Bolivia day 12: I survived Death Road!!!

My itinerary said nothing about risking my life!

It simply said: ‘In less than 3 hours’ drive, and after an amazing trip full of gorgeous sights, the Yungas Valley is reached, where the most exotic and delicious fruits are grown.’

In fact, from the 8am pick-up to the 12.45pm drop-off at the hotel in Coroico for lunch, was a 4¾ hour drive, with a few short stops here and there, and I never did see any exotic and delicious fruits. But what a drive!

First, we wound up through housing perched precariously on the clay cliffs above the city, then on to a road between high hills that looked like they’d been carved by glaciers eons ago. We passed a dam whose reservoir supplies most of La Paz’s water, though its level is currently low, awaiting the onset of the rainy season to replenish it. We passed an area of small shops selling mattresses stuffed with the tufty mountain grass that grows so plentifully at these altitudes. And we passed vans stuffed full of mad young people about to risk their lives on the mountain bikes propped atop the vans by biking Bolivia’s infamous Death Road.

The highest point on our journey was soon reached – 4700 metres above sea level. It is marked by a statue of Christ, around which were scattered empty alcohol bottles and the remains of fires. If the guide hadn’t told me these were offerings to Pachamama, I would have thought it was the remnants of some drunken party! We passed two small towns, Pongo and Unduavi; the second was a breakfast stop for our driver while I wandered up and down taking photos. Up to the right you could see the reverse side of Mururata, the flat-topped snow-covered mountain that towers above La Paz.

Mountain bikers prepping for their ride

The road to Coroico

Mt Mururata

About 50kms from the city, we turned off the wide, new, tarsealed road on to a dirt and gravel road, the old road to Coroico, the aptly named Death Road! It was narrow, hair-raising and bumpy; at times stomach-churning for someone who doesn’t particularly like heights because the drop to one side was often vertical for a thousand feet or more; sometimes wet and greasy from waterfalls cascading directly on to the road from the towering cliffs above; often scary negotiating unstable narrow tracks across huge rockslides that had wiped out whole mountain sides.

My heart was in my mouth for almost the entire 20kms we stayed on the road, except for the couple of times I walked a short way so my guide could take photos of me standing above sheer drops. I was so much more comfortable with my feet on the ground and I would, in fact, have been very happy to have walked the road, as it was all down hill and the views were spectacular. One particularly wet part had been nick-named St John Baptiste, as the mischievous truck drivers who used to carry people up this road would pause there a minute or two, thoroughly wetting their passengers.

Me checking out the sheer drop
- but not too close!

The size of the truck gives a good
indication of the size of the cliffs

We saw plenty of evidence of why the road got its name – the roadside crosses are numerous! Now, the road is mostly only used by tourists and mad mountain bikers, and over-jealous bikers are the only ones who die on the road. We were passed by many adrenalin junkies, and saw one injured, luckily not badly as he’d skidded to the right side of the road, not over the edge!

We eventually emerged into the Yungas Valley, where much coca is cultivated in small plantations at the side of the road. There is supposedly a lot of wildlife in the area, though I saw only a few butterflies and, later, on the road back, some large birds of prey – Caracaras and Andean vultures – no monkeys or parrots.

Some pretty butterflies

A coca plantation

Coroico is a small town of around 10,000 people, clinging to the steep hillsides amidst lush vegetation. Its climate is semi-tropical and it was hot, about 30°C. It exists as a retirement place for the rich of La Paz and as a weekend vacation spot. I was surprised to see a few black people there, especially one older woman who looked somewhat incongruous dressed in traditional Bolivian costume, complete with small bowler hat perched on her frizzy hair. These blacks are the remnants of the African slaves who were brought to Bolivia by the Spanish in the 16th and 17th centuries to work the silver mines at Potosi.

 In the distance, Coroico

Lunch was delicious, at a posh but empty hotel: palm hearts with tomato and lettuce salad; peanut noodle soup – a local favourite; some kind of breaded meat with chipped potatoes and coleslaw; and rich and refreshingly cold chocolate ice cream! No wonder Tony kept knodding off during the two-hour drive back to La Paz – I could’ve done with a siesta as well, but didn’t want to miss a moment.

The drive back was on the ‘new’ road – it was actually begun in 1935 by prisoners of war. They were from the last war fought by Bolivia: the bloody Chaco War with Paraguay from 1932-1935 over a disputed piece of territory. The road is an impressive piece of engineering, needing constant repair, as it winds up and over the mountains. Some sections are cantilevered out over deep precipices, and there are several tunnels, one of which is perhaps a kilometre long, directly through a mountain top.

