Beautiful, Breathtaking Bolivia

This post will be very heavy on pictures. The landscapes I've seen over the past week have literally defied description. The following pictures are from various places in Southern Bolivia with a small number of pics from Atacama, Chile as well.

The first pic is from my last night in Bolivia. I ran into the same guys I had met in Salta, Argentina - we had no idea we were going to be in the same city at the same time! (Small world moment #1 of 2)






The next picture is of an actual Bolivia police motorcycle.

The next picture is of the main street of Uyuni, Bolivia, where our tour finished. Observe the Bolivian dress in the country. Very traditional. Also, note the baby on the woman's back with the ice cream cart!

This is our guide Doro, who piloted our 90's vintage Toyota land cruiser through the desert and mountains.

This is my favorite piece of money I've ever seen. To me, the guy on the bill looks exactly like David Bowie! $10 Bolivianos is about $1.50 US and would probably get you about 1 litre of beer in a restaurant.

This is one of the beautiful landscapes around the Bolivian Salt Flats. Basically this is a 12,000 square kilometre area where there was once an ocean. Over thousands of years, all the water evaporated but the salt remained. There's maybe half an inch of water at most and the effect is that the ground turns into an amazing mirror!

This is the main street in another Bolivian village where we stopped. Though there was a Coca Cola sign, that was the extent of western influence.
After Day 1 of our trek, we awoke to find a huge snowstorm had occurred at night, following 30 degree temperatures during the day. This is a picture of a cool rock formation - we had a snowball fight there!

This was me in the cock pit of the land cruiser. I had no desire to drive for real though - you should have seen these roads! One of the cars got a snapped axel and others had flat tires. We were ok though!

This is a warning sign from on of the hiking trails. The left picture means active volcanoes, and I have no idea what the camera on the right means. The altitude here was more than 4,000 meters.

This is another system of geysers which are powered by lava from the volcanoes. The soil literally bubbles here and is at temperatures of 200 celcius.

This is a political calendar from Evo Morales, the new president of Bolivia. The slogan translates (roughly) to: Bolivian dignity, sovereignty and productivity. "Without money or resources, but with much dignity and love of our towns". Evo is closely aligned with Chavez, Castro and the new president of Ecuador. He was elected on a platform of nationalizing oil and gas and raising the minimum wage 50%. It's said that he's the first indigenous ruler in 300 years of Spanish colonialism. Expectations are high for him, but it remains to be seen whether he and his 'Axis of Good' with other latin american countries (yes, that's what they call it) will allow him to implement his policies.

This was the Bolivian border checkpoint in the mountains. Possibly the most relaxed border I've ever crossed!

This was my friend Jordan, who went to University with me. We hadn't seen each other in about 5 years, but, oddly enough, he was on the same tour to the geysers with me - he was on his honeymoon with his new wife Anat, also from university. (Small world moment #2 of 2)

This is another picture from the Valley of the Moon national park near Atacama, Chile.

This is the Chilean version of Death Valley (Valle de la Muerte)

This is a beautiful sunset in Salta.

Salta and Atacama

My vacation is drawing to a close - 10 days to go. Right now, I´m in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, which is homebase for 3 days as I explore the various desert/mountain sites located nearby.

Before Atacama, I spent 3 days in Salta, which is in the north of Argentina. Salta was a beautiful city with lots to do - a group of us (2 guys from Ireland, Michael and Tom) rented a car one day and drove through a beautiful mountain pass. The next day, we went on an amazing 7 hour horseback ride through the mountains. Unlike my previous experience with horseback riding, this time the horse actually liked me and was willing to work! All in all, a great few days.

This morning we left at 4:30am to view the geysers at dawn. These geysers are the third largest set in the world and emit water that is 85 degrees celcius (which is the boiling point of water at 4,200 meters altitude). Apparently four tourists have been killed over the years by getting disoriented by the steam and falling into the geysers, but I stayed a good distance away. One of the cool things was watching how our guide cooked breakfast for us - he boiled our eggs by placing them in a plastic bag and laying the bag in one of the smaller geysers. Good use of geothermal energy!

Tomorrow I´m off on my 3-day trek through the Bolivian Salt Flats in a 4x4 truck. My biggest challenge seems to be booking my return transportation from Bolivia. My trip ends in the city of Uyuni, from where I have about 36 hours to make the 11hr trip back to Salta to catch my plane home to Buenos Aires.

Shouldn´t be a problem normally, but, Bolivia has very little infrastructure and its impossible to know whether buses will be full or not. I´ll hope for the best!

