters. Tupiza is situated at 2950 meters so we climbed more than 1000 meters in one day. San Antonio de Lipez is a small town in the middle of nowhere and we were told that our accommodation would be very basic. I thought it was fine though - indeed, there was no hot water, no shower and no electricity besides our lonely light bulb, but we had a big room for the four of us, thick mattrasses, thick blankets and plumbing. Since we had some time before dinner, we decided to climb the hill behind the village to see the sunset. This was a big mistake. Although I love hiking, I hate climbing and am quickly out of breath. Add to that the altitude of 4200 meters, the fact that we had climbed more than 1000 meters that day, and that you shouldn't exert yourself before you're at least somewhat used to the altitude, and you can see what I did wrong here. After dinner a group of village boys came in to play music for us. I remember tearing up at that moment because I was just so happy to be there at that moment. I felt so blessed to be able to travel and to see things that so many people never get to witness. It was an incredible night. We went to bed early but I couldn't sleep - my first official symptom of altitude sickness. It was below freezing and despite the many layers I was incredibly cold. The next day we had to get up 4.30 AM.


Valle de la Luna


San Antonio de Lipez


San Antonio de Lipez

DAY 2. Our second day would be our longest day with 10 hours of driving ahead of us. We saw some truly amazing sights on that day - hot springs, colored lakes, volcanos, geysers, mud pools, deserts and thousands of pink flamingos. We spent the night in Huaylljara, another small town in the middle of nowhere at 4340 meters. Again our accommodation was very basic but did not disappoint, but I started to feel a little ill. I was still incredibly cold but Rosilla made me a warm water bottle, I wrapped myself in every single item of clothing that I had brought, got into my sleeping bag, put 3 blankets on top of that, and slept for 10 hours straight.


Aguas Calientes


Laguna Verde and Volcán Licancabur


Sol de Mañana


Laguna Colorada

DAY 3. The third day was shorter with just 7 hours of driving and we saw many more of the amazing sights in the area. The only downside was that by then it had become quite clear that I suffered from altitude sickness. Luckily, we had been descending since the geysers and mud pools of Sol de Mañana at a staggering 5000 meters and were now back at around 3000 meters, but besides insomnia I now also suffered from a terrible headache and nausea. I tried chewing coca leaves and drinking lots of water, but nothing helped. During lunch I believe Zuben took pity on me for he gave me two pills and 30 minutes later I felt as though nothing had happened. I wrote down the name of the medicine so that I can take it with me to the Inca Trail! In the afternoon we stopped at the town of Uyuni where we visited its Cementerio de Trenes. Uyuni is the main hub from which to visit the salt flats but is an incredibly dirty and ugly town. I was relieved to find that we had made the right decision to start from Tupiza instead. We spent the night in Uyuni and although it wasn't as cold as the previous two towns had been and we had a private room, the (lack of) plumbing left much to be desired.


Arbol de Piedra


Laguna Honda


wild flamingos at Laguna Hedionda (for Matt and Aimee)


Valle de Rocas

DAY 4. The last day of the tour meant getting up at 5 AM to see the sunrise over Salar de Uyuni. This salt flat lies at 3650 meters altitude and is 10.500 square kilometers in size, which makes it the biggest salt flat in the world. The salt flat is made up of 11 layers between 2 and 20 meters in thickness. It is quite surreal to drive over the salt flat for as far as the eye can see there is nothing but white emptiness. When you walk over the salt flat it feels like walking on snow and ice. The salt flat is cold and sharp as glass and it shimmers in the blinding sunlight (all four of us wore shawls across our faces to prevent getting horribly sunburned). We had breakfast at the Hotel de Sal before driving even further into Salar de Uyuni to take the obligatory funny pictures. We had lunch in Uyuni and afterwards it was time to say goodbye to Nick and Catherine - they were to stay in Uyuni and take a train to Oruro and then a bus to La Paz while we had 4 hours of driving ahead of us back to Tupiza. It was an incredibly beautiful drive through more wild west country. When we arrived back at the hotel at 5 PM we ate a pizza in bed and crashed.


