Cerro Tunari
According to our (in?)famous Lonely Planet, Parque Cerro Tunari, just out of Cochabamba and up the hill, is a great day outing from the city, with pick nick tables, play areas or kids, and nice trails for walking around. Our guide, alas, dates all the way back to 2007. Another age entirely...
Welcome to Cochabamba
After deciding not to stay in Sucre for language courses, we headed on to Cochabamba, a city between Sucre and La Paz known for its comfy atmosphere and kicking restaurant and bar scene (yes we were still hungry). We were not disappointed and after a couple of days here, decided to stay for a couple of weeks of Spanish classes. Though this is theoretically the heart of winter and people are walking around with jackets, hats and scarves, the sun seems to be perpetually shining and temperatures vary between 10-15 degrees Celsius in the morning, and almost 30 at midday. Barbaric cold, they call it here...
Welcome to Sucre
After a long bus ride across several hundred kilometers of unpaved Bolivian highway (with an overnight stop in Potosi), we finally arrived in Sucre. The former capital of the country, and once the home to many of the wealthy Spanish aristocrats with stakes in the Potosi mines, Sucre is a proud city with an at times tumultuous relationship with the rest of Bolivia.
Hiking the Cordillera los Frailes: part 2
Previously on Old Piles of Words: Matt and Venla embarked on a four-day hiking trip to the Cordillera de los Frailes, taking in the wonderful scenery and village life. They spent their 2nd night in the settlement of Maragua.
Hiking the Cordillera los Frailes: part 1
Having toured tirelessly around Western Bolivia for a few weeks, we decided it was time to go back to friendlier altitudes and warmer climates, and we headed down to Sucre, one of Bolivia's two capitals, and reputedly the country's most beautiful city. We were planning on using our time there to relax, but we had barely arrived that we stumbled upon an opportunity to go on a four-day trek to the nearby mountains. And so on came the backpacks again, and off we went again into the rugged countryside, for what was to become one of our most memorable experiences in Bolivia so far.
The Town of Uyuni
After our trip through the salt flats, we decided to spend a couple of nights in the town of Uyuni before even arriving: we knew we would need to do laundry, catch the blog up, and relax a bit before moving on. Besides, the town's write-up in our guide book didn't sound half bad. It turns out, however, that Uyuni is a self-contained proof that travel guides need to add words like "armpit" to their vocabulary to make it entirely clear that some places should just be avoided.
Salar de Uyuni, day 5
Our fifth and final day on the Uyuni trip was the undoubted highlight of the entire excursion. It was on this day that we climbed the 5,430 meter (17,800 foot) Tunupa volcano.
Salar de Uyuni, day 4
The fourth day of our trip was the day where we finally got to get up close and personal with the world's largest salt flat. This curious formation, which at 10,500 square kilometers is just slightly smaller than Flanders (13,000 km2). It contains and estimated 20 billion tons of salt.
Salar de Uyuni: day 3
Our third day on the Uyuni trip finally brought us out of the national park and to the edge of our goal: the world's largest salt flat. Of course, before getting there, we passed by a few great places.
Salar de Uyuni: day 2
The second day of our trip to the Uyuni salt flat still did not bring us to the salt flat, but instead through some of the more spectacular highlights of the Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa national park, which is located just on the other side of the chain that looms over San Pedro de Atacama in Chile.
The Salar de Uyuni: day 1
The first day of our five day trip to the Salar of Uyuni actually had little to do with the salt flat itself: we still had to move the hundred miles overland to get there. That is not, however, to say that the first day was boring.
Hiking in Tupiza
Having seen about all we wanted to see in Potosi, we headed on towards our next destination, the great Bolivian salar (salt flat) in Uyuni. Of course, getting there is not exactly easy: the only roads to get there require a 4WD and reasonably good off-road skills. This meant that we needed to hire a driver, and so we needed to get to a base close to the salt flat first.
The Cathedral of Potosi
On our last evening in Potosi, we happened to walk by the Cathedral, to find that the building, generally closed for renovation, was open for guided tours. It turns out that the tours are fairly regular affairs, but we missed all of them before because the hours are, somewhat mysteriously, posted on the inside of the Cathedral door. Nevertheless, this developed into a singularly interesting experience.
The Mines of Potosi
As we mentioned yesterday, Potosi was once among the most important parts of the Spanish empire, and this thanks to one mountain, the so-called Cerro Rico (Rich Hill). This volcanic peak once contained so much silver that, apocryphally, one could see the stuff seeping from the ground under campfires. While that story may be exaggerated, over the three centuries that the Spanish controlled Potosi, the silver pulled from the Cerro Rico equaled the amount in all of Europe. In other words, this one mountain contained as much silver as had ever been mined in Europe. Thanks to this one resource, Potosi boomed, soon becoming the largest city in the Americas and in 1650 it actually surpassed Paris and London. That year was also Potosi's peak, both in terms of silver and population.
The Convent of Santa Teresa
Our seemingly never-ending quest for food aside, the first thing we did in Potosi was visiting the Carmelite Convent of Santa Teresa. Not the most exciting thing to do as you get into a glorious mining city, it may seem, yet the guided tour was amazingly fascinating, and not only to history freaks like my better half. Even I am still puzzled by the stories hidden in the walls of this fortress of Spanish piety.
Potosi, the crown jewel of the Spanish Empire
After our short stay in the rather unremarkable but comfortable mining town of Oruro, we headed on to the colonial city of Potosi. Of all the Latin American cities that we have visited, Potosi was probably the most important in the Spanish Empire due to the mountains of silver that its mines provided. The evidence of this importance remains today in the form of fabulous churches and colonial buildings, but Potosi fell into obscurity when the major veins of silver played out around 1800.
Oruro
After a long night and a disturbing if amusing border crossing, we were happy to arrive at Oruro, a large and un-touristy mining city with a mostly indigenous population. The famed cheapness of Bolivian food was immediately confirmed, as we dropped our bags into our room and sprinted towards the city's vegetarian eatery, where a 3-course meal for two set us back $3. Yet we were soon to learn that though food may be cheap in Bolivia, it is not always easy to come by...
How to Succesfully Enter Bolivia
As we had heard that La Paz was paralyzed by a general strike, we thought it would be a good idea to take a night bust straight across the Andes into the Altiplano city of Oruro. We headed out of Iquique at around 9pm, ready for a long night, but looking forward to getting to Bolivia in the morning. At 1am, we got to the border, but our joy at getting there relatively early soon turned into bafflement. Now, the bus driver's assistant told us, we were all going to sleep on the bus until the immigration office opened at 8 in the morning! Shocked and mildly frustrated by this incomprehensible waste of time, which seemed to be a perfectly sensible routine to our fellow Bolivian travelers, we curled up under the sleeping bag we'd had the rare foresight to bring, and tried to sleep among snores, floating bits of conversation, and the periodic (and vain) attempts of a couple of ladies to get reception on a portable TV.