La Paz & el Alto

La Paz is said to be the city with the highest seat of government and the highest airport in the world.
It is at 3640m altitude located in a big valley. Surrounded by the even bigger city el Alto, stretching
up the steep hillsides and overlooking La Paz. The contrast between the two cites can not be bigger.
The big sky-scrapers and shopping malls of La Paz in contrast to the crappy red brick houses of el Alto.

From the valley you can reach the top by super modern cable-cars (built by Doppelmayr, an Austrian company). Currently there are two lines built but 6 more are planned to connect La Paz with el Alto.
One ride is about 0,2€ including Wifi in the cabines, it is simply ridiculous and a must-do in La Paz!!
On the top you have such a cool view of the 2 cities and the surrounding mountains in the background...

Every Thursday and Sunday there is the biggest market in the world in el Alto. Was there on Thursday and the dimensions of this market are amazing, hiked from one end to the other and it took me over 1 hour...
You can buy everything there like food (including over 500 different potato species), clothes, toys, computer-hardware, even beds and cupboards as well as cars or parts of it, or lama-fetus (used as a gift to Pachamama=mother earth when building a new house)...

 

 
In La Paz I made a city tour on my own and visited some churches, public places, markets,...
The tour was created by "red cap" and is free for download with lots of additional information:
The shoeshine boys on the streets wear masks, so that their relatives and friends can not recognise them doing this kind of work. The women wear the cylinder, because they were told it is a big fashion in Europe back in the 50s. And they are still very fashionable here in La Paz.
One more important information: If a woman wears the cylinder inclined it means that she is single!!

I even went to an old car-parking house, which was transformed into a big market. There you can find several small stands selling cheap food and drinks. The possibility to eat very cheap at such places here in Bolivia is the reason why you will not find any fast food chain like Mc Donalds or Burgerking in this country...

The coolest thing here in Bolivia is that the Bolivianos have an unwritten law. Which says: "Treat the tourist like he is one of you and he will come back to Bolivia someday". So they do not betray you or try to sell you stuff more expensive because you are a tourist.
Bolivians are super friendly and I felt save all the time. For me Bolivia was probably my most favourite county of my South America trip and I will for sure return to visit more of this amazing country.

Isla del Sol

After the big hectic city of La Paz I needed some silence and nature.
So I made a 2-days trip to Isla del Sol located on Lake Titicaca, 1 hour by ferry from Copacabana.
The legend says that on this island the sun-god of the Incas (Inti) was born. So it is the birthplace of the big Inca-empire.

After arriving on the island you have to climb up a hill on the famous Inca-stairs. At an altitude of
almost 4000m and 300 stair steps up the hill it was not that easy. I had to stop 2 times to rest because my heart was bumping like crazy and I was breathing like an old steam-machine...

I continued hiking from the southern village (Yumani) to the northern village (Challapampa). There I stayed one night with the locals in a pretty cool small house with a nice view.
At night I watched the amazing stars on the night-sky until a thunderstorm came up on lake Titicaca.
The island is probably one of the best spots to watch the stars as there are almost no light-sources that influences your sight.

Early on the next morning I made my way to the sacred rock, where the sun-king should be born. Next to the rock is also a sacrifice-table and some ruins of an Inca-village.
After that I made my way back over several mountains to Yumani to catch my ferry back to Copacabana and La Paz.

During that hike I made five 4000-m (some even higher) mountains in about 3 hours. Not bad eh?
(To be honest, it is not difficult as lake Titicaca itself is at about 3800m... But still it sounds very good, eh?  :-)  )

  

In the silver mines

After the Uyuni-trip I made my way to the highest city of its size in the world, Potosi at 4067m altitude. There I visited the silver mines where the miners get out the metal with methods like a few hundred years ago. They do not have more than a hammer, a chisel and a few rods of dynamite. No modern machines are used, everything is done by muscle-power.
Also children at an age of about ten years and older work in the mine because some of the tunnels are so small and thin that just very small persons can fit in them.

 
Before we entered the mines, we visited the miners-market and bought some gifts for the miners:
Coca-leafs, which is the only thing the miners eat during their 12h-shifts, soft drinks,
96%-pure alcohol, which the miners used as a gift to Pachamama (mother-earth) to protect them when they are working in the mines (and also for drinking to not fall asleep...) and of course dynamite. Yes, in Bolivia you can buy dynamite without any problems... :-)

Afterwards we got some special clothing and entered the mines. We followed the small, narrow and sometimes really wet tunnels deep into the mountain.
The dusty air and heat inside the mountain made the visit almost unbearable.

This trip is really not for everyone as you also have to climb sometimes or crawl on your knees, because the tunnels are so small...
One girl of our group suffered a panic attack and needed to turn back. So the rest of the group and me were waiting for our guide to come back. We would be lost in this tunnel-system without
our guide.

The miners make new tunnels everywhere in the mountain, so they gave up a long time ago to create some map of the tunnel-system inside the mountains.
So sometimes one of the tunnels collapses because of another tunnel going very close above or underneath it...

The highlight was definitely the detonation with the dynamite we brought. It was a drama as some of our group almost started crying that they do not want to get buried and die due to the detonation...

It was really a relief for everybody when we finally got out of the mines and could breath the fresh air and see the blue sky again.

It was a very cool to get a small insight of the daily life of the miners.
I personally liked this tour and I am pretty sure that such kind of trips would be totally forbidden in Europe as they are too dangerous...

But hey, that's not Europe. THAT IS BOLIVIA!!! ;-)

Salar de Uyuni

Together with 4 English boys and 1 German girl I did a 3 day trip to the Salar de Uyuni. The biggest
salt dessert in the world, located in the south-west of Bolivia.
With our Bolivian driver David we drove in our 4-wd Toyota jeep through the highlands of Bolivia.
Past by many lagoons (with tons of flamingos), geysers, petrified forest and volcanoes.

Finally we reached the Salar on the morning of the 3rd day.
It was like being on another world. Driving on the completely flat salt piste, stretching as wide as you can see to the horizon. And when you take a closer look to the ground, it seems that the whole dessert is tiled also with fugues. Looks really weird...

In the middle of the salt dessert we stopped at an "island" called "Incahuasi". It is not really an island but a big rock sticks out of the wide white plains, covered with lots of cactus.

As it was raining during the night before we reached the Salar, we were able to see the reflection of the clouds on the thin water-layer. This looked so fu**ing unreal and we took a lot of cool pictures...

At the end of the trip we visited the cementario del tren in Uyuni. As the name already says it is a cemetery of old trains, once transported the sliver from Potosi in Bolivia to the pacific coast of Chile...

One of the highlights beside the Salar was the overnight stay in the salt-hotel. The walls of the building are made out of salt-bricks, the floor is out of salt as well as all desks and chairs. Looks really cool!! Just the roof is out of crappy corrugated sheet, because in case the salt construction would get wet, everything would break down... :-)

It was a very cool trip and here is one last cool picture for you... :-)