My first Blog

…..although I am currently in Argentina and my stay in Bolivia, even Chili, is far behind me, I didn´t want to withhold these amazing 3 weeks in Bolivia.

Finally arrived in Bolivia, finally a cheap stay. Although rooms in Ecuador and Peru are cheap compared with Amsterdam, that includes my stylish container that I used to call home, rooms in Bolivia are some of the cheapest in the world. For 1,25 euro I have my own bed, another 50 euro would give me the honeymoon suite of the Ritz in La Paz. My first encounter in Bolivia was Isla del Sol. Isla del Sol is thought of as the birthplace of the god of the Inca´s as well as the first 2 Inca´s itself. Would this be another inflated tourist location, or would it really be something this time? The island contains some ruins which are scattered over the island. Since the island is not much bigger then a few football fields, this should have been an easy trip. Take into account that the area is mountainish (did you notice the understatement?) and you will have yourself a 2 hours walk from the entry site to the ruins. Thus, we skipped the ruins… Besides, after the sight of Machu Pichu the ruins just don´t match up to what you would expect. Instead of another day of sightseeing we decided we would just enjoy the location of the island, which lies at an amazing 4000 mtr high plateau.

After this experience we headed off to La Paz, the administrative capital of Bolivia (for those that don´t get that, it is like the difference between Amsterdam and Den Haag, with La Paz being the Bolivian Den Haag and Sucre the Bolivian Amsterdam). According to Wikipedia is La Paz the highest administrative capital city in the world ánd (I don´t know how this made it to wikipedia) has the highest located golfcourse on earth. Maybe for some people a sound reason to do a last minute heading for Bolivia instead of the Cayman Islands, but to most tourists the city provides no more then a transfer to the jungle town of Rurenabaque. The last is exactly what we did, but not after some good partying. During my stay it just happened to be St. Patrick´s Day ánd I just happened to meet a group of Irish folks in a Irish hostal wíth a bar. Can it get any better?

Well, yes. Just before I wanted to take off towards the big party, someone tolled me about a soccer game between Bolivia and Argentinia with the Bolivian President Evo Morales on the Bolivian side and Diego Maradona as the Argentinian star. We would just have to buy the ticket with food of a total value of 2 euro. Background: there were some floodings in the lowlands of Bolivia and to help the people Bolivia organised the football game as a food-raising event. No problem, I´m game! After exchanging the food for a ticket, buying Bolivian national soccer-shirt and beers, the 6 of us joined the emotional crowd. We just knew Evo Morales and Diego Maradona, the first not even until 2 days before when I entered the country and saw his poster. Seeing Maradona do some moves and finishing off an penalty was definitely worth it, seeing Evo Morales loose in front of the home audience a good bonus. When after the game some guys jumped the 3 mtr fence, we decided to try our luck and see the great Maradona from up close. Although Maradona was long gong when we arrived near the players, the cheerleaders were still present and were a great second goal. Unfortunately one of us got hit by a guardian during the climbing and broke his ankle when he landed on the field. The attempts of getting phone numbers were broken off and we started helping our friend. When we arrived at the hospital, he was taken care off and somewhere around 22 hr we left for a diner and a toast for a happy ending of our little adventure. For our friend we ordered room-service.

The day after this experience, one of the friends from the match and myself took off towards the Bolivian pampas. The pampas is a kind of wetland that has some similarities with the jungle, but less dense and more animals. The bus ride to the pampas was downright incredible. Since a few years the Bolivian government build a new road top the jungle, simply because the old one had fully earned the name Death Road and was therefore not popular among tourists. The new road was slightly better, its use since a few years back only raised 15 reports of buses which slid of the road into a 500 mtr cliff. Not too bad we thought, but the European traffic has a higher number. And after our experience on the field we found ourselves real men and took the 22 hours bus ride, which turned out to be 27, included 3 flat tires and a handful of mudslides. Well, after 2 days of finding peace in the little jungle town of Rurrenabaque, 4 other friends arrived and we took of on a boat to our jungle resort. In 3 days time we went anaconda hunting, caymans petting, piranha fishing and swimming with dolphins. In between every other activity we found ourselves in a competition mosquito slamming. The winner would walk away with less then 50 bites, the loser unable to walk. On our way back to La Paz we took a flight.

The highlight of every Bolivia visit is the Uyuni desert. In a rush to avoid the harsh winter in southern Patagonia I immediately left La Paz for an Uyuni tour of 3 days. Finding myself within a group of 3 British and 6 Isrealis, we took off towards the prime location of the Desert, the salt flats. The salt flats are the remains of an ancient ocean which dried up around 40.000 years ago and left a 6 mtr layer of salt in an area with a diameter of 220 km with a total of 10.000.000.000 tons of salt. There you have the facts. Needless to say how incredible the feeling is to stand in the middle of this all and see nothing but blinding salt. After this, during our first morning, we got to see the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen in my life. Because some parts of the salt flats are under water, I saw it in double perspective, even better. After this we got to see the less famous parts of the Uyuni Desert such as the coloured mountains (because of the minerals found in the Desert), coloured lakes (no idea how) and the steam fields. Just as beautiful but incomparable with the salt flats and the sunrise. All of this beauty ended with an early morning in a hot spring, after which I left the tour and crossed the border to Chili.