Bolivia Part 1: Salt Flats, Jungle and La Paz

Bolivia ROCKS!!!! It is by far the most exotic and adventurous country on my trip so far. It has everything I like...fascinating sites, a strong indigenous culture, folkloric music, singing and dancing, Latin music at the discos; the hot, steamy Amazon jungle; the incredible Andes mountains; and the people are wonderful!!! I could live here for sure, except that Bolivia is landlocked...no beautiful beaches like there are in San Juan del Sur.

The border crossing from Argentina to Bolivia was a breeze...we got our visas back in Buenos Aires (Josue´s was free, I had to pay $135 USD!) and just walked across. Suddenly everything was about a tenth of the price in comparison to Argentina. There was a great market at the border, but we were taking the train to Uyuni, so we didn´t do much there. Uyuni is the town that lies on the edge of the largest salt flats in the world, and certainly they were something to see! Josue stayed back in Uyuni while I signed up for a tour. I don´t like tours, but in this case there was no choice because if you drive onto the flats yourself, you would probably end up lost, stuck on the flats and dead (it has happened.) The driver told us of a story about a friend of his who was driving across the flats and his car broke down. He had to walk 10 hours in the sun and by the time he reached his destination, he was completely blind. That is how white the salt is....with the sun reflecting off that, you can imagine the intensity. You MUST use sun block and have good sunglasses with you. It is hard to describe what it looks like to see nothing but white for as far as the eye can see. You´ll have to look at the photos. But it was incredible! In the middle of the flats there is an island, like an oasis, only it is very dry and has bunches of saguaro cacti and other desert scrub growing. Of course you walk up to the top and the view is just white, white, white. There are no roads on the flat, so you have to know where you are going. The experienced drivers determine their route according to the distant mountains. During this tour, I did several neat things. I stayed in a hotel that was completely made of salt. The outside was salt blocks, the inside had a salt floor, salt furniture and salt chandeliers. The salt flats are very high, around 4000 meters (13,123 feet) so you can´t move too quickly. We visited several lakes with flocks of flamingos, and one lake had red water!!!! That certainly was something to see. But I think the highlight was the sunrise I watched at 5:30 am at 5000 meters (16,500 feet!) in natural thermal waters while the temperature outside was 0 degrees! No one in my tour group would go in...but I´m glad I did. The sun rose over the mountains while I was sitting in a Bolivian natural bath tub. Fabulous! It was a little disconcerting when I got out and found out there was nowhere to change clothes and about 50 people milling around the baths!!!! You´d be surprised how creative you can be with a towel!

After Uyuni, Josue and I went to Potosí, the highest city in the world (according to Lonely Planet and in dispute in Wikipedia) at 4,067 meters (13,343 feet)! Potosi is a great place to buy indigenous musical instruments. One of my goals on this trip was to buy different Andes instruments. Many of my friends in Nicaragua are musicians and it´s always fun to have them over to my house and listen to them play. Not only do I want to have the instruments for these wonderful jam sessions, I also want to learn how to play the pan flute, or zampoña, as it is called in Spanish. Unfortunately, I did not buy instruments in Potosi, because I thought they would be cheaper in La Paz. But we did some fun things in the highest city in the world....we sang Karaoke and went out dancing. Bolivia plays Latin music (the kind I like) in its discos. For those of you who know Nicaragua and its famous, great, smooth rum Flor de Caña, Bolivia sells it! What a treat!

Next we went to Sucre where all the buildings downtown are white, the city itself was quite pretty. We just spent the day there, looking at the markets, eating an interesting lunch in the market that cost $1.00 USD. Just to let you know, we´ve been eating food in the local markets and off the streets, and we´ve been just fine. Sometimes that is the most interesting food. We´re back to eating llama, but I still prefer alpaca. Bolivia also serves a lot of vegetables and salads. If you go to a tourist type restaurant, of course you will spend more, maybe $10 USD each, including wine. There were also lots of musical instruments in Sucre, but I was dismayed to see that they were 2-3 times the price of the instruments in Potosí! I was worried that I had made a big mistake not buying them there. After our quick tour of Sucre, we hopped on the bus at night to La Paz.

Many tourists told us they didn´t like La Paz. Yes, it´s dirty and the traffic is terrible. But it is lively, colorful, musical, and an IN YOUR FACE city, kind of like Bangkok. It has a wonderful indigenous market, actually streets full of weavings, sweaters and other clothing made of alpaca, and all sorts of things. Our hotel was centrally located right between that artists´market and the Witch´s Market where you can buy llama fetuses (to put under your house for good luck), all types of potions to attract love, get rich, have good luck, or maybe other potions that you can use for the not-so-nice type of witchcraft! It was fascinating asking questions and looking over all the goods. Witchcraft is a big thing in Bolivia! The people are very superstitious.