As we neared La Paz, the weather began to close in behind us, with mist and low cloud swirling eerily around. I was so glad we had enjoyed fine clear weather earlier in the day and, though I was exhausted from the nervous tension of the journey, I was also happy to have seen such stunning landscapes, and to have travelled such a treacherous road and survived!

Bolivia day 11: the ruins at Tiwanaku

An archaeological day! Along with about 20 other tourists in a small bus – including the Swiss couple I had spent the day with in Potosi, and bumped into again when back home in Cuzco – we headed out of La Paz towards Lake Titicaca, to the site of Tiwanaku, 20kms from the lake.

The countryside on the way to Tiwanaku

How the site might have been

The Incas are the best known of the ancient South American civilisations but the reality is that, though large, they were only dominant for 170-180 years, whereas the people who created Tiwanaku were active from 1580BC to 1200AD, almost 2700 years. The ruins at Tiwanaku are in the middle of the Altiplano, at 3870 metres above sea level, and consist of one large pyramid and three other temple structures on one side of the small township and another large pyramid on the other side (named Kalasasaya and Pumapunku, respectively). Nothing has been fully excavated and, in the 1970s, some attempts at reconstruction were made, badly, without piecing the stone together correctly and using concrete – so it is difficult to know what is authentic and what isn’t.

We visited the museums at the site first, one that contained ceramic and metal remains, some skulls and textiles – strangely some items looked slightly Asian. The second museum housed the monolithic sculpture for which Tiwanaku is famous, almost 70 metres tall and covered in carvings, some of which have astronomical meanings (e.g. there are 365 circular patterns on the skirt, one for each day of the year). The sculptured figure also has strangely placed hands – the right is depicted in a physically impossible position – and this arrangement is repeated on other sculptures. No one knows why.

The sun gate

Much-weathered carved heads

Interesting carved figures

Another stunning gateway

We walked the site, climbed the tiers of the pyramid (where there’s a constant repetition of seven steps), admired the sun gate (through which the first rays of the sun shine on the morning of the mid-winter solstice on to an obelisk placed directly behind), and puzzled at more astronomical symbols and strange figures carved on another gate.

Next came lunch – and a respite from the blazing sun. The meal was delicious, with quinoa soup, then trout that looked and tasted like salmon, followed by banana and the artificially coloured pink yoghurt that seems to be everyone’s favourite in Bolivia.

Pre-Inca crosses?

More precisely carved stones

After lunch we visited the second part of the site, the pyramid at Pumapunku, where very little has been excavated. However, the large stones visible on the ground have Inca cross (so it’s actually a pre-Inca design?) and other precisely cut carvings, as well as indentations where metal butterfly clips had been used to join the stones together. It was a fascinating glimpse into an ancient culture, about which so little is known, and it will be interesting to see what is revealed in the future.

One small highlight – literally – was the sudden appearance of a wild guinea pig as we walked around. It just scooted across our path and, obligingly, paused long enough for some photos. So cute! I really can’t understand anyone who wants to eat this little creature, though it is as much a favourite in Bolivia as it is in Peru.

We arrived back in La Paz late afternoon and, after dumping some of my gear, I headed out again to explore. I didn’t get to the street with the museums as I’d resolved to, but I walked streets lined with small stalls selling everything from sexy lingerie, a million and one pirated DVDs, food and toiletries, to the fancy petticoats and brightly coloured skirts the women favour in Bolivia. Eventually, my feet would carry me no further and I returned reluctantly to the hotel, weary but entranced after another day of fascinating sights, sounds, smells and tastes.

An alleyway of shops

Tourist tempters!

Bolivia day 10: A witches market and the Valley of the Moon

On Monday 7 November I flew from Sucre to La Paz. At the airport I bumped into a traveller I had talked to before – Sue from Beuly and her 4 friends had been at the same hotel as me in Uyuni and were now also going to La Paz – so I had some company while waiting for my flight. One of the highlights of travelling alone is the people you meet along the way.

The flight took just an hour and there were magnificent views of the Royal Andes mountain range and La Paz, as we headed in to land. Tony the tour guide was waiting for me and I was quickly whisked off to my hotel. I dumped my stuff, then headed down the road for a chicken burger and chips for lunch. Delish!

