Santa Cruz Zoo

As soon as we got to the largest city in Bolivia we checked in and went to the Zoo. Lonely planet said they had sloths roaming around the zoo. I like sloths, I would even put them on my top five awesome animals list. Within 5 minutes of arriving at the Zoo we saw the Sloth, climbing down a tree onto the roof of a birdcage. He tried to get down but wasn’t able to and had to get back into the tree. That whole process took a full twenty minutes. That was the highlight of the zoo visit.

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The Bolivian Adventures of Q

Q and the Crimson Lagoon of Doom

Q in La Paz; High Altitude and Coca leaves.

First Encounters: Q in the Valley of the Moon

Fishy tales. Q on Isla de Pescada in the Salt Desert.

The launch of Q from the Salar de Uyuni

Q and the Stone Desert Tree of Wisdom.

Q and the Crimson Lagoon of Doom II

El Fuerte de Samaipata

We didn’t get a guide when we visited El Fuerte in Samaipata, so all our information came from the information booklet and map we got when we bought our entrance tickets. So here is some information from Wikipedia about the site because anything I’ve remembered about the place is probably blurry and wrong. The taxi driver mentioned though it is the largest piece of rock in the world. I don’t think that’s true because El Penol in Colombia looked larger than this one, but this one is kinda buried, so its hard to judge its true size.

El Fuerte de Samaipata (Fort Samaipata), also known simply as ‘El Fuerte’, is an archaeological site  in the eastern foothills of the Bolivian Andes.

It is not actually a military fortification but it is generally considered a pre-Columbian religious site, built by the Chané people, a pre-Inca culture of Arawak origin.

More recently, it has been pronounced to be an ancient flying object launching and landing site by the pseudoarcheologist Erich Von Daniken.

Floating over Bolivia

Wandering around Sucre

Not much to write about Sucre. Or about the photo’s. We were kinda tired I guess. So here are some travel quotations:

“Our Nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.”

                                                                                                 Blaise Pascal

“Too often. . .I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.”

                                                                                  Louis L’Amour

“Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and celebrate the journey.”      Fitzhugh Mullan

“Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God.”

                                                   Kurt Vonnegut

“The traveller sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.”

                                                                               G. K. Chesterton

“One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind.”

                                                                                 Charles Dickens

Rocks, Sun and Dust

The Moon Valley is aptly named. There is no oxygen, its made of cheese and gravity is 0.16 of Earth’s gravity (thanks wikipedia). We took a local bus and got there after about 30 minutes from La Paz. There was nobody else there so we had the whole place to ourselves. It is a surreal place and it’s hard to do justice of the scale of the place with photographs. I wouldn’t really recommend it unlike us you were stuck in La Paz for a few days due to the many strikes Bolivia seems to experience. Which leads to roadblocks.

Day 3: Uyuni Adventures

Day 2; Uyuni Adventures

Day 1 of Salar de Uyuni

This was my most anticipated place during our whole South American trip. the photo’s I’ve seen of this place are surreal. And a surreal place it is. I didn’t know that surrounding the massive salt desert there were so many lagoons, volcanoes, wildlife. I wish I was more of a landscape photography guy so I could have taken more interesting photo’s but those 3 days were unforgettable.

The blue part is the former sea which is now the largest salt desert in the world.

1200 year old Cactus. Now dead.

One of my camera’s; the sprocketrocket

Building stones made from salt. One village we passed through had all the houses made from salt.

Our tour jeep. Didn’t look that great, but was very comfortable.

High Altitude Soccer and Fun

I like fairs and carnivals. Especially in countries where safety regulations aren’t a high priority. Sitting in a chair made out of welded car-parts, looking at the uncovered dirty rusty diesel engine that makes the whole ride go and no safety barriers is what creates true adrenaline. Knowing that besides fun, a ride to a dirty hospital is a real possibility is what makes a thrill ride really a thrill.

Seriously no safety barriers and some seats did not have a chain you could put around yourself, so you better hold tight.

High Altitude Soccer (4 km)

The officials were escorted of the field during half time and at the end of the game by the local version of the riot police. It made me wonder what happened that put that rule in place.