We spent less than two weeks in Bolivia and during that short period of time we saw many interesting things we’d like to share with you. Of course in such a short period of time we cannot claim to know how people live and think in Bolivia and what we present here is just a thin slice of the much larger and richer Bolivian society. This first picture speaks for itself; people here are clearly very religious and this shows not only in the many churches we see everywhere but also in the taxis, the stores or the Internet cafes where religious signs can be seen everywhere..
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This lady wears a very typical dress that can be seen not only in the country but also in the middle of the city as show on this picture. Another interesting aspect we noticed is that women are the ones usually carrying stuff when walking in couples using these colorful blankets on their back. Very often babies are carried using this technique. Talking about men and women there is one thing we never explained but saw very often. In the restaurants, waitresses would mainly if not solely talk to Danielle even though in most cases I managed my way in Spanish a bit better than her. The girl would hear me and note what I say but would not look or answer back at me!
People in Bolivia are not the wealthiest on earth and in order to build their buildings they need to use very cost effective building materials. The most common way of building walls we saw, especially in the country, is using these bricks made of dirt and straw. Unless my memory is failing me they are using the same technique the Egyptians used about two thousand years ago to make their bricks. In some occasions we were able to see inside through an open door and what you see outside is what you see inside. Interior finish and matching paint color exist only on TV here!
One of the main activities we have in this trip is to travel by bus between cities. Here you can see the main bus terminal in the city of La Paz. The transportation market in Bolivia, and in Peru as a matter of fact, is so developed that literally tens of companies compete for a share of the cake. They are gathered in these large terminals where you can hear the employees yelling the destinations offered by their employer. Sometime, a customer entering the terminal would get surrounded by ‘representatives’ of many companies offering their services at the same time!
Distances between the cities can be long and in many cases the roads are not even paved hence limiting the speed of the buses. We privileged travelling at night as most of the trips would last about 10 hours and cost about $5.00 per person.
We took that picture at the border between Bolivia and Peru. These peoples were sorting the broken eggs out of the trays and we assume that the eggs were destined to the Peruvian market on the other side of the fence. We never saw so many egss at once.
On our way from Copacabana to La Paz we had an interesting experience. The bus needed to cross one of the legs of Lake Titicaca and to do that they first asked all the passengers to leave the bus and take one of the many boat shuttles that pass the people from one side to the other. However, with our very limited Spanish all we could hear from him was about this ‘’Blah, bla terio es barque bla bla’’ we just couldn’t understand what he was telling us and he quickly gave up and simply left us on the bus for the crossing. The bus then got on one of these small barges powered by only a 50HP outboard engine. Thank God there was no wind that day otherwise we would have ended up in the middle of the lake!
This one really struck us. This little boy in the door of the bus is not a passenger but works on the bus by standing there and yelling the different destinations of the bus to attract the customers. This picture was taken in the middle of the morning when kids are definitively supposed to be at school and of course he was not the only one we saw. But don’t get us wrong here; we saw tons of kids walking down the streets at the end of the afternoon in school uniforms. Apparently, this is just not for everyone!
People are definitively amazing in Bolivia but it is not possible to travel in this country and not being struck by the beauty of its landscape. It is beautiful and it is high; most of the regions we visited in Bolivia were over 4000m (13,000 feet) and at this altitude only climbing a stair makes you breath heavily. 