My Adventures and Travels

The "Camino de la Muerte" or Death Road is another touristy highlight in Bolivia. It's a bike ride, about 40 km, all downhill, where you lose a stunning 11,800 feet in altitude from the top to the bottom! For my friends not using the metric system, thats from 15,400 feet to 3,600. (Metric: from 4700 to 1200 meters) Fortunately, the road that is infamous for deadly accidents is a lot less deadly today. Mostly because another much safer road has been built-so the only traffic on the road now consists of mostly cyclists and the vans that transport them, with perhaps the odd tourist. However, in the past, the narrow, dirt road with blind corners required big buses to back up to find wide enough spots to pass one another-which all too often ended up in buses backing off the sheer side of the mountain. Again, choosing a reputable company seems important when your life is on the line (we used Gravity bike tours). They supply you with a bike, a suit to wear over your clothes for ...

If you go to Bolivia and you don't go to the Salt Flats, you are doing Bolivia wrong. Book with a reputable company and read reviews-some of the companies have complaints of their drivers getting totally wasted on the stops and obviously that is no bueno. It is a LOT of time in a vehicle, so be prepared for that. And the lodging falls somewhere between orphanage barracks and prison cells. I know, I'm really talking it up. All that being said, you must go!!! There's nowhere on Earth like it. From a train cemetary, to the flats themselves where salt is harvested, to the "islands", lakes full of flamingos, geysers and hot springs, and high elevation valleys, this is not a place you want to miss. Most tours are about 4 days. 3 is pushing it and longer might be better if you can handle "roughing it." As of spring of 2015 there wasn't even a hint of any sort of cell service or wifi anywhere and the flats don't seem like a place that changes quickly, so...

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...