Mi departamento

Hola,

1 week in and all is well. I was thrilled the other night to be able to understand a sit com on TV - it helped that it was a modern day version of an episode of Married With Children set in Argentina. I've also upped my steak count to three. Attached is a picture of number two - a great bife de lomo at my favorite non-touristy argentine steakhouse - El Trapiche.

Tonight, I'm heading out for some Buenos Aires sushi with my friend Ramiro, whom you might remember from a couple of entries of my blog last year. Sushi in Buenos Aires is quite good, but there's definitely less variety of fish (i.e. mainly salmon and tuna) and more variety in accoutrements (i.e. cream cheese and/or mayonaise in some rolls.. I stay away from those).

Anyway, here's some pictures of my apartment. In the middle of my view is, in my opinion, the ugliest building in Buenos Aires. To me, it looks like a soviet-syle apartment block, but, you be the judge!

felice navidades,

Blair

Back on the grid

It's been an amazing vacation so far, made even more so by the fact that I've been almost completely disconnected from all things technological for longer than I can remember. The use of Interent cafes and wireless access got me through my 36-hour layover in the Miami airport (a.k.a. "hell"), and there were certainly other things on my mind as I struggled to carry myself up to a 4,200 metre summit on the Inca trail last week. But, as of this morning, I'm back online - so I plan to post a few new entries.

I've been in Buenos Aires since Friday, and am starting to settle into my apartment for the month. The apartment is located in my favorite neighbourhood of the city, right between 'Palermo Hollywood' and 'Las Canitas'. Both of these places are ground zero for the 'good food, good wine' culture of the city. The apartment itself isn't bad - a nice pool on the grounds, I have a cool balcony that runs the length of one side. There also appears to be some way to rig up a hammock, but I have yet to try to put the pieces together.

My steak count sits at one, so far. For my first night I met with a colleague of mine from Canada who opted to pass through Buenos Aires on his way back from South Africa for a client. He's been here about 40 times and bascially stopped in this time to enjoy a couple of great steak dinners. I ordered an incredible 'ojo de bife' - basically a choice, 'eye' of beef cut. Very lean and impossibly tender. ahh, some things haven't changed here.

My spanish is continuously improving and it's becoming increasingly motivating. I'm still a long way from speaking or understanding fluently, but my comfort level and ability to hold a basic conversation and interact in most situations is improving daily. I had my first spanish lesson today. My class consists of a young couple from Brazil, and me. The brazilians seem to be doing quite well, but they're definitely helped by the similarities between spanish and portuguese. I'll be taking classes four hours daily, and it looks like today I've got about 2 hours of homework to have done for tomorrow. Who says vacations are just for relaxing, eh?

My trip in Peru was absolutely incredible. I don't know what I expected from the Inca Trail, but, it was both more beautiful and more challenging than I had comprehended. I'm going to post a few pictures here now. I was very lucky in that the team of nine other climbers and our guides ended up to be just a fantastic group of people. I ended the trip with about four new nicknames based on my Indiana Jones hat and being a Canadian. The team is planning on keeping in touch and I seem to have tentative invitations to visit Australia, Switzerland, Poland and Greece. Of course, I've extended the same information with respect to Canada.

Well, It's 9:46pm so I have to start thinking about supper now. Not sure what's on the menu tonight - I'm all set up with groceries now, but I'm not quite able to pass up the chance to eat at another great argentine place for about $8 tonight. Life is good.

Hope all is well with everyone. My apartment has a comfy couch. Visitors are more than welcome!

Indiana Jones and the Sacred Valley of the Incas

Doesn´t that sound like a great next movie in the series? Today was an exhausting day.. I spent 10 hours going up and down mountains visiting various Incan ruins. The title of the post is in reference to my newly bought hat, which could be the best seven dollars I´ve ever spent!

This entry will be brief, because I have to be up at 530 tomorrow to start my 4 day trek to Macchu Pichu. Today was full of beautiful scenery.. Check out the pics!

Banff and Lake Louise

ok, this entry is very very late. These are some pictures from a recent trip I took to Calgary for work. A buddy of mine, Milan, and I decided to stay the weekend to party in Calgary and then drive to Banff and Lake Louise. The scenery was beautiful.. see the pics!

Whistler, B.C.

Well... My charmed life of travel and leisure continues. This past weekend found me in the world-class ski resort town of Whistler, British Columbia. Whistler is widely regarded as the best ski resort in North America, and will be the host location for the ski events of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. Check out the beautiful pictures:

Mont Tremblant, Quebec