What if this bus falls down into the gorge..?!

Near La Paz, there is a mountain road advertised as "the most dangerous road in the world". I refuse to do a mountain bike tour on that "death road", because I don't like scary things and I'm also annoyed by the commercialism, as if every traveller should do it! But later I realise I end up doing something more scary.

I decide to travel to Rurrenabaque, a small, relaxed town about 400 km from La Paz, in order to visit Madidi national park. In the morning I take a taxi to the street outside the center where the northbound buses leave. When I see the bus with big double tires I figure it might be a rough ride. I have no idea! Rough is a mild expression for the scariest road I've ever travelled. The first three hours to Coroico the road is paved and has barriers. The views to the green mountains and valleys are breathtaking. And finally I can hear some Bolivian music in the bus instead of watching American movies.

After Coroico the road is not flat and safe like I had assumed, but a narrow gravel road along the mountain sides. Of course without any barriers! I can't help thinking about what would happen if the driver made a small mistake and the bus would fall into the gorge. I sit upstairs in the first row with the best - but also the scariest - view. There are no seatbelts. My hands are sweating and sometimes I grab my hair out of fear when we go to a curve. Somewhere on the way the bus stops. The engine starts, but doesn't stay running. In about an hour the driver fixes the motor and we can continue. After that I have a bit more confidence in his driving skills, too.

At 6 pm we stop in a small town for dinner. I go to a restaurant with a Portuguese guy, the only foreigner in the bus in addition to me. A soup and the main course of meat, rice and salad cost only 10 bolivianos (1.20 EUR).

The journey continues in the dark and it feels quite absurd to be there, travelling on the bumpy and winding road, seeing banana trees and other tropical vegetation on the side of the road and listening to the music played in the bus - technopop from my teenage years! "Bum digi digi digi bum digi bum, think about the way how we live today..." (This piece of lyrics actually contains an important message.) Another interesting thing in the bus is the smell. The only air-conditioning is the wind from the few open windows. Everybody is sweating and I can only guess how uncomfortable the local women must feel in their wide dresses.

When we stop at a police control point and have to get out of the bus, I swear to the Portuguese guy: "I'm sooooo going to fly back!" The bus costs 60 Bs. (7 EUR), whereas a flight is almost ten times more, 480 Bs. (60 EUR). Later in Rurrenabaque I hear that the last accident happened two years ago. Counting the amount of buses, something around 2000 busrides per year on that road, I come to the conclusion it isn't so dangerous after all. Back home I've had two accidents with a deer and a moose on the road. Several people die in Finland every year in such accidents. But there you don't feel the danger...

At 7:40 am, after travelling the whole day and night, almost 20 hours (a distance of only 400 km!) I finally arrive in Rurrenabaque. I get my dusty backpack from the trunk of the bus and get a ride to my hostel at the back of the hostel owner's motorcycle. I'm exhausted, but happy to be alive and immediately like the laid-back tropical town where everyone moves around with a motorbike (without helmets, of course!) and chickens roam freely in the gardens.

Celebrating New Year

For the Aymara people of the Central Andes - one of the biggest indigenous groups of Bolivia - the southern hemisphere's winter solstice is the start of the new agricultural cycle. It is a day of traditions and festivities. Near Cochabamba it is celebrated at the Inka-Rakay ruins on a mountain where people gather the night before 21 June to wait for the key moment, the sunrise. As I happened to be in the area, I wanted to seize the opportunity and headed there with my friend Kati.


Right after arriving, at 8 pm, staying up all night waiting for the sunrise felt like such a long time. But after walking around and admiring the citylights in the Cochabamba valley we almost forgot about the time when we sat around the bonfire of some highschool-aged boys, drank singani (the national spirit distilled from grapes) and chew coca leaves. It is very common to see local people stuffing dried coca leaves in their mouth or see their cheek bulging with the ball of coca. In the highlands of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia the cultivation and consumption of coca is as much a part of the national culture as wine is to France. (Later in La Paz when I visited the Coca Museum I learned that according to Carter and Mamani's study 92 % of men and 89 % of women chew coca in rural areas of Bolivia.) Coca is used as a stimulant to overcome fatigue, hunger, and thirst. It is considered particularly effective against altitude sickness. And please note that chewing coca is something totally different from using cocaine. For me it was the first time I tried coca. It felt and tasted a bit weard - like putting leaves of the birch whisk used in sauna in my mouth. And I'm not sure if I really felt any of the effects... The next morning my cheek was slightly numb; I could still feel the ball of coca there.


