Category: Bolivia

And now, for the main event. Copacabana and La Paz were both lovely surprises, but the thing that put Bolivia on the “Go” list was… a big, flat plain of salt!

Salar de Uyuni is the world’s largest salt flat. It’s the remnant of one or more prehistoric lakes and has an “extraordinary flatness” according to Wikipedia, with its elevation varying less than one meter in altitude over its entire expanse. Apparently its so flat that it’s used to calibrate the altimeters of satellites passing overhead.

But first, let me recount how we got here. We left La Paz on a fairly sketchy bus for Oruro, a city in the middle of the Altiplano that claims the title of “Folklore Capital of Bolivia.” Its archaeological museum has a better collection of traditional masks and costumes than even the one in La Paz and its Carnival in February is said to be one of the most impressive in South America.

From there we took an awful, bumpy, bone-shattering train ride to the horrible desert town of Uyuni. We were trapped on the train with a large tour group of loud, fidgety college kids, some of whom spent the entire seven hours taking selfies. Uyuni was once an important rail station, but now exists to support the travel agencies sending tourists out into the Salar. We spent two nights there, but had we been able to finalize our tour arrangements online it would have been preferable to spend an extra night in pleasant Oruro instead.

Anyway, on to the tour!

Day One

The first step, of course, is waiting for your ride. We signed up with Uyuni White & Green as our tour agency, but as has been the case throughout South America the travel agencies tend to consolidate with other operators and we ended up on a tour run by Salty Desert Adventures instead. (Which was fine; they were well rated on TripAdvisor.) Our guide, Jose Luis, was friendly and helpful but didn’t speak a word of English. This wasn’t unanticipated. At least I could understand the basics and Lea’s Spanish keeps getting better.

The first location we visited was the “train graveyard” just south of Uyuni – a scattering of old engines, freight cars, and the occasional passenger car left in the desert to rust and be graffitied. This is exactly the kind of photo opportunity I love and would have been fantastic if the trains weren’t crawling with tourists using them as adult monkey-bars. I had to walk pretty far from the crowd to enjoy the trains in peace, but there were a lot of trains and a lot of desert to go around.

Next on the itinerary was a short tour of a place where the salt was processed for commercial use. (Fun fact: Bolivia exports no salt, except what tourists take with them.) Basically it was just a room where the crystals were toasted, broken down, sifted, or whatever it is they do… I don’t know, man, it was all in Spanish!

There were big crystals to make Lea swoon and about a dozen shops to buy souvenirs. What surprised me was that this was our only shopping opportunity for the remainder of the tour. After this, we were truly in the Wild.

The Wild wasn’t far away. A short drive brought us to our first photo stop on the Salar. Other tour groups were still around, but the herd was starting to spread out. The first stop wasn’t completely dry, either – there were springs where gas and water bubbled up from beneath the desert. Mainly it was useful as a place for us wannabe photographers to check light levels and test exposure times before heading out into the Unbearable Whiteness. Another quick stop for lunch, then we were on our own in the vastness of the Salar.

That’s when Lea grew to ten times her normal height and tried to stomp me.

Silliness aside, the beauty of the place is mind-bending. Yeah, sure, the Andes are majestic and such, especially around Machu Picchu, but the Salar is so alien that it hurts your brain just to look at it. There’s nothing but white all the way to a horizon so blurred by mirages that the mountains appear to float in the air.

After drinking in the beauty for an hour or more, we drove on to Incahuasi Island, a rocky outcrop in the salt flat where a forest of cacti hang on for dear life. Beyond that (after half an hour of trying to get our jeep to start) we got to watch the sunset before moving on to our first lodge, a hotel made entirely of salt.

A hotel made of salt sounds cool. The salt bricks do in fact provide really good insulation against the frigid night air on the Altiplano. What no one thought to mention, though, was that the floor was nothing but salt-sand. Aside from two narrow beds and a stone block that served as a nightstand, there was literally nowhere to set anything down in our room. We ended up piling everything we pulled out of our backpacks on top of our backpacks and playing “the floor is lava” as we tucked in for the night.

This was less than pleasant. Had we been staying in a campground on the beach with warm air all around and tiki bars really close by, it would have been a different matter.

Day Two

The salt hotel was in the little village of San Juan, which is also home to the Kawsay Wasy Necropolis. This wasn’t included in any of the tours we looked at, but we asked if we could make a side trip and our guide arranged it. Therefore, while everyone else was snug in bed, Lea and I got up with the sun and rode to the edge of town to engage in our cemetery-haunting hobby.

