It was hard to blog regularly in Bolivia because the places I stayed at in Santa Cruz, Oruro and Uyuni didn’t have wi-fi internet.  So I’ll just lump everything into one large blog post on Bolivia.
Being in Bolivia felt just like being in Zambia, comfortable!  When I first crossed the border from Paraguay to Bolivia, the countryside, its dirt roads, rolling hills, farmland, mud-brick buildings and corrugated-metal roofs were reminiscent of Zambia.  I was instantly in love with the place.
I started in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, partying with Jakob from Germany, Mads and Peter from Denmark, Giulia from Italy, and Zoe from the UK.  It was great fun!

Afterwards, it took me 2 full days of bus transportation to get to Uyuni.  There was a day-long stop in Oruro where I was lucky enough to be there at the same time as a wedding celebration that carried on in the streets .  I later had a rough bout with altitude sickness since Oruro is 4800 meters above sea level.  Combined with the 8-hour, rickety bus ride in the cold darkness down the bone-jarring dirt road to Uyuni will forever seared into my memory as the “Transport from Hell.”
Uyuni was cold; I’d been warned by other travelers.  The salar de Uyuni, the famous salt flats, were a photographer’s paradise.  You could take lots of fun pictures fooling with depth perception.


After Uyuni, I went to La Paz.  My plan was to be in La Paz for a few days only; I ended up being there for more than two weeks!  I met up with Maribel, a friend of a friend, Sidney, from back home.  Maribel introduced me to her friends, Mikaela and Eric, and her brother, Justo, who were all so hospitable and friendly.  Eric let me stay at his house in Coroica, putting me in touch with his friend, Jose Luis, after mountain biking down the famous Death Road.


 

Other highlights of La Paz include:

• dancing at the Gitana nightclub in Zona Sur
• eating delicious Bolivian chicharron at Maribel’s restaurant, the famous Chicharroneria Irpavi
• eating fried chicken at Pollos Copacabana five times in a week
• hiking precariously along the steep ridges of Valle de la Luna with Mika
• visiting the ruins of Tiwanaku with Mika
• eating delicious food during the barbecue at Mika’s family’s house
• eating American-style buffalo wings and baby back ribs with Mika
• getting to know Mika’s family
• eating cheese cooked in a Swiss raclette and eating French tortiflette with my French friends, Phil, Corinne and Romain, and, of course, Mika
• eating the “Maremoto,” a seafood dish, with Mika, her brother Pablo and his girlfriend, Paula
• partying with Mika and her cousins
• all the times Mika tried to get me to dance traditional Bolivian dances, such as the caporales, morenada and tinku

 
Food in Bolivia was so cheap.  I could eat a meal for 3-4 USDs at a fancy restaurant.  In hole-in-the wall restaurants, I could get a more hearty meal for 1 USD, which included soup, a main entree and a drink.  The relatively low cost of food in Bolivia only encouraged more eating.  The same could be said for the cost of beer and drinking.
Not only was food cheap, but it was also very delicious.  Mika was very enthusiastic about me trying as many Bolivian foods as possible.  Who was I to argue with the lady?  I ate everything and I had seconds… and I had thirds.  It was very easy to indulge in Bolivian food.  I ate so much food that Mika had a conversation about the 7 deadly sins and gluttony.  She called me a glutton.  Guilty as charged.
Another interesting cultural observation was the Bolivian’s different concept on the idea of sharing.  When sharing a meal, they take a little bit of food as needed and they are comfortable with the likelihood that the food might not be shared as evenly.  I, on the other hand, tend to want everything alloted evenly.  If that isn’t possible, I become competitive.  I’ll get my food early, eat fast, and then go for seconds.  Only in retrospect did I realize the error of my ways.   On two separate occasions, she had to restrain me from getting too much food too soon, or what I perceived as the fair portion alloted to each individual. (Example: 12 buffalo wings / 3 people = 4 buffalo wings per person)  In Bolivia, you get a little bit at a time and you don’t keep count.



I ended my visit to Bolivia at a town called Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca.  At 3,811 meters, or 12,500 feet above sea level, Lake Titicaca is the world’s highest commercially navigable lake.
I had seen a totora reed boat that is unique to the lake before at the Native American museum in Washington, D.C., and it was nice to see one in real life on Lake Titicaca.


Copacabana also has a great deal of religious significance in Bolivia.  People come here to get married, pray to God, have their cars blessed, and so forth.



Copacabana was my last stop in Bolivia.  Mika and I said our tearful goodbyes and then I was off on my own again.  I took a four-hour bus ride to Puno, Peru, waited two hours, and then took a 30-hour bus ride to Lima.  We passed through the desert and drove next to the ocean.  The bus broke down on the way a few hours outside of Lima, but it was cool.  Nothing surprises me anymore when I travel.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I spent July 7th to August 3rd, 2011 in Bolivia.  The ridiculously complicated visa application process, which I call the “Great Bolivian Scavenger Hunt,” was well worth the delay in Paraguay.  This is what the Bolivian government wanted from me:

1. Visa application form.
2. Passport photocopy.
3. Paraguayan visa stamp photocopy.
4. Hotel reservation (and I never book hotels in advance).
5. Transportation reservations exiting the country (which is impossible if you don’t know how long you’re going to stay and tickets are generally bought on the date of departure).
6. Photocopy of credit card.
7. A hand-written note stating my intent to travel to Bolivia to see the salt flats, to mountain bike down the “Death Road,” and to see Lake Titicaca.
8. A passport-sized photo with a RED background. (I travel with passport-sized photos because I know that many countries require that for the visa.  But only Bolivia requires a photo with a RED background.  Thus, I had to get more photos taken of me, which required more time, money and effort than was reasonable for such a trivial requirement.)
9. A notarized document from the police department saying that I hadn’t murdered anyone, committed any larcenies, raped people or committed other heinous acts in Paraguay.  (Yea, believe it.  This took two trips:  One to the police department and one to the notary office.  More money, time and effort required on my part because mine is, of course, limitless- along with my patience.)
10. Yellow fever vaccine. (This required a little bit of finagling in order to get a physician to write a note saying that I had my yellow fever vaccination eight years ago when I was in Peace Corps Zambia.  I almost didn’t go to Bolivia because of this last requirement, but I came up with this solution and it worked- thank goodness!)

Furthermore, an act of God was required at the border crossing to come up with the money to pay for the visa because the border control wouldn’t accept a wrinkled 100 USD bill!  I almost had my baggage thrown off the bus and I was almost abandoned at the Paraguay-Bolivian border had it not been for the kindness of a stranger who lent me the last 120 Bolivianos (17.42 USD) that I needed to pay for the visa.
Because the border control guards wouldn’t accept my $100 dollar bill, I had to exchange it for Bolivianos at a rate that will almost certainly guarantee the cholita woman a one-way ticket to hell.  (I traded it for 600 Bolivianos when I should’ve gotten 700 Bolivianos, a $10-dollar profit on her part and $10 loss on mine.)  I begged everyone on the bus to lend me the difference, and at the moment when they were about to throw my baggage off the bus and proceed without me, a stranger lent me the money.  That guy will probably end up in heaven.