I talked with a highshool student sitting next to me and found out that he's been working since he was 7 years old. He works in the morning and goes to school in the afternoon. He had started by washing trufis (shared taxis) and earned 3 bolivianos per vehicle. Washing 10 per day constituted him a wage of 30 Bs./day (3.50 EUR) . Nowadays he is selling and fixing mobile phones. Here in Bolivia it is not rear to see children working. In Potosí many are working in the mines. In all big cities children, and adults as well, go from table to table in restaurants trying to sell chewing gum, chocolate and cigarettes. I've also seen boys offering shoeshine services. Luckily I haven't stumbled upon child prostitution, but according to Wikipedia it is a serious problem in Bolivia.


While waiting for the big moment, the sunrise, we could enjoy performances of a group playing traditional music with flutes and a drum. And finally it happened: the round, shiny thing came in sight behind the mountains on the horizon. Suddenly there was so much more light. I must say it was a magical moment. The music performances started again and lasted for the whole morning.


Back in Cochabamba - no, I didn't go to sleep - I had a shower, packed my backpack and took a bus to La Paz. My travel mate Andrés had a severe stomach ache and stayed with his brother - whom he hadn't seen for ten years.

Voluntary work and fiestas in Cochabamba

After visiting a fern forest in Amboro national park and a pre-inca religious site El Fuerte near Samaipata, and meeting up again with Isabel and Johan (the Dutch/Belgian couple I've mentioned earlier), Andres and I went to Santa Cruz. The city itself didn't have much to offer for tourists, only expensive restaurants and a few nice buildings around the central square. After the small, relaxing village of Samaipata, the big, rich and busy Santa Cruz didn't appeal to us, so the following morning we took a bus to Cochabamba. On the way we saw some rudimentary dwellings and women doing laundry at rivers.

Now we are visiting a Finnish girl called Kati, whom I know from Tampere Couchsurfing group. She's been doing voluntary work here in Cochabamba for a few months. I visited the office of her employer, Cedesol (http://www.cedesol.org), an association making solar kitchens and also went twice with her to an orphanage to play with children aged 1-8 years. This weekend there's a music festival 'Fiesta de la Musica' in the city and we've gone to some free concerts. So now I, a girl from the land of heavy metal music, have seen a latino band playing heavy metal. Tonight we'll travel to a nearby mountain to participate in celebrations of Aymara (=an indigenous group) New Year.

A lot of travellers experience stomach problems in Bolivia. According to Kati's empiric studies 50 percent of foreigners get amoebas; she's had them once. Luckily I haven't had anything serious so far.

A woman with short hair is a rear sight in South America. Some girls at the orphanage were asking me why I've cut my hair and if I'm a woman and have breasts and vagina. My travel mate Andres is also saying all the time that I don't have hair.

The beautiful, exotic Bolivia

So, I suppose you are curious about my new travel mate. Don't worry, it's not going to be a love story of the century. I'm still planning to use my return ticket. (Although I wouldn't have anything against continuing my trip a bit longer.) Andrés and I are just travelling together through Bolivia and trying to cope with our cultural differences. I think the Chileans might after all be right about Argentinians being arrogant and Andrés is annoyed by my level of organisation. An independent, but sensitive Nordic woman and an Argentinian man with a strong character is a challenging combination. Andrés is a trekking guide from Patagonia, no Antonio Banderas - more like Danny DeVito, or maybe a combination of both -, likes cooking and is very social. The last two months he was doing voluntary work in Chile, building houses for the people who lost theirs during the earthquake. He's a real Argentinian: mate, asado and football are sacred to him. At this very moment he's watching the Worlcup, Argentina playing against Nigeria.

We started our journey to Bolivia by taking a tour to Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat on earth. It meant sitting for three days in a four wheel drive vehicle on unpaved roads - sometimes just tracks in the sand. We saw colourful lagoons, volcanoes, geysers, weird rock formations, beautiful blue skies and the vast blinding white salt flat - some of most fabulous landscapes in South America, according to my guidebook. I'm surprised and happy that I didn't suffer from altitude sickness, even though we went to almost 5000 metres above sea. In San Pedro and later in Potosí I felt some fatigue and other mild symptoms, like loss of apetite. During the tour some other people had serious headache; the feeling like their head would explode.