This particular cemetery is unique in that the inhabitants used natural stone towers to act as tombs for their dead. The remains have been left in situ and can be viewed through a small “window” in each of the Necropolis’s burial chambers.

After that and breakfast, our gang took off in our jeep for even more wonders of the desert. Specifically, alkaline lakes full of flamingos. Also (not in the lakes) wind-eroded rocks.

And an active volcano! Our first stop was at a baño and snack bar with a fantastic view of several volcanoes in the area, one of which was actively smoking.

The first lake we stopped at was a very interesting shade of pink. The second was an algae-covered green with a saline froth along the shore and, in place of seaweed washed up on the sand, a rind of salt-encrusted flamingo feathers. Flamingos were everywhere. Back in the Galapagos we spent quite a bit of time stalking the handful of flamingos we saw, always waiting for that perfect shot where one of the birds would pull their head out of the water for the briefest of instants. If we’d known what was coming, we wouldn’t have bothered. If Hitchcock had wanted to make a sequel to The Birds starring flamingos, he could have filmed it here.

Then there were the rocks.

Plenty of rocks, in interesting shapes, but like the trains on Day One they were crawling with tour groups. Taking a photo of this particular formation without someone posing in front was nigh impossible. But I did it!

I’m going to mention right here that at this point in our excursion, neither Lea nor I were feeling very well. Without going into the gruesome details online, suffice it to say that both of us were feeling the mileage weighing on us in different ways. It wasn’t altitude sickness per se, those headaches and feelings of light-headedness you get when you suddenly find yourself thousands of meters higher than you were. We’d been at high elevation ever since Cusco, but the fact is that we’d both been pushing our bodies beyond their usual limits, hauling backpacks and ourselves up and down mountains in the rarified Andean atmosphere (with its accompanying lack of oxygen) and were both paying the price.

We ached for sea level. We longed for beach chairs under a cabana. We wanted heat, dammit, enough air to breathe, some decent adult beverages, and life without an alarm clock once in a while.

The wind on the plateau steadily picked up all day. The sky was cloudless, but the sun wasn’t enough to fight what eventually became a full-on gale by the time we got to our final vista: Laguna Colorada.

What that gorgeous, unearthly image doesn’t show is the tropical-storm force winds picking up thousands of needle-sharp volcanic sand grains and blowing them right in my face every time I turned west. As windy as it was, Lea overheard one guide comment that often it was even worse. We took our photos then decided to enjoy the view from the safety of Jose Luis’s enclosed 4×4.

That night we stayed in a hostel that only ran their generator from 7:00pm to 9:00pm. Skylights warmed the building during the day, though, and at least it had a floor! It was quite an improvement, even if we had to use headlamps and flashlights to brush our teeth and pack.

Day Three

Up before sunrise. The wind had died down overnight. The first lake we passed had frozen over. We got up that early for the best views of the geysers. (“Not geysers,” says Lea. “Mudpots.”) They’re more active in the morning and the steam is better seen in the early sunlight. The last time Lea and I were taking photos of geysers, it was in Iceland in January 2015. This was warmer than that, at least, and we didn’t have to worry about ice on the ground. Lea, though, made sure to inform me that when walking around mudpots like these, the ground could theoretically open up under us at any time. (Email subscribers click here for video of our potential bubbly demise.)

If you gotta go…

After the geysers, the group went to a hot spring bath. Lea and I did not partake, not wanting to add wet clothes to our backpacks. The last stop for us was Laguna Verde, another salt lake which wasn’t as verde as normal because there wasn’t enough wind to kick up all the algae. Still, more great views of volcanoes:

And that was it for us. The rest of the group had one or two more stops to make on their way back to Uyuni, but Lea and I had chosen this as our exit point from Bolivia into Chile. For a nominal fee our guide helped us across the border and gave us tickets for a bus to take us into San Pedro de Atacama, Uyuni’s sister tourist town on the other side of the mountains.

We longed for warmer air. We longed for thicker air. We wanted to be someplace flat. We dreamed of getting back to the coast. We imagined the sound of waves and the feel of a humid sea breeze.

We waited for two hours in a cramped, stuffy van just to get our turn at the inspection station at the border into Chile. As for the beach? That, my friends, is another story.

P.S.

