Traveling in Bolivia is like a bad relationship, where there are enough good times to make you stay longer than you should, but eventually you just need to leave. I was skeptical about going to Bolivia due to its shady reputation, but there was no way I was going to miss the salt flats, which had been a dream of mine to see since I first learned about them. (Not in school, mind you, as the US education system largely ignores South America, even at the university level.) So, it was with this dream in mind, that Heather and I walked across the border from Peru to Bolivia, reluctantly paying our $160 US per person for our visas. What follows is a “totally objective” account of the good, the bad and the downright annoying.
Contents
The Good
Las Pampas
Based on Heather’s research, we decided to go to Rurrenabaque and book a tour to the edge of the Amazon, into a region known as Las Pampas. You can also go into the Amazon, but that tour is more focused on the plant life and culture, and we wanted to see some cool animals. We took a pleasant 25 minute flight from La Paz to Rurrenabaque (you are out of your freaking mind to take the 18+ hour bus ride, especially during the rainy season, so don’t be cheap on this one and budget an extra $70 per person for the flight). Once there, we walked around to a few different tour companies and gathered information and pricing. Heather’s research had initially indicated most companies charged between $180-$240 US per person. However, this is exactly why you don’t book something before getting where you’re going. We ended up going with Eco Camping Travel for $100 US per person. The accommodations were basic and the guide didn’t speak English, despite promises to the contrary, but the food was plentiful and the experience was amazing. (All the companies promise their guides speak English, but unless you pay a fortune, it’s a crapshoot. Fortunately we were paired with three students studying abroad from Europe who spoke enough to translate for us.)
The best part of our three days in Las Pampas, for me, was cruising down the river at night with a flashlight and seeing the hundreds of caiman and alligator eyes glowing red staring back at us from mere feet away. (See my instagram @knoffthenomad for a video). A close second to this was getting into that very same water to swim with the pink river dolphins. The guide kept saying we were going to do this at the end of the trip and honestly I thought he was screwing with us. I’m supposed to get in the same water where I caught piranha and saw 12 foot caiman fighting each other? Nice try tour guide, but I’m not as dumb as I look. Well, we found the dolphins and the tour guide dove right in after explaining the dolphins are fiercely territorial and chase everything else away when they’re in an area. Guess he was right, because the five of us emerged unscathed after more than 30 minutes with the dolphins. I hope you are just as lucky. 🙂
Sucre
I love college towns. There is something about people walking around who look like they have a future that warms the heart. The city of Sucre, in addition to being the constitutional capital of Bolivia and home to la Universidad de Sucre, is much cleaner, more modern and more welcoming than most of Bolivia. For anyone wanting to learn Spanish, it is a great place to hire a private tutor and just hang out for a week, a month or longer. Make sure you go see the world’s largest wall of dinosaur footprints in the Cal Orck’o cliff in Cretaceous Park. You can buy tickets for round trip bus fare and entrance to the park for 45 Bolivianos at the Joy Ride Cafe just off of the Plaza 25 de Mayo. If you’re looking for a place to stay, we stayed at The Beehive hostel which had a great courtyard and by far the best free breakfast we have had in our travels to date. Had we known all this we definitely would have spent more time in Sucre. Oh, and as you’ll read later, it’s better to fly here from La Paz as well, so budget for it.
Salt Flats
Salar de Uyuni or the salt flats are just fascinating. Besides being able to see the curve of the earth here (checkmate flat-earthers), it is incredible to think that you are standing on salt 300 feet thick in some places that is the remnants of several prehistoric lakes. If you don’t get a tour that includes finding water for the near perfect reflection of the sky and mountains, your guide might be willing to make a detour for 10 Bolivianos per person. Even in the dry season when there isn’t supposed to be water, they all know where it is, so don’t miss out on this. If you have a good camera and if it’s going to be a clear night, find a tour to take you out onto the salt flats at night to see the reflection of the stars and Milky Way in the water for some incredible pictures. Make sure you get all of your fun perspective photographs and videos too, and be careful climbing the trains in the Cementerio de Trenes, so you don’t tear your pants and almost break your nose as someone did who will remain anonymous.
If you choose the three day tour to the Chilean border, day two and three find you on high plateaus (up to 16.185 feet) gazing at beautifully colored lagoons, geysers, flamingos and viscanchas, which look like a cross between a rabbit and kangaroo that is perpetually stoned (see pic). However, if you are not continuing on to Chile, the one day tour is really all you need. The accommodations are sparse, to say the least, and our tour company (Andes Salt Expeditions) provided the bare minimum when it came to food. You could also get stuck with seven people in the car like we did (we were promised six people max), which made for extremely uncomfortable long drives. So go see the salt flats and skip the rest.
The Bad
La Paz
Is it bad if multiple people tell you not to leave your hostel at night because the street you’re on is dangerous? My favorite response was the waitress I asked at a restaurant two blocks from the hostel. I didn’t even get the full question out when she interrupted with an emphatic “yes!” There is zero reason to stay in La Paz. We saw nothing memorable and wished we would’ve spent more time elsewhere. Skip it and go to Sucre for a week of Spanish lessons, you’ll thank me later.