All about Coca: Coca leaves are legal (not cocaine or marijuana!) in Bolivia and Peru. They are illegal in the other countries, though people sell the leaves openly in the streets of northern Argentina! There is a very interesting small museum dedicated to coca in La Paz. They go through its history, even telling how the original coca cola in the United States used coca leaves in its recipe. And how Sigmund Freud was the first important person to use the new chemically made cocaine, which he used until he developed nose cancer! The museum gives you all sorts of little interesting tidbits about the use of coca leaves and how the cocaine industry developed. You will be very interested to know that it is Bolivia, not Colombia, that is the biggest producer of coca in the world. I find it fascinating that the U.S. is concentrating so hard on eradicating the coca fields in Colombia, but has absolutely nothing to do with it here. In fact, years ago the U.S. asked Bolivia to join the world organization against coca production and the Bolivian president said no. So that´s where they left it. It is Bolivia´s biggest export. So why the drug war with Colombia and not Bolivia? Something to think about. On top of the museum they have a restaurant with items made from coca. Like green coca beer, coca cheescake (fabulous!), cookies, alcholic beverages, coca liquor, coca chocolate cake, etc. It is all so interesting. We bought a bag of coca leaves and learned from natives how to ¨masticate¨(not chew) the leaves on the side of your mouth. Contrary to what you may think, coca leaves do not give you a high. It is more of an anesthetic and it numbs the areas where you are masticating (usually the side of your tongue and the inside of your cheek). It also gives you energy, so if you do it at night you are probably not going to sleep very well, kind of like the effect of strong caffeine. We only tried this because it is legal here and a new experience. But the flavor is not so great, so they have other things you can add to enhance the flavor. They gave me banana ashes, which are moistened and rather sweet. You just put that in your mouth with the rest of the leaves and it tastes better. This is not something we are doing all the time, it was just interesting to see what all the hubbub is about coca leaves. Really nothing as far as I´m concerned.

Anyway, after 3 fun days in La Paz, we decided to head to the Amazon basin. Since La Paz is the highest capital in the world (at 3,600 meters or 11,811 feet) there was going to be a big temperature change when we took the bus down to 0 meters! The bus ride was a mere 16 hours and we got the thrill (terror?) of our lives when a pretty long stretch of the road was about 10 feet wide, no railings, and about a 2000 foot drop down into the canyon! And this was not even the Death Road (more about that later)! At times the bus tires were literally 6 inches from the edge.... Of course we saw this around dusk and then it got dark and we kept going! Crazy! We decided to go to sleep and forget about where we were driving. We arrived safe and sound at the charming jungle town of Rurrenabaque at around 7 am.

A Bolivian man came up to us immediately and asked if we wanted to go on a tour to the Pampas (another place you can´t really go yourself unless you buy a boat). Usually we NEVER go with someone who does that, but we were tired, he was promising extra perks like a discounted hotel, free drinks at a local bar, so at 9 am we were off on a tour with 6 other people. Benjamin from France, Georgette and Reynaldo also from France, and a family....Valerie from England, her husband Alfonso from Spain and their 31 year old son Martin. The people were all great! The tour was for three days and two nights and included all meals, sleeping accommodations, several trips in the motorized canoe to go animal sighting by day and night, fishing for piranhas, swimming with wild river dolphins, etc. All for $55 a person! Pretty cheap! Yes, you needed tons of sun block and DEET. Although the mosquitoes weren´t as bad as I thought they´d be in the Amazon! And we DID see tons of animals, birds and reptiles! The place where we stayed had its own alligator and giant black caiman swimming around freely, so we decided not to swim right there. But that didn´t stop me the next day from swimming in the river downstream, home to those very same alligators, caimans and crocodiles, not to mention those man-eating piranhas! One of the highlights was swimming with the wild river dolphins....they came up to me in the water and I would put my arms around their middle or hold onto their tails and they´d give me a ride! Then they would flip their tails and I´d let go and they´d come back to do it again. Most of the people chose NOT to go swimming in a potentially dangerous tributary of the Amazon. They weren´t just worried about the creatures in the water, but also the illnesses in the water that I won´t go into here, but which are pretty gross. Anyway, we saw all sorts of monkeys..howlers, spider monkeys, the cute tiny yellow ones with the big eyes, capuchins, etc. We also saw many alligators and crocodiles, big turtles, two anacondas (not too big), bright red and blue macaws, toucans, the famous (and tallest flying bird in the world, often 5 feet high) Jabiru stork in its huge 6 foot nest, and many Capybaras (the largest rodent in the world). It was a successful animal and bird-watching tour!

Back in Rurrenabaque we enjoyed the hot weather, had a great hotel for $11 USD with private bath, TV, all other amenities as well. Bolivia certainly is cheap! I had a hankering to go into the jungle, so we hired a private guide for two days and a night. Mario, our guide, was from the Tacana tribe and gave us a very interesting tour through the jungle, pointing out different plants, flowers and trees and giving an explanation of the medicinal properties of each. Unfortunately, this information will be lost when he is gone as he explained that the kids today aren´t interested in these things and now when they get sick they go to the pharmacy and get a pill. So Mario is the last generation of people who know which red and white flower to use and how to use it to stop alcoholism! (Yes, he claims that it works!!!!) At night we slept in hammocks with attached mosquito nets. In the middle of the night something put its front paws on my hammock because the hammock moved and I woke up suddenly, frightening whatever it was away. When I asked Mario the next day he said it was probably a jaguar or one of the other large cats!!!! Mario made our meals which were simple, but delicious. We ate them along side a bubbling creek. It was a great trip. And now time to say good-bye to the jungle, because we were headed to the Death Road. Couldn´t leave Bolivia without going on the MOST DANGEROUS ROAD IN THE WORLD!!!!! To see photos of this section, click here.