Here’s our route through Bolivia. As you can see, we barely touched the country and kept entirely to the upper Andean plateau. Should we return, and I have to say we probably will, it’ll be to visit the green areas on the map – and Oruro one more time.

P.P.S. Jared’s Book Corner

There’s not a lot of Bolivian literature available in English translation. However, there is American Visa, a gripping crime novel from the mid-1990s about a down-on-his-luck Bolivian teacher who will do whatever it takes to escape his native country and get to the United States. Check out my full review on Goodreads.

La Paz is a big city. So were Quito and Lima, but the geography of La Paz never lets you forget it. No matter where you are, you’re either at the bottom of the valley looking up at cliffs carpeted in buildings, or you’re on one of those cliffs looking down at the entirety of the metropolis.

La Paz sits in a valley in the Andean Plateau formed ten million years ago when the rising mountains cut what would become Lake Titicaca off from the rest of the Pacific, causing it to erode a huge swath of real estate as it drained. The city started life in the bottom of the valley, but now fills it and spills out over the rim.

La Paz is a fun, colorful city where something’s always going on. If you’re bored, you’re doing something wrong. Lea and I spent a week in La Paz (mas o menos). Here’s what I recommend based on our experience.

10. Lots of Cardio

This is going to happen whether you want it or not, so just make it part of your plan. With the sole exception of several blocks along Calle Illampu, I never saw a single level street in the city. Imagine if you scooped up another South American city, dumped it in the mountains of West Virginia, then levitated it to the height of the lower Himalayas, and you’ve got La Paz. Being at high altitude already increases your heart rate. In La Paz, walking one block up the street is like doing five minutes on a Stairmaster. Why even pay for a gym membership when you could just move here?

9. Get Haircuts In Spanish

I’d already done this in Quito but it was Lea’s first time. The lady in Ecuador cut my hair so short that I was able to go two whole months before getting it cut again. Even so, my top had only just reached its normal length, but the back was slowly turning into a mullet. Lea had hers cut just before we left Atlanta, but it had reached the point where she couldn’t ignore it any longer. Fortunately, our hostel is right next to a row of about twenty barber shops. Guys stand in the doorways calling out to people walking by, as if a haircut is ever an impulse purchase.

Seriously, though, this is an experience everyone should try at least once. Find a barber or hairstylist with whom you only share a handful of words in common and try and explain in pantomime how you would like your hair to look for the next six weeks. Charades was never this fun.

In the end, Lea rated her haircut as “close enough.” My barber gave me something like  flattop with lots of gel (that I wasn’t expecting) and gave my beard and mustache the best trim they’ve ever had.

8. Shop Your Touristy Heart Out in the Mercado de Brujas

The heart of the backpacker/tourist district of La Paz is Calle Sagarnaga, where there are hostels and travel agencies galore (as well as, if I may say so, an excellent Mexican restaurant called Kalakitas and a damn fine Cuban place called Sabor Cubano). The block between Sagarnaga and Santa Cruz, along Calle Linares and an adjoining alley, is the Witch’s Market (Mercado de Brujas). This is the souvenir-shop center of the city’s tourist industry.

The whole street smells of incense even after the shops close. About a quarter of the stores sell “witchy” items like herbal remedies, sex-aid potions, Tiwanakan totems, and mummified baby llamas (seriously) but the rest sell regular Andean souvenirs: T-shirts, bags, rugs, wall hangings, and about everything imaginable made out of llama or alpaca wool. Lea and I have avoided buying souvenirs so far, but knowing Bolivia was the least expensive place on the continent we finally broke down. If you happen to get a Christmas present shipped to you from South America this year, the Mercado de Brujas is probably where it came from.

7. Ride the Teleférico While Commuters Look at You Strangely

Several times on this trip we’ve ridden teleféricos (aerial gondolas) in other countries. In Quito there was the one up the side of the Pichincha Volcano, as well as the open-air cable car across the waterfall gorge in Mindo. In Peru there was the spanking-new teleférico that took us up to Kuélap, the ancient walled city outside of Chachapoyas. Those were all tourist attractions. The teleféricos in La Paz, however, are actual public transportation.

That didn’t stop us from being geeky tourists. There are at least seven color-coded teleférico lines in La Paz serving as a sky-borne subway system. We rode the Orange Line, which goes east-to-west across the north part of the city, and the Red Line, which rises from the valley floor to El Alto, La Paz’s high suburb on the rim of the valley and home to a five-square-kilometer street market on Sundays. Except for our first ride on the Orange, in which we had a car to ourselves, we shared our gondolas with regular commuters minding their own business and ignoring the silly gringos taking photos through the scratched-up plexiglass.