Bus Rides and Roadblocks
The bus ride from La Paz to Sucre was an unmitigated disaster that could’ve been a lot worse. The night bus came to a grinding halt at about 3am in the small village of Cruce Culta. After two hours of sitting there, I finally asked the driver what was happening and he said there was a blockade. Once it became light out we could see that, about a half mile away, the local people had piled rocks across the road to stop traffic. Based on my limited Spanish, the best I could figure was that they were doing this because they felt like their voices weren’t being heard by their appointed officials. At this point about half our bus gathered their belongings and walked around the blockade to find transportation on the other side. Most of the other tour buses turned around to make the 8 hour trek around the roadblock, but not our bus (Trans Copacabana). Instead the driver and his assistant kept lying to us saying that we were about to find another road around and that the roadblock would be done by noon. It was only after we learned from other sources that these roadblocks can last 3-5 days, the mob was getting bigger and drunker and that the police had given up negotiating that we decided to find other transportation. We were happy to skip Sucre and go straight to Uyuni, but a local convinced Heather, myself and four other gringos to walk around the roadblock with him and his family, telling us not to talk and then pointing at me and saying, “especially you.” Ha! (We later looked up the US State Department’s advice in such a situation, which is to never try to walk around a roadblock.) Well, like I said it could’ve been a lot worse. We made it around, but not without a hairy moment where a group of men tried to call over people from the roadblock as they saw us passing. Fortunately, there was a speech going on at the time and no one could hear them. The moral of the story is, don’t be dumbasses like us and try to walk around a roadblock with several hundred angry, drunken Bolivians.
The Food
As I write this I am recovering from food poisoning that I got on our tour of the salt flats, so it’s ok to question my objectivity. That miserable experience aside, the food in Bolivian is certainly nothing to write home about. Heather and I cannot think of a single signature food dish that Bolivia presented nor of anything we really enjoyed. We really just ate to survive while there. If there is any advice I would offer it would be to spend a little extra for western food (pasta, pizza, etc.) and to always carry hand-sanitizer and soap on you, as very few restaurant bathrooms have these modern conveniences.
The Annoying
Lies!
Lies, lies, lies! Look, I’m as big a laissez faire capitalist as you’re going to find, and truly believe an item is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it, which is a concept most of the developing world takes to heart. If you don’t negotiate and shop around, you are going to pay way too much for things, by local standards. However, what I can’t stand is the constant lies from people trying to sell you things, because they know you have no means of holding them accountable. Here is a typical exchange: Does the bus have a bathroom? Yes. It does? No. Will we stop to go to the bathroom on our 9 hour overnight trip? Of course. No stops. Guess I’ll just pee in this bag then, thanks. This type of selling is ignorantly short-sighted and keeps the country from progressing forward toward wealth and reason.
Unwelcome
Most Bolivians seem to not want you there. Nevermind that tourism puts food on many of their tables, most Bolivians attitudes towards foreigners ranges from indifference at best to downright hostility and potential violence at worst. Now, maybe its due to frustration with the country’s political corruption, the loss of their coastline to Chile in the Saltpeter War or blind nationalism running amok, but Bolivians don’t exactly like to make a guy feel welcome. To be fair, the US did blacklist Bolivia in its misguided war on drugs and our ambassador called, now President Morales, the “Andean bin laden,” while accusing him of drug trafficking and being an assassin. But what can you do, the CIA just hates competition. 🙂 So what should you do if you are going to visit Bolivia? Here are a couple suggestions:
- Fuck La Paz, don’t even leave the airport if you don’t have to.
- Fly when you can. Avoid long bus rides at all costs.
- Stay in Sucre if you have to stay anywhere.
- See the salt flats in a single day.
- Get out as soon as you can to somewhere nice, like Santiago.
Want to know how we managed Amazon Jungle and freezing salt flats in one pack? Check out my Practical Packing Guide for South America: the Female List (Men, don’t feel bad, yours is coming soon!)
Interesting article!
I know as mentioned above my comment is out of date.
I understand some of the frustrations of travelling through Bolivia- it isn’t an easy country to travel through and if you are not used to travelling in South America or even Asia (Where there are some similarities)- it can be a culture shock.
The infrastructure is poor but to be expected given years of political unrest.
However I think painting La Paz in the way described in your article is a little unfair – considering it was one of the most awe-inspiring cities for me even if just for its incredible location and being the highest capital city in the world.
I visited Bolivia in April/May of 2018 and La Paz blew me away.