The Bolivian border:

Blue skies and mountain landscapes, driving on the sandy/gravel terrain without proper roads:

Laguna Colorada:

Salt flat of Uyuni, looking like a frozen lake:

Our Toyota 4 WD, Johan from Belgium, Teo the Bolivian driver/guide, Isabel from the Netherlands, me and Andrés:

Now I've seen three Unesco World Cultural Heritage listed cities during my trip. The first one was Valparaíso in Chile and the two other ones are Potosí and Sucre here in Bolivia. I've really liked all of them; they are beautiful places. Potosí - once richer and bigger than London or Paris - is a mining city dominated by Cerro Rico, where mining still continues, four centuries after the first mines were started. I didn't have the courage to visit the dusty mines. Instead, at the hostel I watched the movie 'Minero del Diablo' (The Devil's Miner) telling about a 14-year-old boy working at a mine. I really recommend anyone to see it! What cought my eye in Potosí was the big amount of law offices. After Potosí we visited the capital, Sucre, "La Ciudad Blanca", where we could admire the buildings in the centre painted in their original colonial white.

After the European-like countries of Argentina and Chile, the poorer Bolivia feels exotic, more like the "real South America". Here you can see women in traditional clothes with their long hair in two braids, carrying a child wrapped in a colourful cloth on their backs. One traveller said the old women in their wide skirts look like bells when they walk. Ding-dong, ding-dong. :-) In one bus a local woman had two live chickens in her bag. The hostels and public toilets can be very basic, and internet connection is frustratingly slow. Outside the town of Uyuni there was a lot of rubbish on the ground - it was like a graveyard of old plastic bags. But the mountaineous landscapes between Uyuni, Potosí, Sucre and Samaipata were absolutely beautiful.

A street in Uyuni:

A street in Potosí:

What a busride the other night! We took a night bus from Sucre to Samaipata, a small town south of Santa Cruz. At 8 pm a wheel came off in the middle of the road!!! Luckily we were not in the mountains... We waited for half an hour on the roadside and in the next town I sat on the pavement for two hours waiting for the bus to be repaired. Later, on a narrow mountain road in the dark I was repeating in my head a prayer from my childhood and protective mantras I've learnt from my yoga teacher. Usually I'm not scared on my travels, but this time I was. Another time I woke up when the bus had stopped and the police were searching the bus. But don't worry for me, now I'm safely in Samaipata and have one more exciting experience to tell from my travels.

Greetings from the driest desert in the world!

A few examples of Chilean friendliness:

• When I left Valparaíso, I took a local bus from the hostel to the bus station. I didn't know exactly where to get off, but there was a woman in the bus who showed me to get off with her. She walked all the way to the bus station and made sure I was following her.
• From Valparaíso I took a bus to La Serena. Just before arriving the guy sitting next to me started chatting with me. I asked about his plans for the evening and got invited to go and eat seafood with him and his friends in the nearby city of Coquimbo. So I went. And finally had the courage to taste raw mussels, shrimps, octopus etc. How could I have left Chile without trying the seafood?! I've visited a fish market a few times before, but they don't look like the most hygienic places and the food is raw, so I've only taken photos. After this experience the guys took me to my hostel in La Serena. No expectations, no emails changed; just a nice, random act of kindness.

From La Serena I got a ride to the village of Pisco Elqui in Elqui Valley in the rental car of three French exchange students who stayed at the same hostel room with me. Pisco Elqui is a small, peacefull place in the middle of the mountains. On the way we stopped in Vicuña to learn more about two important things connected with Chilean culture: Gabriela Mistral and pisco. Gabriela Mistral was a poet awarded by Nobel Prize. The ones of you who've been lucky enough to get a postcard from me from Chile have seen a picture of her in the stamp. After Museo Gabriela Mistral we went to a pisco distellery. Pisco is a Chilean liquor distilled from grapes.

Now I'm in San Pedro de Atacama in the northeastern part of Chile. Tomorrow it's time to leave the country. In a month I've travelled through the whole country; seen the granite towers of Torres del Paine, the fjords in the south, the green central part with lakes, snowcapped volcanoes, Pacific beaches and now I'm amazed by the driest desert in the world. There's emptiness like in Patagonia, but still it looks very different.

Full of expectations - hoping for the best, dreaming of it and at the same time trying to prepare myself for a disappointment - I met my new travel mate Andres yesterday. Finally, after exchanging emails for a month. I sent him a Couch request earlier, but he was travelling and suggested we'd go to Bolivia and Peru together. "Why not?" I thought. So here we are. My first impression is pretty good, so I believe we'll have a great time travelling together.

I also met a really cool Belgian/Dutch couple at my hostel. All four of us are a team now; we'll take a tour to the salt flats of Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia together. It feels good to be with other people again. A lot of laughter.