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Beautiful Bolivia - Part 2 (August 2013)
 
After Potosi (which is the worlds highest City with more than 100.000 inhabitants) we went to Sucre - the constitutional capital of Bolivia. After Potosi (which is rather a "workers-city") Sucre was very noble and the people were spending much more time and money on their appearance. Sucre is also a colonial city and enchanted us with nice architecture, delicious food and - most importantly - we met wonderful people there! We re-met a lovely english couple with whom we spent wonderful days. On Sunday we took a bus for one hour to a traditional market which was a delight for the eyes. The next days we basically did not do much more than walking around the city and enjoying it, eating delicious food, having good conversations, organizing things & photos and even watched a movie in our comfortable hostel.   Fruit Salad
a delicious fruit-joghurt-whipped-cream-salad for 0,80€
 
Sucre
Sucre
 
After spending many days in cities it was time for us to head into nature again!
Our next destination was Torotoro National park - a destination which promised to be off the beaten tourist track and rather hard to get there.
We first took the nightbus to Cochabamba. The bus was supposed to arrive at 6:30 AM but instead it arrived 2 hours early at 4:30 AM. This was probably the first time we disliked the bus arriving too early... :-)
In Cochabamba we stayed for one night before we took a minivan at 6 AM which would take us to Torotoro.
 
Torotoro Canyon
Torotoro Canyon
 
The nationalpark was simply beautiful. We hiked down a deep canyon and hopped across rocks over to a waterfall where we swam in the river.

The next day we went on a tour to visit the "Ciudad de Itas" and a cave. The Ciudad the Itas consists of several very impressive rock formations with high pillars and halls which were formed by erosion.

Afterwards we went deep into an impressive limestone cave with stalactites and stalagmites. This cave even included some (basic) rock-climbing and crawling through very narrow holes.
Ciudad de Itas
 
After Torotoro nationalpark we went to La Paz. We arrived in La Paz shortly after sunset and it was very impressive to see all the lights of the big city lie in the big bowl. We only stayed there for one day as we generally prefer nature over cities and were eager to get to the Bolivian Amazon.
 
view over La Paz
view over La Paz
 
To get to the town of Rurrenabaque in the Amazon you can either choose the bus (roughly 20 hours) or go by plane. We allowed ourselves the luxury to take an inland flight to Rurrenabaque which was only 30 minutes - our shortest flight so far.
 
view out of the airplane
the view out of the airplane alone was worth the extra-price for the flight ;-)
 
Arriving in the Amazon was a huge contrast to the weeks before. Suddenly it was extremely hot and humid - compared to the very dry and rather cooler weeks in the Bolivian Altiplano before. It was also a huge change in colors - from orange and yellow tones before to lush green.
 
From Rurrenabaque we started a 3 day boat tour through the Pampas. On this tour we saw alligators and caymans, turtles, capybaras, monkeys, piranhas, lots of different birds and we even swam with pink dolphins in the river - a bucket list item for Edgar :-)
We were simply hoping that there were no Alligators in the part of the river where we swam with the dolphins ;-)
 
lazy Capybaras
 
After the Amazon we went to Copacabana which lies at the Lake Titicaca - the highest big lake in the world at 3810m. From Copacabana we took a boat to the Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) on which we had a wonderful hike.
 
view over Copacabana and Lake Titicaca
view over Copacabana and Lake Titicaca
 
 
After 30 days we were kind of sad to leave Bolivia - we had an amazing time in this wonderful country which was even more impressive and beautiful than expected.
 
next stop: Peru
 
 
more photos in the gallery
 
 
NOTES & ANECDOTES

we did not have any rain for 33 days in a row
 
sadly the Bolivians have a very different understanding of littering - plastic bottles and bags are just been thrown away - even out of the bus in a national park
 
Bolivians are really small. Even Edgar did not feel small in Bolivia ;-)
 
the majority of the Bolivian women dress up very traditionally
 
we have the feeling half of France is here - we hear French everywhere!! Is France empty at the moment? ;-)