Salar de Uyuni


Hotel de Sal


Salar de Uyuni


Salar de Uyuni

This tour was definitely one of the highlights of our world trip. At times it was very challenging, but mostly it was just incredibly rewarding. Our driver/guide and cook were also amazing. Zuben always got us on sight first, offering us the best panoramas and the nicest rooms. Rosilla was extremely accommodating to our vegetarian needs (Nick and Catherine had temporarily become vegetarian after seeing the meat sold at the local Tupiza market) - she got up at 3 AM every day to prepare such dishes as lentil burgers and cauliflower fritters and other amazing foods. If you ever get to travel to South America, this would probably be my one recommendation. There are many tour agencies offering similar services, but we used Tupiza Tours and couldn't have been happier. Their service is sublime and they pump money back into local communities. We have 5 more days in the pretty town of Tupiza where there is still a lot to see, but for now I'll stay put at Hotel Mitru's solar-heated swimming pool.

If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!

Santa Cruz & Tarija, Bolivia

Throughout the past 7 months I have traveled in a myriad of ways. I slept on a ferry traveling between the Netherlands and England in order to catch our flight to Thailand. Two times I spent almost 12 hours on an airplane. Once I spent the night on a sleeper train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. I spent 2 days on a slow boat during the rainy season to get to Luang Prabang. I spent 5 days sleeping on deck of a dirty Indonesian boat. I took 5 overnight busses while in Australia. For a week while in New Zealand I slept in a small campervan. In South America long-distance busses are the norm. In between there were countless short flights, long bus rides, minivans, taxis, tuk-tuks and much walking. Most of these travels were at least somewhat enjoyable and many were a great place to take a break from all the sightseeing by reading a book or watching a movie. I like to think of myself as quite the experienced traveler by now. But the journey from Foz do Iguaçu to Santa Cruz seems to have severely ruined my romantic attachment to traveling this way.

It took us no less than 44 hours. Like I mentioned in my previous post, our bus from Foz do Iguaçu was scheduled to leave at midnight. After crossing the border into Paraguay we tried to sleep a little before we arrived in Asunción at 6 AM. We tried to catch a bus to Santa Cruz straight away, but were told that the next bus wasn't due to leave until 8 PM. We paid for a hotel close to the bus station and unsuccessfully tried to sleep a little bit, since the bus ride to Santa Cruz would take 24 hours. The hotel wasn't very nice, though, with very questionable sheets, so I didn`t get a lot of rest. By 8 PM we were ready to board the bus and we quickly realized that the busses heading to Bolivia are not the usual, air-conditioned, fully-reclining-seat havens that we have gotten used to in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. This bus was dirty and extremely uncomfortable. There was just no way to get any sleep, which is kind of crucial to your overall well-being when you've been awake for 36 hours and have 24 hours of traveling to go before you reach your next destination. We tried nonetheless, only to be rudely awakened for Paraguayan border formalities at 3 AM. We drove all night and all day. The driver drove very fast on pitch-black gravel roads and a few times I was sure the bus would simply fall onto its side. There was no air conditioning. The bathroom was basically a loose bucket on the floor of the back of the bus and guaranteed spilling, what will all that wild driving on gravel roads in the pitch-black darkness. Besides the necessary border formalities, we were not allowed to leave the bus to stretch our legs - not once.

I will always remember that journey as the day that I stopped loving long-distance bus travel. I did some yoga in between it all and tried not to kill anybody. But this is a part of traveling in South America and, in a way, I'm glad that we experienced it. But I'm also really glad that it's over and that I'll never have to do it again.



We arrived in Santa Cruz at night, took a taxi to our hotel and went to bed straight away.

Now, I don't know what image comes to your mind when you think about Bolivia, but mine did absolutely not match the places that we've seen thus far. When you read about Bolivia, things like ''poorest country in South America'' and ''an increase in violent crime against tourists'' jump out to you. One girl I met in Foz do Iguaçu told me that she'd stopped wearing earrings because they were forcefully snatched from girls' ears.

But Santa Cruz was nothing like that. I did some research and it turns out that the eastern part of Bolivia is actually quite wealthy and prosperous. Santa Cruz is the biggest city in Bolivia with 1.54 million inhabitants and is obviously doing quite well. The city is a mix of beautiful colonial architecture and shiny, new malls. Santa Cruz is close to the Amazon Basin and thus lies in the tropics - humidity guaranteed. I read that the people of Santa Cruz consider themselves to be more Brazilian than Bolivian and I can see why.



