SETTLING IN AND VENTURING OUT

Happy new year all!  Hard to believe we’ve been in La Paz just over three months already.  Considering we’ll only be in Bolivia two years, over 1/8 of our time here is already behind us.  Time to start getting out and checking some things off the Bolivia bucket list!

Ready, set, go!

We started off slow with some short ventures out of La Paz.  The highest golf course in the world is a 15 minute drive from our house – and it’s beautiful.  Getting out to the course has become a regular diversion.  In just a few minutes, you feel like you’re out of the city and on a lovely stroll through the canyons and woods.  Quite literally, since my balls end up in the canyons and woods regularly.  

It is a really stunning course.

I don't know who looked at this crazy, canyon-y topography and thought, yeah, we can put a golf course there... but I'm glad they did.

We’ve also found some amazing hiking areas – also within a 20 minute drive from our house.  The canyons around La Paz are really stunning – think Bryce Canyon.  Even in La Paz, on my daily commute to work on the gondola each day, I am dazzled by the views.  It’s a stunning city.

Hike #1 though a river canyon about 20 minutes out of La Paz.

We went on a dry day, but now that the rainy season has started, this canyon probably gets pretty wet carrying all the runoff from these steep canyon walls.

A view from our lunch spot.  This isn't a national park or anything, folks.  Just a rural area outside La Paz.  There are views like this EVERYWHERE here.

Mt. Illimani peaking out from the clouds towards the end of our hike.

Riding back to La Paz at the end of the hike.  If you drove straight there, it would take 20 minutes.  It took us about an hour on this "trufi" - vans that run a set route around the city and suburbs (and pick up anyone that flags them down along the way) for about 30 cents a ride.

Hike #2 - Muella del diablo (Devil's tooth).  A cool rock formation you can see from pretty much anywhere in La Paz.  We drove up and then hiked down (downhill is key at this altitude) to a little, rustic ecolodge where we had dinner and spent the night.

The intrepid migrants on the trail.

That rabbit-meets-squirrel looking thing is a viscacha - super cute rodents that like the dry, craggy canyons around La Paz.

Sunset at the Colibri ecolodge.  It took us most of the day to hike there.  It took about 20 minutes to drive back to La Paz the next day.

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A stop at a local ceramist's studio on the way back to La Paz the next day.

And lunch at Flor de Leche - a fabulous local cheese producer.

La Paz also loves a good holiday – especially Halloween, it seems.  When we heard they were shutting down traffic on Halloween evening in an area called San Miguel – a 15-minute walk from our house – we headed up to check it out.  San Miguel was long ago a horse race track – a very high-altitude and slightly uphill oval.  It has now been paved and converted into a commercial area with lots of restaurants and coffee shops.  We like to head up on weekends to stroll around and grab a coffee.  On Halloween, EVERYONE came out – in full costumes.  Businesses handed out hard candies to the kids.  We enjoyed a $2 glass of wine at a sidewalk café and watched the procession. 

Even the embassy got into the spirit, turning into a haunted house for local and U.S. families working here.

Our household shipment - and most of my clothes - hadn't arrived yet, so I fashioned Ruth Bader Ginsberg out of a black suit and some coffee filters.

Halloween evening in San Miguel.  They closed the streets and it became a huge party.  Also featured in this photo - an example of the omnipresent 1970s Volkswagen Beetles that are everywhere here.

A flash mob did the Thriller dance.  I'm not usually much of a Halloween person - but La Paz made this such a fun night for all ages.  

We also arrived about a month before Bolivia elected its first pro-U.S., pro-private market government in 20 years.  After two decades of socialism, the new president is promising lots of reforms to try to boost Bolivia’s economy.  We’re waiting to see how it all shakes out, but in the meantime, U.S. officials are falling over themselves to come here to meet with the new administration.  It has definitely been a much, much busier job than what I was anticipating – the previous government hated the U.S. and wanted nothing to do with us.  But it has been exciting to be here during a pretty monumental moment in Bolivia’s history.

Lots of pomp and circumstance on inauguration day.

Bolivia's newly inaugurated president (Rodrigo Paz) at the Government Palace.

I was part of our team that was staffing our U.S. delegation that came for the inauguration, so the day was a bit of a blur.  But it was pretty cool to be "in the room where it happened."

The busy work schedule is part of the reason most of our sight-seeing so far has been contained to the immediate La Paz area.  But we were able to celebrate a long Thanksgiving weekend at the Uyuni salt flat in southwest Bolivia.  It is the world’s largest salt flat – basically a huge salt desert with small “islands” in its interior and a volcano on the perimeter.  It’s Bolivia’s biggest tourist attraction – though Bolivia still hasn’t quite figured out how to do tourism, so it’s a challenge to get to and navigate.  But we figured it out and spent two days driving across the salt flat, hiking one of its islands and the volcano, getting up at 3am to see the stars from the salt flat, and then watching the sun set later that day.  It is a pretty magical place.

On the Uyuni salt flat.

Various tour operators offer day trips to the salt flat from the neighboring town of Uyuni.  All of them take small groups of tourists out in 4x4 Land Cruisers.

The cars more or less follow well-worn tracks through the salt flat to various destinations - islands, hot springs, volcanoes, etc.

It looks like snow, but the salt is hard as heck.  There are salt mines scattered around that cut huge blocks to use as building material for lots of the buildings in the area.

Our lunch spot during our tour.  The walls were made of salt blocks.  Even our hotel was constructed of salt blocks.

A hike on Cactus Island (aptly named) offered stunning views across the salt desert.

A tourist trap, er, destination on the salt flat featured huge sculptures made of, you guessed it, salt.

Wet season was just starting during our visit, so parts of the salt flat were covered with shallow standing water that reflected the sky and made for very cool views.

