My Adventures and Travels

April 6, 2015 Part 2: The Journey You didn't think it would be that easy to get back to La Paz, did you? Now it is election day and it is illegal to be on the roads AT ALL. Despite that, our trusty driver came from wherever he had been to pick us back up.  The first part of the car ride was through a mountainous, and let's be honest, sketchy but again beautiful road. I think we took that route to avoid traffic stops and police. It had its own challenges... This is fine. Everything's fine...at one point we stopped, our driver and guy hopped out and grabbed the tools they had in the car for just this type of occasion, and widened the road a little bit. They asked us to get out of the car while they drove over the newly widened part. And we continued on our journey. When we got closer to the city, our driver grew increasingly nervous about being on the road. There was NOBODY on the roads. At one point we had to stop at a police checkpoint. They aske...

April 5, 2015 My last trip while I lived in Paraguay was to our neighbor to the north, Bolivia. To be honest, Bolivia wasn't a place I'd ever spent much time thinking about. As I met other travelers, though, and my fellow teachers started venturing there on breaks, I realized I was missing out. For Easter week (semana Santa), I went there with 2 other teachers. Bolivia is truly magical. Part 1: Trekking So you may or may not know that La Paz, at 12,000 feet above sea level, is the highest capital city in the world. Asuncion is 141 feet above sea level. This will be important soon in our story. The two other teachers I traveled with are quite outdoorsy and active. One has even climbed Mount Kilimanjaro! We decided to do some hiking to start our trip. Unfortunately, due to a really wacky election law, NO vehicles of any kind are allowed on the road on election day, which was our first full day in Bolivia. So we really needed to be at our hiking destination by then, gi...