We only had one day in the city before moving on, which we spent walking around town. At night we spotted a real, live sloth in the palm trees of the central plaza - how amazing!



Perhaps foolishly, though, my favorite part about Santa Cruz was our hotel and the two kittens that lived there. In the short time that we stayed in town we got really close to them and one even brought us a live cockroach to our room one night. Thanks, I guess. It made me realize how much I miss our own cats who, by my mother's description, will probably be unrecognizable to us by now - apparently Bicho weighs a staggering 6.4 kilos!



On Thursday we flew to Tarija in southern Bolivia. I absolutely refused to spend 30 hours on another rickety bus to get there and so we paid a little extra and flew. The great thing about being in the poorest country in South America are the cheap prices - it's like being in South East Asia again! We`ve been spending more money on transport, we're sleeping in ridiculously swanky hotels and eat out 3 times a day without once spending more than our daily budget allows. It's nice. After an hour delay it took us less than 45 minutes to reach Tarija - a warm and sunny city surrounded by beautiful green mountains.



We actually don't have a map of this city. Lonely Planet didn`t print one - probably because no backpackers go out of their way to get here. So we decided to just walk around and see where we would end up - the way backpackers of yore used to do it, one imagines. The Lonely Planet does mention that while Santa Cruz is more Brazilian, Tarija is more Argentinian, and, again, I can see why. The streets have that all-familiar smell of barbecue about them.

This reminds me to tell you about a story of Paraguay. One time we bought some chipa and it turned out that it had minced meat inside. We carefully removed the meat and ate it anyway because we had a 6-hour bus ride ahead of us and hadn't had breakfast yet. Although there was no more meat, it still tasted like minced meat, and guess what? I really didn't like it! Nor did Jochem! The fattiness of the meat was just unbelievably disgusting to me. I like this new development - I knew that I would probably never want to eat meat again, but not once did it cross my mind that when I did eat it, I wouldn't like it. Vegetables all the way!

Back to Tarija, a small town with beautiful plazas and a lot of pastel-colored churches.



My favorite place in Tarija, though, is the Mercado Central. Here you will find your usual mangled animal corpses (reminiscent of Cambodia, if you catch my drift), but also the most beautiful produce section. Hidden in the middle of it all are tiny kitchens with tables and chairs set up next to it, where you pay 2 euros for the most amazing pile of food yet eaten in South America, while being serenaded by a group of local musicians. Some people worry about hygiene in these Bolivian street markets. We haven't been sick once, but, then again, we don't eat the meat that's been lying in the beating sun all day without refrigeration. I loved it - what a treat!







After lunch, by the way, you can head to the bakery section for one of the hundreds of sweet treats on offer!



What I also didn`t know about Bolivia is that it has a fairly successful wine region just outside of Tarija. Today we took a tour to visit 3 wineries, from the very small family-owned to the bigger corporation machines. One thing that they love here is singani - a spirit comparable to grapa. Not exactly my cup of tea, but Jochem liked it. Most wines tend to be on the sweet side, which we didn't like very much, although we did taste an amazing rosé and were allowed to bring the whole bottle back to our hotel! The wine ranks are grown at between 1500 and 2500 meters altitude and thus these are one of the highest wineries in the world.







The scenery in this region was also pretty amazing.



Tomorrow we are traveling to Tupiza by private car. Most busses leave at night and arrive at 4 AM, which is just crazy if you ask me, so we decided to take this route because it means that we leave at 7 AM and arrive at around 1 PM. One of the things that I remember most from The Other Flying Duchman's blog is that staying in Tupiza is nicer than staying in Uyuni. Once in Tupiza we will finally be able to see what everybody wants to see who comes to Bolivia - the biggest salt flat in the world at Salar de Uyuni.

If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!

Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil

We just spent 4 days in the theme park that is Iguazú Falls. Brazil is nice, but it was not easy to get here.