Tony and our driver returned at 2.30 and we started our exploration of this impressive city. First was the Witches Market, a fascinating area of stalls selling aphrodisiac formulas, a variety of the herbs used in popular remedies, soapstone figures representing the different creatures important in the local culture (like frogs for wealth and good fortune), and some of the bizarre ingredients used to manipulate the spirits that populate the Aymara world. Most revolting were the dried llama foetuses, which are buried in the foundations of new houses as an offering to the earth goddess Pachamama to bring prosperity to the inhabitants. I was told these are only used by the poor; the rich are expected to sacrifice a live llama!

A basket of offerings to Pachamama, including a dried llama foetus!

There were also statuettes of little men, hung with paper money and festooned with the various items desired by the owner, to be kept in business premises to bring good luck. Apparently, the Catholic church has decided it is better to accept rather than reject such pagan offerings, so the statuettes now get taken to church to be blessed as well. Nothing like covering your bases!

We drove on through the crazy traffic of the main street, then out through the suburbs, past security-conscious embassy buildings, the official residence of the president, and the headquarters of the Bolivian navy. I had to laugh at that one – Bolivia is a landlocked country, except for 40% of Lake Titicaca, and Chile has denied them access to the Pacific Ocean, so why have a navy?

As we descended further down the valley, the temperature rose by 2 degrees to 26°C, and it was greener and more lush, with palm trees and colourful flowering bougainvillea. Next stop was the Valley of the Moon, with its strange rock formations caused by rain eroding the clay soil. In fact, much of the land around La Paz looks similarly unstable and subject to erosion, and Tony said there are frequent landslides in the rainy season.

We drove back towards the central city through posh suburbs with grand houses that could have been anywhere in the world to the Killikilli lookout for another fabulous view over the city – it is certainly a spectacular setting. Back down in the CBD, we stopped at the main plaza, which was full of more pigeons than I’ve ever seen in one place before, and was bordered by the impressive cathedral, government offices and the legislature building, guarded by specially dressed members of the National Guard. The last stop of the day was the narrowest and prettiest street in the city, Calle Jaén, home to several museums that aren’t open on Mondays. I resolved to visit them the next day if I returned early enough from my next excursion.

Just a small part of the huge city that is La Paz

The National Guard

La Paz's main plaza

The Legislature building

Calle Jaen

Bolivia day 2: getting to Uyuni



Part of La Paz



After a lazy morning, resting up for the long journey ahead, Tony the tour guide picked me up from the hotel at 1pm and took me to the bus station. The Naser double-decker to Oruro departed at 2pm and arrived just after 5pm.

We climbed up out of La Paz, before heading south. La Paz is a city of about 1.3 million people, according to my tour guide, so about the same population as my home town of Auckland, but La Paz’s setting is unique. It sits in a huge steep-sided canyon, with another large separate city, El Alto, built on the plains above it, and the high snow-capped mountains of the Altiplano bordering one side. Due to its unique topography, the elevation of La Paz ranges from 3200 to 4000 metres, so many visitors suffer from altitude sickness when visiting the city. Luckily, coming from Cusco, that didn’t affect me.

One of the huge peaks of the Royal Andean range that runs alongside La Paz

There was snow and ice in places along the roadside, something I hadn’t expected, and sprinklings too on the surrounding hills. It was very windy and obviously cold out, as people were well wrapped up, huddled in doorways or crouched behind walls out of the wind. It was brown, brown countryside and looked barren, but the fields had been ploughed – though there no signs of the green of growing crops. And there were no trees, and only the tufty grass that grows in the high country the world over. Occasionally, I could see small herds of cows and flocks of sheep, with their ever-mindful shepherds in attendance – no fences here to contain wandering animals. In places, there were also llamas – once I saw one rolling on its back in the sand like horses do.

The Tigo logo is everywhere



The green and white of Vivo



We passed through several small settlements, with buildings constructed of adobe or red bricks. There were few painted walls, except those sponsored by advertisers: popular ones are the green and white of Vivo; the red, black and white of Viacha, a cement company; and the blue and white Tigo label is everywhere, a telecommunications company, I think. The ubiquitous plastic bag littered the fields bordering the road and, near the towns, the dry stream beds were full of rubbish.

