For those craving an other-worldly experience, Bolivia delivers. Kier has always been a fierce solo traveler. In the summer 2015 she went to Bolivia before joining us in Costa Rica. These are her favorite photos from that trip.
The salt flats allow for the coolest perspective photos- travelers bring props to take photos with, like toy T-Rex’s to have chase them. Google salt flat perspective photos to see some cool ones.
The locals have started selling toy Godzilla’s and other props on the edge of the flats for tourists who couldn’t spare the room in their packs.
The salt flats aren’t as white when it is windy season when dirt gets blown in from the mountains.
Travelers who come here bring a flag from their country to attach to the posts.
The salt is spiky and rough.
This may look like an island, but is the edge where salt meets mountain.
The three dots on the salt are a tourist convoy of 4×4’s, where local guides have worn a make-shift highway.
Even with the smoother pathways, tires need to be replaced often due to the salty wear and tear.
This is my tour group. We traveled with three 4×4’s as well. Shortly after this picture when we were driving to the edge of the flats our truck got stuck in the salt. On the edges of the flats it looks like slushy snow in some spots. All of the men on the tour and all of the tour guides and drivers had to get out and push our car out of the salty slush. It remided me of living in Canada.
The only way to effectively experience the vast desert wilderness, is with a guided tour in a 4×4. Even then it takes days of driving to arrive at landscape treasures like Laguna Verde. Sharing the back seat of a 4×4 with a group of other travelers, you don’t stay strangers for long. This particular day was so cold, we almost didn’t get out of the 4×4 to take a group picture. Most people in our car had been living out of their backpacks for over half a year. For such adventurous fearless people to be unwilling to get out of the car, the cold wind has to be oppressive.
This train graveyard in the middle of the desert, is now a tourist jungle gym.
Flamingos in the foreground and llamas in the back on Laguna Colorada.
Bolivia specializes in surreal landscapes like these.
Getting up close to these flamingoes was one of the most magical experiences of my life–didn’t want it to end.
There were many moments in Bolivia where I felt like I was on a different world.
Like Mars, but with flamingos. A better version of Matt Damon in a tricked out Rover, alone on my personal planet.
This picture didn’t show the sheer number of wild Llamas running wild.
They played and pranced, jumping about on the weird grassy tuft islands, like out of a Dr. Seuss book.
Buildings made out of salt bricks are common around the high-altitude desert flats. The lines through the bricks are the dirty stripes marking when it was windy season. The walls become a history record of the ice core. We slept in a building made of salt which was a few minutes drive from one of the most elevated deserts in the world. Salt bricks are efficient insulators and make a significant difference in temperature. Every degree is a gift, and helps you focus on breathing instead of how cold you were. Every building made of salt that we stayed in had most of its furniture made of salt. We slept on salt beds and sat on salt chairs. Epic experience.
Salt, my new favorite brick.
The market in the center of Santa Cruz.
In the center of Santa Cruz is a charming square with lots of trees and park benches.
On the right half of this picture is the edge of the central square, the heartbeat of the city. Everyone is out enjoying the square and each other; couples on dates, grandparents with their grandchildren. People watching in international settings is one of my favorite hobbies. The best places to do this are the coffee shops around the square with their expansive floor to second-story windows where you can people watch while feasting on Bolivian pastries. There are few things I enjoy more than sitting in a beautiful place in an unfamiliar country, where I can drink the local’s coffee and eat their treats and watch their lives as they pass by.
Below is the beginning of La Paz.
Above shows a fraction of the massive city sprawl of La Paz. Clocking in at a lofty 12,000 ft above sea level, the city often leaves you breathless, literally. Sometimes you will wake up in the middle of the night, feeling like you are suffocating, and must focus to keep from hyperventilating. You repeat your breathing mantra, “There is enough air, there is enough air.” I heard someone say it took them 4 months to feel like they could breathe after they moved to La Paz. Understandably, you are at quite a disadvantage if you are playing La Paz Futbol players.
My favorite hangout in La Paz was the English Pub. I had a tuna melt, which was heavenly. That night I thought I had food poisoning. It was awful because I was still trying to focus on breathing steadily in the airless La Paz altitude. I found out months later that I had a gallstone. The fatty melted cheese triggered an episode, not the gringo mayonnaise or tuna. There are few things worse than the pain of a gallstone episode. One thing that is worse is having an episode in La Paz, or a high-altitude desert during winter. Turns out every time that I have had “food poisoning” while traveling was a lie. Now that I am gallbladder-free I’m also episode-free when I travel. Bring on the tuna melts!
Since this pub does not actually serve food poisoning, it would be a cool place to work. This is how people never come back from traveling.
No matter where you end up, you will find a community of expats happy to accommodate the steady migration of travelers with hostels, internet cafe’s, and restaurants that cater to the traveler’s desire for familiar comforts. In Sucre some English guys created a little travel oasis that includes a hostel, travel agency, bike rental, and restaurant that serves homesick favorites, like my 35 cent bowl of Top Ramen. A bowl of noodles that reminds me of home is always welcomed, especially when it comes with wifi and coffee that are both fast enough and strong enough. Heaven.
