Gard

Today (Tuesday October 3rd) I'm back home in Norway again. We started yesterday at 03.30 from La Paz and after stops in Santa Cruz, Miami and London I'm back home again  . Now I will get a chance to take a look at all the pictures that I have taken and the best ones will be posted in a trip report on my homepage http://gardkarlsen.com/

Today we have finally gotten a chance to walk a bit in La Paz. We started out by checking out the "black market" and the "witches market". In the witches market you can find lots of different herbal stuff to be used in medicine...the most eye catching part of this market is the lama featuses(?) that is for sale. According to local belief this is used as a sacrifice when e.g. you build a new home etc...the lama is buried under one of the corner stones. The black market was huge and everything was for sale here from fake clothings to copied DVD´s. But there was alos lots of food for sale of course :-) Pictures will be published soon.

The main event today was the trip to Chacaltaya. This peak is located right outside La Paz and it is about 5400 meters high. We had some problems driving up the mountain as we got a bit of snow last night. But with the Toyota LandCruiser we made it all the way to the parking at 5300 meters. Yes, I know it is cheating driving almost all the way to the top :-) We walked the 100 altitude meters to the top and it was a bit cold as I only had standard sneakers. But it was a fun experience.

We are back in La Paz after a couple of days on the "road". We chartered a small plane and we flew from La Paz to the salt lake Salar de Uyuni. We first made a stop at the salt hotel and the next stop was at an island where you can find lots of cacti(?). The largest one was 12 meters high and they only grow 1 cm per year! The salt lake is huge and it was like standing on a vast plane of snow and the light was so bright. After that we flew to the national pak of Torotoro where we checked out dinosaur tracks, went into a cave where we had to crawl through the narrowest parts and we have been checking out deep canyons. It has been quite an adventure :-)

We are back in La Paz after a 12 hour bus ride from Cuzco. We got back to Cuzco quite early to check it out but I had eaten something that didn't agree with my body so I was knocked out most of the day  So I was in bad most of the day but I'm better know and looking forward to the trip to the big salt lake south in Bolivia. We are going in a tiny place to the salt lake first...and then we are heading to the national park of Torotoro

Today we went to El Alto located at about 4000 meters about sea level. This is a suburb of La Paz and it is a rather poor area. Dur to our connection here in La Paz we got to visit a school in the area. Today was a day of fiesta since it was students day and first day of spring. In some classes they had cake and jelly and we were offered some of course. I guess we were a bit sceptical....you know..."is this safe to eat?" But it is rude to turn down food so we ate it and it was great :-) The skies over La Paz was blue this afternoon and what a view you get to the city when you come down from El Alto...it is breathtaking. Tomorrow we are heading for Peru...we are going to visit Machu Picchu :-)