Schlagwort-Archive: tupiza

Bolivia, World Trip 2018-19

Bolivia – Summary & Pictures

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People: Locals are friendly if a bit shy in Bolivia. We didn’t have many closer interactions than for clear tourist reasons. We met a mix of backpackers, many other couples around our age or a little older. Often we were also the only ones in our accommodation though.

Food: A bit of an issue, especially for me. There are not much vegetarian options, lots of fried chicken. The set lunch menus never excited us either. The best places we ate at were a Turkish place in Samaipata and an Italian pizza place in La Paz. Lol.

Weather: We were a bit unlucky with the weather since rainy season hit early this year. We had to cut our time in Bolivia and leave out quite some highlights unfortunately. Too bad! Luckily, we were also treated to some sunny days in the most important places such as Uyuni.

Costs: Bolivia was a nice change after visiting so many expensive countries. Finally things were cheap again! We spent around 28€/day per person. Could have done it a bit cheaper, but we did quite some tours and also some (necessary) shopping for warm clothes.

Accommodation: We almost always stayed in smaller guesthouses in a double room, barely in hostels because they were usually more expensive. What’s odd in Bolivia is that they always mention prices per person, not per room.

Infrastructure: Easy-peasy after the South Pacific. There’s busses or colectivos to go pretty much anywhere you want. Cheap, lots of competition and therefore often quite good (especially long-distance night busses). Taxis are also readily available and cheap and La Paz has awesome cable cars to offer.

Illnesses: Our stomachs didn’t quite enjoy the Bolivian food as much so we both had some issues now and then, especially Mathijs got quite sick once.

Safety: Bolivia is supposed to be a bit more unsafe and therefore I was a bit more nervous about things sometimes… without real reason. Everything went fine!

Itinerary: We visited pretty much all typical tourist destinations plus some that were a bit out of the way such as Samaipata. As mentioned, we would have wanted to see more – especially around La Paz there were some hikes and towns that I would have loved to do/visit. Also, the Sajama national park sounded very good. Guess we’ll just have to come back one more time!

Highlight: The Uyuni-Tour.

Lowlight: The battle with the weather. As in places: Cochabamba.

Click on the photo below to see our full photo album of Bolivia:

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Bolivia, World Trip 2018-19

Wild West in Tupiza

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Our plan of following the sun seemed to be working: when we arrived in Tupiza after a very uncomfortable minibus ride (squeezed in the back with barely any legroom), the sun was shining and the mountains around town were glowing in a beautiful red. A good welcome! On our first full day, we decided to climb up Cerro de la Cruz for a view of the city. It was a bit of a walk along dusty roads first, but the climb itself took shorter than expected and brought us up to a beautiful viewpoint. Seriously, the views in all directions were just stunning!

Since it was getting hotter and hotter, we then took advantage of the free swimming pool in the partner hotel of where we stayed. It was not as nice and refreshing as expected, but a reasonably good way to relax a bit before we had to get some things done, like booking the Uyuni-Tour, getting our laundry done etc. Travel life! We also spontaneously decided to book a 3 h horse riding tour for the next morning, since the prices were really low and it seemed like a great way to see this desert landscape.

Good idea! Next morning, we headed off together with Ladina and Kevin from Switzerland, who should also be our Uyuni group as we found out. We first took a colectivo to the place where the horses are kept, and off we went! The first place we visited was Puerta del Diablo, the devil’s gate, an impressive rock formation where we briefly got off the horses to take some pictures.

We then passed by Valle de los Machos – some more funny looking rocks – to Cañon del Inca, a really cool canyon. But anyways – the whole trip so far had been amazing!! Riding horses in this kind of landscape feels exactly like the thing you should be doing. Sometimes we were going fast, and it felt a little bit like in a Western movie.

So when our guide asked if we didn’t want to extend the trip to 5 h and add Cañon del Duende, we didn’t hesitate for long… We took a route that connects the two canyons – actually quite a long ride, but very beautiful once again. Cañon del Duende itself can be explored better by foot, as it’s quite narrow in the end and you have to climb up and down some rocks to see it. It’s a really cool place with unreal rock formations!

I’m really glad we came all that way even if it meant a long ride back whereas our bones and muscles were starting to hurt and we were out of water since we had only planned on a 3 h ride. But… the landscape and the feeling of riding a horse in these kind of surroundings more than made up for it! Very much recommended.

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