La Paz is located at an altitude of about 3.600 meter (depending where you are). It is based in a valley surrounded by the high mountains of the Altiplano. It is also the seat of the Bolivian government. more „Beautiful La Paz“
From 4.700m to 1.300m in 4 hours and 70km on the most dangerous road in the world – on a mountain bike. We survived!
more „We survived the Death Road!“
Samaipata – somewhere between the lowlands of Santa Cruz and Sucre at 2.750m. After a really bumpy and scarry bus ride through the night we arrived in Samaipata at 3 am. With an altitude of only 1.650m it was finally warm again! The sleepy village is the starting point for tour to Amboró National Park and also close to El Fuerte ruins. The village itself doesn´t have many sights, but it is nice to relax for a few days or after an exhausting day of hiking. more „Cloud forest & our first Inca ruins in Samaipata“
The „white city“ and the official capital of Bolivia, Sucre is just a lovely city. We stayed here for a while and really enjoyed it. Here are some reasons to spent some time here:
more „So many reasons to stay in Sucre…“
Have you heard of Potosí in Bolivia? Apart from being one of the highest cities in the world with an altitude of 4.090m, you should know it for once being the largest city in America. more „En las minas de Potosí“
There are two ways to get from San Pedro de Atacama to Uyuni in Bolivia. You can either get a direct bus or go on a three-day jeep tour. The tour takes you to high altitude and includes some of the most beautiful places of our planet. Volcanos, lagoons, geysiers and at the end the biggest salt flat of the world – Salar de Uyuni. On the way you see thousands of flamingos and other birds, alpacas and lamas. This blog is more about pictures than about words. more „Jeep Tour from Chile to Bolivia“
There were three things we definitely wanted to do in South America. Machu Picchu (or similar, we´ll get to that later), Galapagos and star gazing in the Atacama desert. more „Rain in the desert“
We felt like we haven´t seen enough of Chile yet to really know the country. The usual tourist plan would be to go from La Serena to San Pedro de Atacama. But we wanted to see more, so we went all the way up to the north to see the Lauca National Park. The park is at an altitude of 4.520m and has the highest lake in Chile. It is only a few kilometres from the Bolivian border.
The Elqui Valley – a place known for its pisco destilleries and observatories from where to watch the stars.
Bienvenidos a Chile! We are finally in South America and have taken it slow for the first week. We spent four days in Santiago to get over the jetlag, then moved on to Valparaiso for three days. From there we travelled further north to the Elqui Valley. more „Santiago & Valparaiso“