We donned wellies for a stroll - and photos - in the standing water.

The reflections at sunset were particularly striking.

Day 2- a hike up the dormant Tunupa Volcano on the north edge of the salt flat.  It was about 1,000 foot gain - but Uyuni is even higher than La Paz, so there was a lot of huffing and puffing to get to this vantage point.  This photo was taken at about 14,500'.

We came upon this mama and newborn llama when we got off the volcano.

Our tour guide had us posing for all sorts of photos.

These are just a couple of the photos he took.  There are dozens more like this.  

Another sunset showing just how vast this salt desert is.

We were up at 3am to get to the salt flat and look at the stars before sunrise.  It was COLD out there... 

We’ve continued to get out of La Paz since Thanksgiving, spending the week before Christmas in Bolivia’s colonial capital Sucre and its wine region Tarija.  More on that trip in a future post since this one is already running long.  (If you've read this far, thanks for sticking around!)  We also received our household shipment (i.e., all our stuff that follows us around the world) two days before Christmas, so we spent the holiday unpacking and starting to make our temporary house feel like home.  So at the three month mark, we find ourselves settling in… and ready to venture out. 

REACHING NEW HEIGHTS

Greetings from La Paz, Bolivia!  The airport is located in an area of the city called “El Alto” (or “The Highest”) – and it’s called that for a reason.  The elevation is about 13,500 feet.  Larger international flights have to land in the wee hours of the night when the air is slightly more dense.  That’s how we found ourselves making our way to our new home around 2:30am, slightly bleary eyed, but excited to see what the light of day would bring.

La Paz Airport, 2:30am.

The view from our new home - a 3-story condo.  At over 10,000' elevation, some could consider walking up to the 3rd floor bedroom a form of hazing.  Don't worry.  The guest bedroom is only up one flight.  Come visit!

There's a lawn area in front of our building that turns into a dog park in the afternoons.  Perfect!!!

Our house is located in another neighborhood called “Zona Sur” (South Zone).  It is lower here – about 10,400 feet – but that’s still plenty high enough to make us catch our breath.  The first week or so we were here, I would get winded just talking.  Walking on any incline necessitates occasional pauses.
  

The embassy supplied us with a bottle of oxygen for the first few weeks.  That's a first.

The street trees are trimmed to Bolivian height - not grande Australian/American height.  Watch your head!

My office is located back up the hill at about 11,000 feet and about 5 miles from our house.  That means a short commute is needed of either about 20-30 minutes by car, or slightly longer… by gondola.  I am opting for that latter option for several reasons – it’s quiet (no honking), it’s smooth (no zig zag turns and braking), and it’s like a Disneyland ride every day!  Bonus: it’s less than $1 roundtrip every day.  To suss out my new commute – and get a birds-eye view of our new city – we spent part of our first weekend making a circuit of the city’s teleferico system.

Gondolas definitely make quick work of scaling cliffs like these.

It's amazing how many houses and buildings here are built within feet of sheer cliffs.  No gracias.

What a view!  The buildings below aren't bad either.  :)

There are 10 lines in the city's teleferico system.  Most of them are criss-crossing cliffs and canyons.  This one goes right down the middle of a main road.

The view from the top of the yellow line.  Actually, it's the view from a fast-food chicken place at the top of the yellow line.  A million dollar view to accompany your $2 fried chicken.  Not bad.

I pictured La Paz being kind of brown and drab before I came here since it's so high and desert-like - but the colorful houses - and plenty of trees! - make for some lovely vistas.

A date night trip to the top of the yellow line - which besides the fast food chicken place also has a little coffee shop.  We stopped in for a cafecito and a view of the Harvest Supermoon rising over Mount Illimani earlier this month.

We’ve only been in our new city in the sky for a bit over a month, but we’ve taken full advantage of the weekends so far – visiting local markets, sightseeing at a local nature park, doing our share of eating (this city has AMAZING food!), taking in some musical shows at a little theater nearby, and celebrating a birthday.  We’ve wasted no time seeing all that La Paz has to offer.

Wandering through the streets of the "Witches Market," which despite its name (and a few taxidermied llamas used in good luck rituals), has a bunch of lovely shops and handmade wares.

The entry to the Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) nature park about 10 minutes outside La Paz, complete with llama statue - of course.

The formations in Valle de la Luna reminded us of Bryce Canyon.

There was a series of trails and bridges through the park that made for a lovely stroll.

View across the Valle de la Luna - and look at that blue sky!

This balancing boulder on top of a sandstone spire was called Madre Luna (Mother Moon).

Time to eat!  A local Spanish restaurant put on a paella feast in honor of Spain's national day.

Soup's (or paella's) on!

Not to be outdone, the local German Club put on an Oktoberfest celebration.

And now for dessert.  Birthday cake and a gathering with new friends at our place for my bday.

And now for some evening entertainment.  A little theater about a 15-minute (very slow) walk from our house puts on live music and theater productions.  This was The Greatest Showman - or El Gran Showman because the production was en espanol - complete with circus acts and a live band.

And this was the Bolivian Tony Starlight (Portland people, you know what I'm talking about) covering Frank Sinatra standards, in english, with a 15-piece big band.

Bolivia will be our home for the next two years.  That sounds like plenty of time… but given how much we’ve found to do here – and that we haven’t even made it out of La Paz yet! – I dunno.  We’re starting to make plans to explore farther afield – likely in December.  In the meantime, Bolivia elected a new president last weekend, and it looks like the country is in for a historic shift after 20+ years of socialism under former president Evo Morales.  There is an excitement among the people here in La Paz – and a frenzy within the U.S. government – so my work has been decidedly busier than I’d thought it would be a year ago.  I’m trying to take deep, cleansing breaths… but at these heights, that’s easier said than done.