At Oruro, tour guide Martin met me off the bus and took me to the train station. It was interesting to chat to him. He is half Bolivian, on his father’s side, and half German, through his mother – his parents met at university in the US. They have since divorced but Martin enjoys duel citizenship, so he has lived in Europe as well as Bolivia. However, he’s now married to a Bolivian woman and has a young daughter, so prefers to live in Bolivia. He said that because his wife and child are darker skinned than him they suffer much prejudice when visiting Germany. Martin teaches German at a college in Oruro, and does tour-guiding part-time because he enjoys meeting people from other countries and cultures. I enjoyed meeting him too!

The train to Uyuni departed at 7pm. I was in first class, which was very comfortable, with reclining seats, though my seat was broken and wouldn’t recline as far as the others – actually a good thing, as I didn’t want to sleep past my stop – the train goes on to Chile! It was very hot. There were two movies: the latest Johnny Depp Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which seemed good but was in Spanish so I’m not entirely sure what was happening in the story; and then the X-men origins movie, which had English sub-titles. There actually weren’t many English-speaking travellers on the train – lots of Belgians, a big group of French, and various other Europeans.

After 7½ hours of chugging slowly along, we finally reached Uyuni at 2.30am. Luckily, my pick-up person was waiting and I was snuggled up in my lovely big comfy bed at the Tambo Aymara Hotel by 3am.

Welcome to Bolivia!

The Litoral bus to La Paz left the bus station at Cusco soon after 10pm on Friday 28 October, with me sitting in seat 2, right up front behind the driver, next to a young male traveller – I have no idea of his nationality, though he spoke Spanish like a native, so maybe he was South American of some description. It was comfortable enough, and they gave us thick, cosy blankets, so I snoozed on and off till we reached Puno about 5am. We only stopped there, on the roadside, to let off passengers, then continued on to Despaguerdo for the border crossing from Peru to Bolivia.

Here, Litoral let us down, I later discovered, as they were meant to guide us through the process. Instead, one of the drivers simply told us, in Spanish, to get off the bus and line up. A local official went up and down handing out forms to the locals, but wouldn’t give any to the gringos, not just me. After an hour and a half, I made it to the head of the queue and had my passport stamped out of Peru. At the other side of the river bridge that forms the border, I was stopped by a Bolivian official and marched in to their office. They asked about drugs and checked how much money I had and searched my bag, but there was no paperwork to complete. Two other gringos were treated the same way so I didn’t think anything of it. And it wasn’t till I got back to the bus that I realised my passport hadn’t been stamped – it was too late to go back. And it wasn’t till I was checking in to the hotel in La Paz that I discovered what a problem the lack of a stamp and official piece of paper I was also supposed to have completed would be – I could be fined when I left the country so would have to spend Monday morning visiting the Immigration office in Uyuni to get it sorted. I later discovered this is a common scam to get tourists to pay the fine, which is then pocketed by the immigration officials. It wasn’t a good start to my holiday!

But the rest of the day was great. Tony, the travel agency’s guy, was at the bus station waiting for me, even though we were 1½ hours late arriving, and I was whizzed off in a van to my hotel – which was nice, with free internet in reception and friendly staff, and I had a large comfortable room. Tony gave me all the vouchers for my future travel and said he would meet me the next day.

I was feeling very tired, and the business of my immigration paperwork made me feel a bit down. But I hadn’t eaten since the previous evening so I knew I had to pick myself up and go out. And I was so glad I did.

The city was alive, full of people and buses and cars. It has motorways and overpasses and roundabouts, things Cusco does not. Its suburban houses and buildings seem mostly to be made of red brick, but in the city centre it has some interesting old architecture, buildings that look European but not necessarily Spanish colonial.

I had a late lunch in a delightful restaurant that looked like it hadn’t changed from the 1920s, with old family portraits and film star photos hung in elegant frames on the walls, and memorabilia stacked on every available surface – an old cash register, typewriter, camera, phonograph – and art deco light fittings that a collector in the West would die for! And the food was pretty good too.

When I stepped back out on to the street, with 3 empanadas in a little bag for my supper, there was a parade in progress on the other side of the street. It was some kind of traditional cultural display – and it was fun! Some of the characters were weird – heavily wrinkled old men dressed up in white lacy petticoats with angel wings on their backs, one performer with a green dragon head, guys with doll-like masks and bulging blue eyes. The performers were quite happy to be photographed and, when I showed them the photos, we shared a laugh and simple conversation. There was a carnival atmosphere and my smiles were quickly returned. I returned to the hotel, very tired but having had a lovely afternoon!



Angels?



Look at that face!



Conquistadors?



I shared a laugh with these two old gentlemen



A knitted mask



A doll-like mask