So I knew that it was going to be winter coming down here but oh man this is a little over the top. I have been wearing my down jacket and hat almost everyday, but is okay because I have been seeing amazing things. My first couple of days in Bolivia were really about the people and these last couple of days are about the natural beauty. First we headed down from La Paz to the south Bolivia and the Salt Flats around Uyunni. Getting down there was a little complicated and included getting up at 630 am to sit in line for a train ticket and arriving in a city without a hostal at 230 am. But we finally got there. While in Uyunni we experienced Bolivias chaos and innefficiency to its greatest but then we finally left the city and headed out on a three day 4wd adventure. It was amazingly beautiful. The Salar de Uyunni is the largest salt flat in the world and it is about 1200 square km. I could not get my head around it. It looked like the ocean, lake Superior and and a frozen MN lake all at the same time but was really a large flat expanse of salt. We spent our first day just driving across it. Over the next couple of days we drove through alpine valleys reaching an altitude of 5000 meters (a ton of feet), seeing flamingoes, swimming in natural hot springs and just taking the immensity. I have never seen such beautiful montains and colors, a place everyone should try and see. Because it was a three day trip we spent the nights in very small indigenous community in hostals with no heat and it was about 15 degrees F (really, really cold). This experience opened my eyes to the beauty that this country has. Middway through the third day we left Lindsay at the Chilean border which was sad and then headed back to Uyunni.
From Uyunni we spent a day or two relaxing in La Paz and then headed up to Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca. We drove in as the sun was setting and it was amazing. On the way there we stopped in this small town and I asked the woman next to me if we were there. She giggled and said no we are going to get off the bus and take a ferry while the bus takes a differenty ferry across (pretty funny to watch your tour bus float across Lake Titicaca), Bolivia never ceases to amaze me. Today we spent the day on Isla del Sol which was stunning. We took a boat to the far end and the spent the day hiking across the very hilly island (my lungs are getting sick of this hiking up hills at altitude thing). It was another but very different example of the beauty that is Bolivia. From miles of salt to miles of lake, what an amazing experience.
I also have very exciting news about my time down here. For the month of August I am going to be working for an organization called the Democracy Center and helping them write an article for their annual magazine. The article is going to try and show the true spirit of Bolivians. So I get to travel around with a photographer and interview people and live in rural communities, how cool. I think it is going to be one of the most difficult but rewarding experiences of my life, we will have to wait and see. Then I will be heading down to Chile to see the folks down there and then to Paraguay for an internship with an organization that works on Micro-Finance. Life seems to be coming together.
I love and miss you all and tomorrow off to Peru to see Machu Picchu in all its glory.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment