Bolivia and Melanie goes solo..!

November 27, 2009

The Bolivia itinerary:

Copacabana/Isla del Sol 1 night

La Paz 7N

Cochabamba 2N

Sucre 1N

Overnight bus 1N

Potosi 1N

Uyuni 1N

Salar de Uyuni 1N

So I´m just going to sum Bolivia up in a nutshell...dirty, stinky, yucky, hot, poor, awful food, and sick sick sick. Clearly, I loved Bolivia. It´s the poorest country in South America, and it´s quite apparent compared to the others.

Copacabana was a little town, and from there we went to Isla del Sol and spent the night. Nothing really to write home about, a cute place but nothing really exciting occured.

During our time in La Paz, we stayed at the Wild Rover hostel an Irish place. Party central! So during my time in La Paz, I made great friends and partied a lot!! During this time, I split from Teja and Nadja and began my trip as a solo traveler. We split mainly due to a pampas tour that they chose to go on and that I chose to skip. It was also time to split due to some personal reasons and it being the right time to move on. :) During La Paz, I did some market shopping, saw some of the city, went to some weird Bolivian wrestling match, helped some sick hostel buddies from Bolivian diseases, and just basically had fun!

From there, me and my two new little La Paz buddies, Irit and Dor (from Israel), and I headed to Cochabamba. After an unfortunate 1 am cheeseburger incident, we spent two nights in this town. We had a very ugly hostel room that looked like a hospital, including weird bathrooms but lots of laughs. We spent time touring the city, enjoying some food and wine, running errands, visiting some parks... We went to what the Lonely Planet book said was possibly the best Italian restaurant in Bolivia...which was okay, but a few hours later Irit was throwing up sick. OH BOLIVIA!

So then the next day Irit and Dor and I parted as they were going to an animal rescue volunteer for 2 weeks. After they left in the cab, I was like OH MY GOSH I am alone in South America!! There were tentative plans to re-meet up with the girls, Teja and Nadja, but it didn´t work out.

So, from Cochabamba I took a night bus to Sucre. Oh man, was this a bad bus ride. Keep in mind, it was my first bus ride alone...Halfway during the ride I felt really nauseous and realized I was going to get sick. I proceeded to throw up for the next hour or so...I was sweating, getting sick in a bag, falling asleep, waking up to get sick...we stopped at a rest stop and I was just sitting on the curb barfing my brains out. Thanks, Bolivia! Anyways, met an annoying girl and shared a room with her. Spent one night and two days exploring Sucre, which was a pretty and cute town.

Next, I got an overnight bus to Uyuni so I could finally do the Salar de Uyuni...