6. Witness the Warping of Spacetime In Mercado Lanza

At the bottom of Santa Cruz and Sagarnaga, about two blocks from our hostel, was the Plaza San Francisco and its big shopping center, Mercado Lanza. All cities in South America have mercados with crowded walkways between tiny stalls the size of walk-in closets. Most mercados are single story affairs. Mercado Lanza is another beast altogether.

From the outside it looks like a box. From the inside it looks like a car park designed by M.C. Escher in a particularly vindictive mood. The stalls are metal boxes on concrete ramps that shoot off in every conceivable direction: bookstores, vegetable stands, flower shops, and even restaurants that can sit up to eight people if they really like each other. Lea took me there on my first day in town, and the first words that went through my brain were “five dimensional hypercube.”

What really blows my mind is that no matter which level you’re on in the mercado, there’s an exit directly to the street. How that works I’m not sure. I just enjoyed my Bs15 ($2) dinner and tried not to think about the geometry of the space. That way madness lies.

5. Visit Enough Museums to Become an Exhibit Yourself

You’d think we’d be sick of museums by this point and you’d be right, but La Paz has a depth and breadth of museums to keep even jaded three-month travelers like ourselves entertained. The only problem is having to climb mountains to reach them. That and the fact that they like to close at lunch and not re-open until late in the afternoon.

Lea checked out the Precious Metals Museum and the Museo de San Francisco before I arrived. Together we went to the National Museum of Art and the Museum of Ethnography & Folklore, both of which have impressive collections. The latter has an entire room of masks, a room of metalwork (both ancient and contemporary), and a room of clothing and hats made of plumage.

We later went to the National Archaeology Museum (also known as the Tiwanaku Museum) and tried to go to the Contemporary Art Museum (in a building designed by Gustave Eiffel of all people) only to find that it had been shut down. Wandering around, we saw a Museum of Geology and Paleontology that wasn’t marked on any of the maps, but didn’t get to go because of the aforementioned funky hours and an afternoon thunderstorm.

We did not go to the Coca Museum, the Museum of Bolivian Beverages, or the Museum of Musical Instruments, but all those things are out there if you happen to be in town and feel so inclined. I’m convinced there’s a limit to how many museums you can visit in so many cities before they invite you into a glass case of your very own and lock the door behind you.

4. See Where Bolivianos Go When They Die

As is our habit, Lea and I visited La Paz’s biggest cemetery. The Cementerio General was actually the easiest place in town to find, since half the buses list “Cementerio” prominently as one of their destinations.

The cemetery in La Paz is big and does not waste space. There are no individual “graves” as we would think of in the U.S. and very few large family monuments. The Cementerio General is a massive apartment complex of a graveyard, including several structures that I could only think of as high-rise housing projects for the dead. The “streets” within are better marked than those in the city itself.

We visited the cemetery as they were getting it ready for Todos Santos. Artists had been creating large, creative, beautiful, and funny murals throughout the complex. It’s too bad that we’re going to miss all the excitement. Day of the Dead may not be as big in South America as it is in Mexico, but La Paz as a city seems to be really into Halloween. The Cementerio General may not be the prettiest cemetery Lea and I have visited, but thanks to it’s current artwork I’d say it’s definitely the most “gangsta.”

3. Tour the City In an Open Bus While Ducking Tree Limbs and Power Lines

La Paz is too big to see just by walking. Luckily there is an open-top double-decker tour bus that runs three times each day. It costs Bs100 ($14.50) per person and has audio that you can listen to in seven languages. The tour runs from the north end of town through the historic center, up to the panoramic Mirador Killi Killi with its 360° view of the city, then south through the middle class Miraflores neighborhood and finally out the bottom to the Valley of the Moon and its eroded rock formations.

A few words of warning about the tour: First, the bus is fairly tall and the crazy bundles of power lines strung across La Paz’s narrow streets are fairly low. The tour guide told us not to stand up and that’s the best piece of advice I got all week. Otherwise I’d have been clotheslined by an electrical cable and Lea would have collected on my life insurance. Even staying in my seat, I had to duck more than once.

