Ending Bolivia with Death Road

Retuning to La Paz for one day before leaving to Equador Dianne and I decide to challenge ourself to the Detah Road bike ride. We joined a group along with Lucy and Mike from our tour group. none of us slept very well the night before and I think we all had many second thoughts about this ride. It is know as the death road because of all the deaths that happened when it was being used as the main transport road but now a new road has been built so it mainly used by bike riders now. All of us listened to our guide and had a blast mountain biking down this road. It was truly one of the highlights of our trip.
This brings everyone up to date for the blog. Dianne and I are travelling today ( long day up at 3 am. 3 flights before arriving in Quito , Equador at 9:30 tonight.). The only positive thing is fast wifi. We are in the last month with Equador , Panama and Costa Rica still to come. Back on our own for this next month. We will miss many members of our tour group but are looking forward to the freedom to travel on our own again.

Sucre

Sucre is the political capital of Bolivia. A very colonial city nicknamed the White City because most of the city centre is white. Here we visited a dinasour footprint site, a park filled with people celebrating labour day and Dianne and I got to walk a short hike along a piece of the Inca trail. It is actually a pre Inca trail but because the Incas used it in their time they advertise it that way.

Potosi

Potosi was the next city we visited after leaving the salt flats behind. This is a mining town where they say that all the silver that was take by the Spanish could build a bridge from Potosi to Spain and all the bones from the workers killed to get the silver could build a second bridge of the same size. The mountain where all the silver is looms over the city. We were fortunate to also get to see a football game here.

Day 3 - the salt flats

The Salar de Uyuni or Bolvian salt flats are the highlight of many people's trip and they did not disappoint. Driving onto a flat surface 15 m deep of salt and white everywhere leaves the mind wondering as to where you are. When we see white as Canadians we think snow. This area allows you to produce some depth defying photos. Our group had a blast trying to see what we could come up with. We then drove to an island in the middle of the salt with many large cacti on them. A strange sort of oasis in the sea of salt.

Day 2 of the highlands.

Day 2 started very early after staying in some very basic accomodations the night before. It was very cold as we reached just below 5000 m above sea level the highest point we would get to. We did warm up beside mud bubbles and geisers that rise out of the ground. It was then of to the green lake with a volcano backdrop and onto a hot pool for a warm up dip. More interesting rock formations and animals like vizcacha rounded out our day. We ended by arriving at a salt hostel where we would spend the night.