Biking the World’s Most Dangerous Road
After having a nice, calm day at the ruins, we decided to opt for a little adrenalin and take a mountain bike tour down The World's Most Dangerous Road! (queue scary music) Actually, our mothers will be glad to hear that the appellation is today more tourist hype than anything else. The road earned this name several years ago after the World Bank took note of the fact that a bus or a truck would plunge off the cliffs once a week or so, killing all aboard. In the meantime however, the route had been replaced by another, safer road and the World's Most Dangerous Road today hosts pretty much exclusively mountain bikers.
Art in La Paz
After a couple of days chilling in La Paz, we decided to finally go and check out the city's museums. Our first choice was the municipal archeology museum, however, much to Matt's dismay, the archeology museum was closed without explanation and apparently permanently, so we headed across the street to the Contemporary Art Museum (also to Matt's distress).
Tiwanaku
From our refuge in La Paz, we finally made our way to Bolivia's premier Old Pile Of Stones, the pre-Inca city of Tiwanaku (aka Tiahuanaco). Historians typically divide Tiwanakan history into five periods spanning approximately 2,500 years from 1500 BCE to 1000 CE, however what you see today almost certainly dates exclusively to the last two of these periods, from around 300 CE to 1000 CE. The city reached its apex around 700 CE, and its influence extended for thousands of miles into parts of modern Chile, Argentina and Peru.
Welcome to La Paz
After a 20 hour bus ride from hell, Bolivian style on unpaved mountain roads, we finally arrived to the closest thing Bolivia has to civilization: La Paz. The last few weeks of traveling with little food and little sleep having sucked the life out of us, we decided to let our bodies heal and take it easy for a few days, concentrating mostly on getting good food -which this city, Gracias a Dios, has plenty of. And, well, we did walk around some (if only to get from our lunch place to our dinner place), and took a few pictures.
Rurrenabaque
After the interesting but admittedly miserable ride down the Rio Mamore, we decided to head back to civilization for a bit of, well, comfort. La Paz, however, is a 40 hour bus ride from Guayaramerin, and so we decided to break the trip up by stopping half way at the famous gringo congregation point of Rurrenebaque.
Rollin’ on the River: part 2
The fifth day of our trip down the Mamore proceded much as the day before, with every hour of travel punctuated by another hour getting the boat off of a sand bank. As night fell, the barge attached to our starboard got stuck and the frustrated crew decided to wait until morning to pull out. When dawn broke, they untied and pulled it from its seat, but as we were maneuvering to pick it up, the boat itself ran up so high onto the very same sandbar that any hope of recovery was lost.
Rollin’ on the River: part 1
After our visit to the ruins at Samaipata, we decided to change gears for a bit and head north into the Amazon basin. Our plan was to hitch a ride on a barge down the Rio Mamore from Trinidad to Guayaramerin, supposedly a four day ride featuring lots of hammock swinging, hot weather and wildlife. On this trip, however, we got way more than we bargained for.
Samaipata: the ruins of El Fuerte
Once we finally managed to arrange transportation out of Torotoro, we found ourselves on a remarkably painful two day trip to move just a couple hundred kilometers down the road to the town of Samaipata. The trip was grueling, involving 4AM minibuses packed so tight that you could not move your legs for hours, packed line buses with the people who could not get seats simply plopping down in your lap, and a long holdover in dusty, crappy Santa Cruz. What would make this pain worth it, you ask? Well, another Old Pile of Stones, of course!
Torotoro National Park, Day 3
Probably the m0st remarkable thing about this particular post is the fact that there was a day 3 in Torotoro. In fact, we are beginning to feel the time pressure, and we were intending to move on, but when we went to purchase tickets for the 6AM bus, we were rather shocked to find out that it sold out the day before. Given the general absence of personal vehicles in the region, the only option, it seemed, was to wait another four days for the next bus. Ah, life in small town Bolivia.
Torotoro National Park, Day 2
For our second day in Torotoro, we took the 20 km hike out to the Humajalanta cavern. The trip was a very nice hike across a flat plane surrounded with tooth-like hills formed of layers of what was once the muddy shore of an ancient sea.
Torotoro National Park, Day 1
After deciding that we had profited as much as possible from our stay Cochabamba, we decided to move on to our next destination, the Torotoro National Park. So, we boarded the thrice-weekly 6AM bus on a Sunday morning, hoping to arrive in time to have lunch, which is always a time-sensitive event in this country.