Archiv der Kategorie: World Trip 2018-19

Bolivia, World Trip 2018-19

La Paz – back in Bolivia

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I was excited and anxious at the same time to go back to La Paz – a city I loved so much when visiting Bolivia first in 2012. When going back to places, you never know how they developed, or if this time you are just not going to have such a good time… I was more excited than anxious though. Reallyyyy excited!!! When we landed in La Paz from Santiago, we were tired from a night of almost no sleep and stepped out of the airport right into the pouring rain! Not the best start. Weather remained tricky during our stay in La Paz, with the rainy season having started too early according to locals. We made the best out of it and spent the dry periods wandering around town, exploring the various markets, taking pictures of local ladies in their colourful outfits and (me) remembering all kind of random spots in the city. Good times!

Something I thought I did back then was visit the Mirador Kili Kili – however, turns out Andrea and I gave up too early back then and didn’t make it all the way up to the highest viewpoint. From there, you had amazing views over La Paz, even if the weather was not at its best. Must be awesome with blue skys and the snow-capped mountains in the background!

About half a day of our time was dedicated to „cable car-hopping“. Yes, you read correctly! When I visited in 2012, there were no cable cars in La Paz, but since then there are 8 different lines stretching in all directions of the city. We started with the orange line, and realized at the cable car station that we could easily do kind of a loop, seeing many parts of the city from up high this way. Thought and done! At only 3 Bs per ride, it is really not an expensive way to get around – and a really cool one too! The cable cars are brand new, built by the Austrian company Doppelmayer (for all those with trust issues in Bolivian-built stuff, this is Austrian quality we are talking about!). Every line was different – some went really in between the houses, close to the ground (can’t imagine house owners having been too happy about the decision to build the lines directly above their terraces…), some steeply up the hills to El Alto or other areas. Sometimes we got off in between, sometimes only in the end. The best views were mostly directly out of the cable cars.

One day, Mathijs went to go mountain biking on the Death Road, while I stayed in La Paz since I had already done this in 2012. He was lucky, for on that day the weather was dry and sunny and had an amazing time at the tour – with some great views that not even I had back then (it was one of the few rainy/snowy days I experienced in Bolivia back then).

I stayed in La Paz that day, walking through the streets and enjoying the city. I love this place too much!! For me, it is one of the best cities in the world… I had to get some shopping done (warmer clothes etc), but also found time to visit San Francisco church with a tour. A cute young girl led me around and explained a lot about the church. I actually only went on this tour to be able to access the roof, but it was worth it also for the rest. Turned out the girl was pretty good at taking pictures too, so I got an odd amount of pictures of myself on that day!

Another day in La Paz was spent with a day trip to Valle de las Animas just outside the city. This is a really cool spot that not so many people know about yet. It’s similar to Valle de la Luna but much cooler and bigger. Since I had already seen the latter during my last visit, I was keen to explore new grounds and we quickly found a bus heading in the right direction…only to get stuck in traffic! On the way back we took the cable car from Zona Sur and walked a short walk back into the city center – much better option! Anyways, even though we were once again unlucky with the weather (it started raining right when we got off the bus), we embarked on the 3 h half-circular viewpoint hike – and it was sooo worth it!! Even with the occasional rain shower in between and grey clouds instead of sunshine, the views were just amazing and Valle de las Animas looks out of this world. A truly magical place!! In sunny weather, I’m sure you could easily spend a day here, discovering some more treks… Like this though, it was not the most comfortable hike and we didn’t take too long to finish it. We appreciated the dry periods in between for many photos, and were lucky to find a dry lunch spot. In better weather, we might have added the hike inside the canyon, which looks also pretty cool. Maybe next time…

On our last day in La Paz, it was Thursday and therefore market day in El Alto. A huge market, that we wanted to see and experience! There is a lot of talk about El Alto not being that safe and how there are many pickpockets operating at the market. Well, we just really watched out, carried our backpack in front rather than on the back, locked it and were generally very aware of our surroundings, avoiding getting in pushy crowds too much etc. Even though we did keep our eyes open the whole time (more because of stories we had heard), I didn’t feel unsafe at all. Also, I don’t think anything else than pickpocketing could happen when there are so many people around…so as long as your pockets are empty and you had your backpack in the front + locked + raincover over it…what could happen!? Walking around the market was fun, and the views over La Paz were great as usual! Definitely recommended.

We then left La Paz earlier than we had wanted originally, because of the weather… We had wanted to do some more hiking, but the rain (and snow, higher up) was not on our side. Too bad, seems like at one point in my life I will have to return to Bolivia a third time!

Chile, World Trip 2018-19

Santiago – a taste of mainland Chile

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From Easter Island, Mathijs and I had separate flights to Santiago which turned out much cheaper. We were couchsurfing for the first time on our trip together and our host lived in a nicer neighbourhood with a beautiful sunset view over the mountains.