The same goes for trees, which the bus is not low enough to clear. I only got smacked in the head one time, but there were several close shaves. The other problem is that the bus’s shock absorbers aren’t what they could be and La Paz’s streets aren’t that smooth to begin with. I learned to take what pictures I could while the bus was stopped. To do so with the bus in motion would have resulted in having a camera shoved up my nose.

2. Try To Take Pictures of the Surrounding Mountains

Speaking of photography, if there is one challenge that is both maddening and irresistible it’s trying to take pictures of the snow-capped mountains that circle La Paz’s valley, of which the giant volcano Illimani is the crown jewel. In the city itself they’re usually obscured by the buildings or the rim of the valley. If you do get high enough to see them, they’re often shrouded in cloud.

Attempt One: We read in the Footprint South American Handbook (that we chopped up to carry with us and discard in pieces as we leave each country), that there was a great view of Illimani at sunset if we walked up Calle Max Paredes, dodging homicidal bus drivers and edging around market stalls, up to the intersection with Avenida Buenos Aires. What the book failed to mention was that when we got to Buenos Aires all we had to do was turn around to see the mountain. We walked up and down several blocks looking for this supposed “view” until we gave up and headed back– only then to see the mountain right in front of us, all its glory blocked from photographic perfection by the hundreds of power lines strung across the street.

Attempt Two: While walking around the Cementerio General, I happened to look down one of the alleys to see – snow capped mountains! I started looking for the best unobstructed angle and eventually  decided to climb the stairs to the top floor of one of those “high rise” mortuaries I mentioned. Several of the mountains were in easy reach of my telephoto lens, although it was hard to keep trees, roofs, and other structures out of the frame.

Attempt Three: The Cementerio General, as it turns out, was right next to a station for the Red teleférico line. Instead of heading home by bus, we walked around the corner to the gondolas. On the way down we had a fantastic view of Illimani, blocked by the grill of the gondola doors. Once we reached the bottom, we bought two more tickets to ride back up, this time with the doors facing north and the large bay window facing the mountain. At last we got our shots of Illimani! At the upper station we had to buy two more tickets to get home. The attendants gave us funny looks, seeing as we’d gone through their turnstiles three times in ten minutes.

1. Watch the Flying Cholitas Kick Ass

Email subscribers click here for the video. DO IT.

If you’re in La Paz on a Sunday, there is one thing you absolutely have to do. If you’re just passing through, miss your bus or skip your flight so you can hang around and see this.

The Flying Cholitas are women wrestlers who fight in full traditional outfits. They perform in El Alto on the rim of the canyon in a back-alley gymnasium that has the feel of an underground Fight Club. It takes place around and after dark in one of the sketchier areas of town, so booking a tour through an agency is recommended.

The show is up-close, intimate, and spectacular. It begins with some regular male luchadores to warm up the crowd, but when the ladies come out it’s Game On. They throw each other into and out of the ring, they chase their opponents into the stands, they go after the announcers if they don’t like what they hear. They’ll beat each other with plastic water bottles (with the effect of soaking any spectators nearby, such as your humble author). Once they tied one of their opponents to the ropes with her own braids before laying the beat-down.

Cheesy? A little. Hilarious? Absolutely. Surreal? You better believe it. But it sure as hell beats following a gaggle of tourists taking selfies in front of ancient monuments. Anyone taking a selfie in front of the Flying Cholitas would probably be rewarded with a metal folding chair to the head.

The Escape Hatch will be going dark as Lea and I head out into the salty Bolivian desert. I’m confident that when I report back, the photos will be worth the wait.

Stay tuned, dear readers.

I have a confession to make. I was really reluctant to go to Bolivia. As a matter of fact I almost didn’t. When we first started planning this trip, Bolivia was on my list of “don’t need to go there” countries. Also in the planning stages, Lea and I discussed the idea of splitting up at some point and traveling independently for a week or two. When that came up, the obvious choice in my mind was for Lea to head out to the Bolivian salt flats while I made my way down the Pacific coast to some nice little beach town in Chile.

Why the prejudice against Bolivia? In all honesty I had it built up in my mind as an impoverished slum of a country much like Tanzania, which Lea and I visited in 2012. Tanzania was a mix of staggering natural beauty and horrifying poverty, and even for travelers living conditions there were far below anything I ever wanted to experience again. Knowing that Bolivia is the poorest country in South America (except for Venezuela, which is in total economic collapse), I expected much the same.

I’ve never been happier to have been so wrong. Wow, do I love Bolivia.

