VENTURING FARTHER AFIELD

I’m woefully behind with updates on what the migrants have been up to.  This edition will cover our visit to Sucre and Tarija – two destinations in southern Bolivia that we’d heard were must-sees.  We took a week off just before Christmas to see what awaits there.

First up, Sucre, the constitutional capital of Bolivia.  It is the judicial center of the country with lots of well-preserved Hispanic colonial buildings, for which it has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Getting there wasn’t without its challenges when the airline canceled our flight and automatically booked us on another flight, the day before which wasn’t going to work because of work commitments, and the next available flight wouldn’t have been until the next day.  Not wanting to lose a day of precious vacation, and ever the intrepid travelers, we opted for an overnight bus from La Paz. 

Our bus digs for the next 12 hours. Roomy... but not much sleep.

View from the bus the next morning.  That swervy road is to blame for the poor sleep.

Sucre is a lovely city.  The architecture with its tiled roofs and white exteriors has earned Sucre the moniker, “The White City.”  The Christmas decorations were also in their full glory, which added to the charm.

Our view across the White City from the rooftop of our hotel.

The town square was all decked out for Christmas.

So were the colonial government buildings around the town square.

The architecture on the colonial buildings, some dating back to the 16th century, was spectacular.

This building and its lovely courtyard were part of a university.

The second morning we were there, as we were strolling around, we noticed some streets were closed and people were gathering along the sides.  Apparently, a soap box derby of sorts was about to begin, so we stuck around to see what the fuss was about.  Like La Paz, Sucre is at elevation (about 9,000 feet) with lots of hills that make it hard to find much level ground in the city.  Made for a challenging course for the entrants – and a challenging town to walk around without getting winded.

Geronimo!

Miss that curve?  No worries - there's a mattress strapped to a building to protect you.

There are lots of paleontological sites around southern Bolivia, so we decided to check out the Cal Orck’o fossil bed just a few minutes outside Sucre.  About 5,000 dinosaur tracks were discovered on an almost vertical surface when the adjacent concrete plant was blasting away limestone in the mid-1990s.  It’s now a protected reserve.

Those little dots are dinosaur tracks from 68 million years ago that were once a lakebed, now raised almost vertically through tectonic activity.

We wrapped up our stay in Sucre by meeting up with some friends from the embassy who were also visiting Sucre for a few days.  We joined them for a guided walking tour around the city center.  We love doing walking tours in any new city – a great way to learn a bit of the history and culture, and get your bearings.

Looking over Sucre from a hike up to Recoleta Monastery.

And a stop for a roadside choripan (sausage in a bun) on the way back - $1.

A final sunset from our hotel.

And a stroll through the city on our last night.

From Sucre, it was on to Tarija, which is about as far south as you can get in Bolivia and is Bolivia’s wine country.  Believe it or not, Bolivia makes some pretty tasty – and cheap – wines, so we figured we would go to the source to learn more about the area, and do some wine drinking, ahem, research, to see which ones we really liked.  We balanced all that, um, research with some other activities too. 

Lots of pretty, green town squares in Tarija.

Colorful murals in downtown.

We walked by this church a couple of evenings, and both times there were groups dancing around this may pole (for lack of a better term).  Christmas festivity action shot.

Foosball is big in Bolivia.  We've seen entire foosball halls in La Paz too.  

We hired an outstanding guide who showed us around for a few days.  The plan was to have some morning activities, and then to balance out all that activity with afternoon wine tastings.  The morning activities, included a walking tour of the city center (of course), and a picturesque hike to a waterfall (and some birdwatching for me).  

Our walking tour included a stop at the local market.  Look at all that amazing fresh fruit!

And potatoes!  Bolivia has over 4,000 varieties of them.

And breads!  I am a bread snob.  Not gonna lie - the breads here are not my favorite.  It's hard to bake at altitude - I get it.  But they still look great.

We hiked along this lush valley to see a waterfall at the end - and to earn our wine that afternoon.

And our afternoon wine tastings brought us to some superb wineries.  The buildings were modern, and the wines were tasty (mostly reds - think malbecs, cabernets, and the very Bolivian tannat) - and cheap.  A bottle of very drinkable red wine will set you back about $15.

This was our favorite winery - Magnus.  We had a fabulous visit.  The wineries aren't set up like California or Oregon - you don't just roll up and have a tasting.  Reservations are required, and we figured we'd be there with other groups.  But we had the place to ourselves, with a private lunch to boot.  A super memorable place.

Magnus also had on display dinosaur bones that had been unearthed during construction.  Because, of course.

Our private lunch set-up in the cellar.  Delicious!

Harvest was in full speed.

The tasting room at Campos de Solana... and another lunch to accompany.

Last but not least, Casa Solum Winery - a small, family-run  winery.  The winemaker/owner showed us around.

Our last day took a bit of a detour after the Bolivian government reduced its long-standing subsidies on gas and diesel* and the country’s bus drivers went on strike by blockading the streets all over the country.  That kept us from getting to our last scheduled winery.  But undeterred, we found another winery within walking distance from our hotel, so we visited there as a Plan B.  We capped it all off with a paella feast at one of the wineries we had visited early on and really enjoyed.  An altogether successful trip – airline cancelations and blockades can’t keep us down!

This is what a Bolivian blockade looks like.

And this is what Plan B looks like.  Aranjuez Winery - walking distance from our hotel.  One of Bolivia's oldest wineries with a very pretty setting.  The wine... not so much.

A paella feast at Magnus with our guide to celebrate our final night in Tarija.

*Bolivia’s former government had subsidized the price of gasoline for over 20 years.  When we arrived, a liter of gas cost about 30 cents.  The new government that came in right after we arrived in Bolivia is trying to make changes to bring Bolivia into the 21^st century.  The changes are coming at a price – like lifting the subsidies to try to build up their abysmal cash reserves.  Of course, that means gas costs more now (still less than neighboring countries are paying), but people weren’t happy about it, and blockades are their preferred method of protest.

Back in La Paz, Christmas – and the arrival of our stuff from Indonesia – awaited.  Our delivery came just a couple days before Christmas, so our house was decidedly unadorned this year.  But we had some fabulous holiday celebrations with friends, so we didn’t miss the lights and tinsel at all.

The checkout staff at the local market was definitely feeling the holiday spirit.

Our stuff arrives!  With help from a local street dog.  (Don't worry.  The street dogs here are very well cared for, complete with dog houses and coats.)

As I’m writing this, we have just returned from Cusco and Lima, Peru.  The tales from those adventures further afield will wait for another time.To be continued...

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.