High altitude days

Border crossing from Peru to Bolivia is an easy thing ... if you are not a local. Unfortunately, there were many locals in front of me in the queue. That meant waiting ... I think they almost had to submit their CV to cross the border ... well, I really like my passport :o)
Arriving in La Paz is quite impressive, since the bus goes down from the highest part of the city into the canyon. Looks great! Amazing architecture. Some vertical spots in the canyon might still be sold to interested real estate agents ... or better slum estate agents ;-) Though I had spent a lot of time in Peru on high altitude, La Paz still made me feel the altitude.

No excuse! The World's Most Dangerous Road is waiting! Great fun to go down on a mountain bike. Actually a fairly easy downhill track ... though little mistakes might be punished quite severely ;o) Have a look in wikipedia. It might summarize the road's death tolls. Since the road has been closed for public traffic (and been replaced by a similarily deadly paved road - the better the road, the faster they drive) still every year one or two bikers take the flight down the cliff ... and these cliffs are up to 700m deep. That can hurt a bit. Our guide mentioned the decease of an owner of one of the biking companies who, while taking pictures of his tourist group, did the famous one step backward ...

After some more hiking in high altitude I continued to Uyuni. Time for salt flats. We started a jeep tour for three days and visited the largest salt flat of the earth, Salar de Uyuni, and the deserts nearby. Amazing landscapes!

It turned out to be a fantastic jeep tour with our incredible driver Milton. He was slow, but safe! Many jeeps stranded during these three days, but Milton got us back home safely. And Milton also knew how to safely transport toilet paper on bumpy roads!

After three days on bumpy, unpaved roads in a jeep the desire to get to Argentina got greater. Hence we took the next night bus to the border - 10 hours on unpaved roads in a bus ... have you ever slept on a massage chair? More shaken than stirred we arrived at the border and made it to the country of beef! Bolivia is a really wonderful country with lovely people, but somehow it felt good to be back to Argentina!