I’m writing from a hostel in the heart of La Paz, but this week I just want to talk about the little resort town on Lake Titicaca that completely changed my mind: Copacabana.

We bused into Copacabana from Puno, the main Peruvian city on the lake. The difference was staggering. Puno was bigger and more westernized, also with a big tourist sector, but like many of the cities we visited in Peru it looked like a giant garbage heap. In Copacabana, suddenly everything was pretty and not just the landscape. Yes, the buildings were dilapidated and under continual repair, but suddenly they were in color. Vibrant blues, greens, and orange-painted walls were everywhere. The main church, the Basilica of Our Lady of Copacabana, is a blazing white with glistening green and orange tile work on the spires and Moorish-style domes.

What I’m trying to say is that yes, Bolivia is poor, but the people here make an effort. My first impression of the country is that Bolivianos take pride in where they live and despite the hardships they do what they can to put their best foot forward. I know I may be an arrogant, spoiled American talking out of his ass about things whereof I understand very little, but I’m here to tell you that crossing the border from Peru to Bolivia was like stepping from black-and-white Kansas to Technicolor Oz.

And Copacabana is so laid back. It’s a tourist town for sure, but it’s not a pushy tourist town. There are hostels, restaurants, and travel agencies everywhere, but no one’s chasing you down the street to make you shop at their store. It’s possible to just sit on a bench and stare at Lake Titicaca in peace and quiet for as long as you’d like. For just a few dollars more, you can do the same from the roof of a backpacker’s bar while sipping 2-for-1 Cuba Libres.

(It was in Copacabana that I feel we really caught up with the Backpackers. In Peru we were among more traditional “two week package with luxury accommodations” tourists.)

The only trouble with Copacabana is that it’s so damn high. The elevation is 3,841 meters and the tourist maps don’t stop reminding you that Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable body of water in the world. That’s fantastic, unless you’re in your mid-to-upper forties and your body is already showing signs of wear and tear from extended travel. After a week at this elevation (counting the time in Puno) Lea went ahead and traveled “down” to La Paz (highest capital city in the world). Like a dork I stayed behind for two days to do a couple of hikes – because 3,841m just wasn’t high enough.

The first was to climb this thing:

Cerro Calvario is the hill that overlooks the city. On its peak is a series of monuments representing the Stations of the Cross. From below it was obvious that the views from on top were spectacular. And since the trail starts right in the middle of town, I thought “won’t be too hard, just bring some water and take it slow.”

It took me about an hour to reach the top. The steps and ramps on the path up were wildly uneven and it was all I could do to sit and breathe when I reached the summit. The views were fantastic, however, as you can see from all the aerial shots in this article. Having reached the top, I made sure and stayed as long as I wanted. The way down, though less taxing on the lungs, was far scarier. Once I exited the path from the hilltop, there were three choices of streets back to the center of town. I chose the shortest, but it ended up being so steep and slippery that halfway down I turned around and climbed back up so I could take a longer, gentler route.

The next day I rode the ferry out to Isla del Sol, which according to myth is the birthplace of the Inca. Every square foot of the island is terraced and I swear they call it “Island of the Sun” because there isn’t any shade. At present there’s a feud between the people on the south side of the island and the north (something to do with the northerners allowing development on sacred ground) so only the south end is currently accessible to the casual hiker.

Nevertheless, I took the boat to the village of Yumani, climbed the Inca Stairs, and walked the long donkey trail to the south tip of the island, then back up (and down) to Templo Pilkokaima, the main archaeological site on the southern end. I had five hours from when the ferry dropped me off in the morning until it went back to Copacabana in the afternoon, and I needed almost all of that for the hike.

Despite hiking my body right up to the limits of its endurance two days in a row, I felt more relaxed in Copacabana than I had anywhere else on our South American trip since Mindo, Ecuador (another peaceful backpacker haven – I see a pattern forming). Still, there was a lot of continent left and it was time to move on.

Fun fact: Copacabana is on a peninsula that juts out into Lake Titicaca and, like Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, does not connect to the rest of Bolivia except through Peru. Since border crossings are a pain, the buses ferry across Lake Titicaca to get to the road to La Paz. Thankfully, they make the passengers disembark and cross on a separate ferry. Otherwise, we’d have been going across the water like this:

The Escape Hatch will return in just three days for a special La Paz report before I lose the Internet entirely in the wild Bolivian desert. ¡Hasta pronto!