It all started on Wednesday morning when we took a bus at 7.30 in the morning from Encarnación, in southern Paraguay, to Ciudad del Este, in eastern Paraguay. This part of the journey took 6 hours and was far from comfortable - the ride was bumpy, there was no air conditioning and the bus was packed with people. Had it not been for the lack of livestock it would have been your perfect South American bus nightmare. Next we had to take a local bus in Ciudad del Este from the bus terminal to the border. This was another long, bumpy and hot ride in a bus packed with people while hardly moving at all due to the enormous traffic jams in town. When we got off the bus, we discovered that we were, in fact, not quite at the border at all, and so we had no choice but to take an exceedingly overpriced taxi to take us there. Ciudad del Este may be the ugliest city in Paraguay. Maybe even in the whole of South America. Maybe even in the world! That's how much I hated it. There is nothing to do there except buy stuff tax free, so the streets are covered with people selling all sorts of crap and greedy Brazilians hoarding it. What commenced was a kind of annoying bus hopping game. From the taxi we walked to the Paraguayan border, got our exit stamps, hopped on another bus, got off at the Brazilian border, filled in the necessary documents, got our entry stamps, hopped on yet another bus, and got off at the local bus terminal in Foz do Iguaçu. We had no Brazilian money and there was nowhere to get it, so instead of paying for a bus we had to walk 12 blocks to our hostel in the now-familiar humidity. I was absolutely exhausted after that day and I don't care how cool it is - I am never doing that again and fully intend to pay the necessary tour operators to take care of these border procedures for me in the future.

Once in Brazil, though, we ended up having a nice evening. At the risk of sounding cliché, Brazil has a nice 'vibe'. We ordered some caipirinhas and went to bed early.

The next day we took a bus to visit the Brazilian side of the Iguazú Falls. I believe that this side is generally considered to be the lesser side, but I liked visiting it because you get a nice overall view of the waterfalls. The only downside was that the day had, quite suddenly and inexplicably, turned from hot and humid to windy, rainy and downright cold so we had to work a little harder to stay warm, but the views were amazing!







The next day we were so happy to see blue skies and sunshine, that we decided to stay at the hostel, enjoy the pool, and just relax.

On Saturday, then, we went on a tour with our hostel to the Argentinian side of the Iguazú Falls. The great thing about visiting Brazil's side first and Argentinia's side second, is that you move from the grand overview into detail. In Argentina we got incredibly close to the Devil's Throat, which is a massive wall of thunderous white water - very impressive.





The downside here, though, was that it was Easter weekend and this meant: crowds. Lots and lots of crowds. Although we came here during Easter on purpose because we figured that no one would ever close such a sight as the Iguazú Falls no matter what God thinks, it seemed like every parent, grandparent and baby had decided to come as well. Like this, Iguazú Falls starts to feel like a visit to Ikea on Easter Monday, which is less than ideal. Also, I got a little sunburned. But it was still amazing. Argentina has done a very good job exploiting every possible angle of these breathtaking waterfalls, so there's a lot to do in the area - enough to keep you occupied for days. We took a train through the jungle to reach the Devil's Throat, walked around a lot and took a little thrilling boat ride. I have discovered that I have a ridiculously good time in fast boats, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a boat that goes straight into this waterfall:



It was very exhilarating because you don't know how far the boat will go into the waterfall and you can't see and you feel the force of the water on you. There's no way not to get completely drenched, but this is actually quite nice on such a hot day.





Today, on our last day here, we made a visit to the Itaupú Dam, which is blissfully on both the Paraguayan and the Brazilian side, so that I did not have to go back to Ciudad del Este to see it. The Itaupú Dam is the second biggest dam in the world and is quite impressive in its sheer size. But, I must admit, I felt that I had seen enough of the circus in this area to really appreciate it. I kept thinking about the environmental consequences of the dam and how much wildlife has been destroyed to make it possible. I did enjoy the views over the Rio Paraná, and the blossoms, and the capybara, the biggest rodent in the world, just grazing away on the shores of Lago de Itaupú.







Often you could also find me in one of these two positions:





And now our time in Brazil is already coming to a close. Brazil is such a big country and there is so much to see, but if I fall in love with yet another South American nation I will never get myself back to Europe by early June. It's time to move on. We're taking a 6-hour bus back to Asunción tonight, which leaves at the inconvenient hour of 12 'o clock at night, probably to avoid the crazy masses that we encountered at the border just 4 days ago. We decided not to spend any extra time in Paraguay, even though we love it there, but to travel straight to Bolivia. Our time is running out and there's still so much left to see and do. Gotta keep moving!

If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!