La Paz is a fantastic city. The little red houses are as far as the eye can see,
like someone poured red paint from the mountain tops and let it flow through all the creases into the valley.
Spider web wiring below.
Below is the view leaving La Paz on a bus to Lago Titicaca.
Standing on the Isla del Sol.
Ironically, hiking up the island of the sun gave me the worst sunburn of my life.
There were people on this hike who hadn’t gotten a sunburn in their entire life –
the Isla del Sol does not discriminate where you are from or the tone of your skin.
Terrible sunburns for everyone.
The Isla del Sol is on Lake Titicaca.
In the eyes of the locals the place to go in Bolivia is Lago Titicaca.
The way to get to and from this lake is via long bus ride.
Then the bus goes for a ride.
The driver kicks you off the bus, and points you in the direction of a little motor boat.
There you pay the boat driver to take you across the channel to catch up with the bus that has your luggage on it, except mine.
I took my bag–packing light has many advantages. Below is the bus boat.
This is my favorite chair in all of Bolivia. This is the patio at Juan Valdez. You get a great view of the Hard Rock, and people watching. I would go every day to this cafe. The coffee is great, the people are nice and they all knew me and remembered how I like my coffee. This Juan Valdez is in Ventura mall, Santa Cruz. Ironically, Ventura mall is like a baby Aventura mall.
On a North American based rating system for how service-friendly a country is, if Japan is a 10, Bolivia is a 1. Service expectations while in Bolivia will need serious adjusting. Like simply feeling grateful if you don’t have to go back into the kitchen to make the food yourself. The Fridays in the picture was an interesting service experience I’ve had in a major chain restaurant. There were “clicks” of waitstaff hanging out. If your waiter decided to visit you, you would have to ask for a menu. When they did decide to bring it back, they would leave to go hang out against the wall with 5 of their other friends. After the food was delivered, I didn’t see anyone near my table for an hour and a half. Another example, the Starbucks had so many people working behind the counter they had time to hang out in groups. One guy’s job was to simply add whipped cream to the drinks when needed. I counted once, ten people working behind the Starbucks counter, not including management. It may be also the longest wait time you will ever have for your coffee, even when there are only two people in line. In almost all of the restaurants I have talked about the people working at the restaurant was equal to the number of customers. Even at my Juan Valdez. Four people working, Four people on the patio. I will say, the Hard Rock was the exception, and always is. I have yet to experience poor service (North American standards) in a Hard Rock anywhere in the world.
One of my favorite of the cities I went to was Sucre. My favorite place in Sucre is the Dinosaur Park.
This is a huge slab of rock that got pushed out of the ground. It has tracks of various dinosaur species on it. The number of footprints on the slab changes as the rock continues to shift.
Some pieces fall off exposing other footprints. You can see on the left where a surface piece fell off taking prints with it.
Here I am with some footprints on the slab.
The rest of the park was a lot of silly dinosaur fun, such as a garden with life-size dinosaur replicas. Some people are afraid of the solo part of solo travel. But those dinosaurs and I had a lot of fun together that day. I have a Uno deck from that park to remember all of my Dino-friends. Someone went around taking pictures of the fake dinosaurs and photoshopped them onto Uno cards. Now they (illegally) sell “Dinosaur Uno” as a souvenir.
I even got a selfie with little foot. 
This was one of those days that ended up being extraordinary from beginning to end.
My favorite picture of the Laguna Colorada.
This picture is the best picture I have ever taken. I took this in a place well known to Astrophotographers–middle of the desert (no light pollution) plus no atmosphere (it felt like it) equals crazy photos of the milky way. I took this photo during one of my most painful gallbladder episodes. Taking a picture of the milky way has been a dream of mine ever since I became fascinated with physics and astronomy. So even during the most intense pain of my life, I dragged myself out of bed and went out into one of the highest altitude deserts in the world. I propped up my palm-sized tripod on the hood of a 4×4 and pointed my camera up. I had a camera lens with f1.8 which collected enough light. I let the camera shutter stay open for quite a few seconds to let it record all of the light possible. It took many tries. But for a few brief moments I felt like it was just me and the stars. It was pitch black and deathly silent after I put my flashlight away. It’s a hard feeling to explain but it is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Blackness, silence, and the entire sky filled with the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. One of the drivers came outside and turned on a truck nearby so he could warm up inside of it. The headlights ended my amateur photography hour session. Felt like I could have stayed out there forever, just me, my camera, my milky way, and my gallstone. But since that pain was going to 11, while I was freezing and deprived of oxygen, I turned my flashlight on, ran inside to curl up on my designated slab of salt. No one on my tour could believe that I got this image with my tiny camera. This image was just a fraction of that sky and a fraction of that moment, but it still one of my most favorite possessions.
Solo-travel props: This moment would have not been possible without the solo part of travel! You can’t recreate this moment or that feeling without being alone. The stars and I would have had a third-wheel. There is nothing more invigorating than knowing that between you and any known civilization is miles and miles and miles of desert which is surrounded by miles and miles and miles and countries and countries of strangers! You feel free, powerful, thankful, and full of perspective and awe. I would trade anything for the world!
I took the above two photos, my favorites from the whole trip, and combined them into the picture below. This picture reminds me daily what an unexpectedly magical place Bolivia is.
