Bolivia ~ Central Highlands

                           

Patti and I just returned from an amazing road trip in the central highlands of Bolivia.  For almost three weeks we traveled on back roads and stayed in small villages where there were few, if any, other tourist.  It was just fantastic! 

We got to see the ‘real’ Bolivia, life outside of the cities and off the tourist track.  Most of the time we were driving on one lane dirt roads carved into a mountain side.  Shear drop offs, constant switch backs and challenging road conditions made for very slow going but it was beautiful!  We climbed up and over mountains, down into valleys, across rickety bridges and stayed in towns with cobblestone streets and mud brick houses. Did I mention that it was fantastic..

 

The mountains were made of very distinct layers of different colored sediment and rock which had been forced upward at different angles (via plate tectonics) to create stunning vistas.

  It was hard to catch the magnitude or the beauty in pictures – but we tried.

                       

The people in Bolivia are very friendly and it is not unusual to see people walking long distances between towns.  Very few people in the countryside own cars so we quickly got in the habit of picking up anyone we saw walking along the road – that is if they weren't tending their animals or carrying loads too large to fit in our vehicle. 

 

We picked up this 12 year old boy who was literally running 70 km to go home from school for the weekend.

Give him some Nike's and enter him in the next Olympics for cross country!

 

We saw children no more than 6 years old responsible for tending the family’s cows, sheep or goats and trekking miles each day in search of good pasture. 

                         

Well over 80% of the population is indigenous which means that their culture and languages are still alive. It’s great to see them in their traditional clothing working the fields (by hand...), tending their animals or shopping at the Mercado. None of this was a ‘show’ for tourist (which we were the only ones...) they were just living their lives.  

                                       

We didn’t take many pictures of the people for just this reason – they were just regular people in their regular life and it felt funny and invasive to photograph them (but of course we tried to do it on the sly a few times...)

It's rare these days but we saw a first for us...actual dinosaur foot prints.  I guess the dinosaurs liked Bolivia (and so do we) because perfectly preserved foot prints of several different species of dinosaurs have been found here.  Amazing!

Dinosaur foot print-for real!

In the small town of Torotoro we encountered a most extraordinary man who has spent his life collecting fossils and rocks.  Senor David invited us to see his collection and what a magical collection it was! Every inch of every wall in his home was covered with fossils.

Over our three week journey we enjoyed hiking up mountains in search of condors (which unfortunately alluded us that day), exploring beautiful caverns formed by the sea a millennium ago and used ropes to go spelunking in underground caves.The whole trip was a blast and we'd do it again in a heartbeat.