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Unfortunately, during our days in Santiago the weather was cloudy with the occasional drizzle, and rather cool to walk around. That, and the fact that Santiago’s center is anyways not really pretty but full of grey and ugly buildings, made us not like the city very much. Maybe it’s better in the sun, but it’s definitely not pretty.

The only cool thing are the views…if you get any. In addition to the clouds, there’s often a big layer of smog hanging over the city which prevented us from having the nice mountain views you would get, for example from Cerro San Cristobal where we went up by funicular.

There’s also a bar area where there’s some nice graffiti to be found. But bars are not too cheap, you really have to look out for happy hour deals! We’ll probably be back in Santiago later during our South America trip. Maybe there’ll be some sun then and the city will look different to us…

Easter Island, World Trip 2018-19

Easter Island: Eye in eye with the Moai

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When planning our time in the South Pacific and South America, it was always clear to me that a stopover in Easter Island would be a must do. The little island is approximately midway from both French Polynesia and Chile, making it a convenient stop along the way. Adding to that the mystery of the Moai statues, and our flights were booked! It’s not a cheap place to visit, but there’s an alright camping where we spent our nights.

To see the different Moai statues, we spent the next few days driving around by scooter and hiking to the nearby sites. We were mostly really lucky with the weather: while definitely cooler than what we were used to after our South Pacific adventures, it got quite hot during the day when the sun was out. So our first hike up Rano Kau crater turned out raster sweaty! We passed by our first Moai statue, some cave and then just walked uphill for quite a while. Once we reached the top, we were wow-ed by the crater!! Certainly one of the most scenic ones we’ve seen!

The Orongo ceremonial village on the other hand was not that special for us. This is one of the two places you can only visit once with the Easter Island ticket (the other one being Rano Raraku), and once was enough for us.

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We then started our 24h scooter rental in the early evening to be able to watch the sunset at Ahu Tahai – one of the most famous and supposedly best places for sunsets. We were lucky – there were some clouds, but they let the sun through in the most essential moments. I went a bit crazy taking pictures, but hey – I was certainly not the only one, with lines of semi- professional photographers and an annoying drone buzzing over the scene. Still – it was very pretty and I’d consider it a must see! We only realized over the next few days how lucky we had been in regards to the sunset – for the next few days there were always clouds in the way.

Next morning, it was time to wake up early to see the sunrise at Ahu Tongariki. It was a bit of a drive and got quite chilly on the scooter – but soooo worth it!! If the sunset had been great, this sunrise was awesome! In hindsight, this was also our favourite and most impressive Moai site, so we spent a lot of time there, trying to take the perfect photos and returned a few times in the course of the day.

Another beautiful site was the beach and Moai of Anakena – imagine a beautiful white sand beach with lots of palm trees and a couple of scenic Moai watching over it. There you go – this is Anakena!

However, my 2nd favourite place ended up being Rano Raraku – the hill where the Moai were carved out of the rock and many of them left unfinished, laying around in various positions. It’s a very pretty setting with the Moai body parts cluttered across a green hill with good views of the surroundings. There’s a little circuit that takes you past the best places and gives you lots of photo opportunities. We really liked getting so close to the Moai and all that while enjoying views over the island and Ahu Tongariki from the distance.

There’s also a trail leading up to the crater, which is picturesque and funny in a way: horses grazing between more Moai bodies.

On our way back to Hanga Roa, the main town, we made a little detour to see the place where the hats of the Moai got made out of red rock and another site – Ahu Akivi, which is the only place where the Moai are not looking inland but out to the ocean.

But during our scooter day, we didn’t just visit archaeological sites – we also enjoyed the landscape of Easter Island and the quiet roads too drive on. Sometimes the road ahead was blocked by horses or cows and we had to drive through a herd.

In our view, seeing Easter Island by scooter is the best way to do it! It’s small enough to easily be able to see all the farther away sights in one day and it enables you to quickly stop anytime for a photo. Hiking is also very popular on Easter Island, and after our hike on the first day, we walked along the coast and past a couple of Moais to the museum next day. The museum is small but quite interesting and a good replacement for an expensive guide in our view. We learned that (as suspected) all the Moai were re-erected as they had all been overthrown in fights between the different island groups in the past. Further, there was some interesting information about the whole South Pacific region which was nice for us to read after having visited so many countries there.

On our last days, we were a bit unlucky with the weather: We had planned to do one more hike up along the coast, but it was very windy and rainy so we turned around after a bit. Just not worth it in such conditions! We’re happy though that we were so lucky with the weather on our most important sightseeing days and that we managed to see both a really good sunset and sunrise. Not something you can take for granted! With Easter Island, our island time came to an end and we were mainland-bound: South America, here we come!