I know petty crime is rife- I had my phone stolen and know of 2 people in my hostel who were mugged so we were very careful about leaving at night, however we ended up spending extra time in La Paz as we grew to love it…(I know that sounds weird given what we went through but we didn’t let that detract from wanting to experience the heart of Bolivia- poor infrastructure and petty crime go hand in hand – this is part of what makes Bolivia Bolivia) there were days I could not walk 20 ft from the hostel without feeling the effects of the altitude, there were hundreds of steep hills that at times made walking around feel impossible!! However there is no place on earth quite like La Paz and I felt quite emotional when we arrived into La Paz by bus from Copacabana – we descended into this crazy, other-worldly city – which appeared to be built into the side of a crater with a backdrop of Andean mountains- with cable cars being used as public transportation. It was incredible.
As for the Bolivian people- Yes people try to scam the tourists and don’t hold up their side of the bargain- again this is to be expected in such a poor country with a corrupt police system however this is not too different from other cities in South America/SE Asia – I found them very friendly otherwise 🙂
Just as an aside…I would also say the 3 day salt flat tour was incredible and the red lagoon with the bright red water, mountains and roaming alpacas was one of the most stunning places I have seen…don’t just go to see the salt flats and call it a day!! 🙂
Sucre is lovely but I think it doesn’t have the chaos, madness and depth of La Paz – feels almost European.
However I agree- Bolivia is not going to be winning any food awards anytime soon!
I know this comment is really out of date but I just wanted to point out that this article comes across as rather bias and not really helpful at all. Fuck ALL of La Paz? Really? Of course it’s recommended that certain neighborhoods are places to avoid, but it’s not like all of La Paz is some ghetto war zone. As long as travelers remain sensible and don’t go looking for trouble, petty crimes are as worst as it should get. I’ve walked around La Paz at night and I never ran into any real trouble. Perhaps I was just fortunate but it was definitely nowhere near as bad as how this article portrays it.
Also there are quite a lot of things to see and do in and around La Paz. If none of these attractions peaked your interest on a personal level, that’s fine. But to tell everyone to not even bother coming out of La Paz Airport if possible just seems really irresponsible. What if someone read this article, believed what was written and literally did as you recommended? You could have potentially robbed that person of an experience that they personally might have really enjoyed, even if you didn’t.
And to say Sucre is better than La Paz would also come down to personal taste. Preferring a college town feel and better private Spanish tutors seem like very specific things that would only appeal to certain people. For example a lot of people might not care much for college towns the same way you would and most people would rather learn new languages in their own time where they live instead of during their limited travel time. Don’t get me wrong, I think Sucre is great and does have it’s own charm. All I’m saying is that I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss an entire city just because another city excels in certain things that you personally prefer.
As an article giving travel advice, this article fails to highlight all of Bolivia in a way that is balanced and well thought out. Sorry. It’s just comes off as very pessimistic and negative to be honest. Almost as if you have some personal vendetta of sorts against La Paz and certain aspects of Bolivia. I wouldn’t be so critical of this article if the tone of it wasn’t so confident and assuring by saying things like “You’ll thank me later”. I sure as hell know I wouldn’t have thanked you if I didn’t know any better and I simply did as you recommended. I for one really enjoyed my time in La Paz and I would hate to think that anyone might have missed out on experiencing La Paz because of this article.
HI Paul..Thanks for your comments. I hope the author’s tongue in cheek writing style would come through because although there were a lot of things we didn’t love about Bolivia, if you read the entire article, you should have also seen the things we did love. I’d also encourage you to read the 7 things you must do in Bolivia article to see that there were a ton of highlights for us in this country. I think you have some really good points that every person who is traveling will have different expectation and enjoy different things. That’s the beauty of blogging. When we were researching to take 20 months and visit 52 countries, I read a TON of blogs. Many of them I connected with and some I didn’t. I hope that nobody would read one article about La Paz and choose not to do any more research for themselves. On the flip side, La Paz was the first place in South America that we experienced locals telling us not to go out, and that we would be in danger if we left our hostel in a well touristed part of the city, after 10pm.
I’m glad you had a great experience there and wish you good travels wherever you go.
Sounds kinda entitled
La Paz is great. But it’s different for everyone, I don’t find Bolivians hostile I find them quite friendly, all our local and long range bus journeys have been great and as for go somewhere nice like Santiago really what a dump that is.
Thanks for your feedback. I’m glad you had a great experience in Bolivia and La Paz in general. As in every country, there are going to be people who are friendly and open, as well as those who don’t like the influx of tourists. My experience in La Paz was that it was the one place that multiple locals expressed genuine concern for our safety because of crime levels in the city. Also, of the 7 countries we visited in South America, Bolivia was the one where we had the highest number of vendors absolutely misrepresent what they were offering and not delivering on what was promised.
But the article is about the good and the bad, and despite the downsides, I hope you took from this article, and my other post, 7 Things You Must Do In Bolivia (and 3 you shouldn’t), that we spent more time in Bolivia than some of the other countries and had some unique and incredible experiences.
I am doing a report on Bolivia about the Good and Bad, and this article helped me a lot. Good work on the article!
Thats really cool to hear. Thanks Jason!
Thanks for the update. Entertaining! Glad you made it out of Bolivia.
Glad you enjoyed it! It was a good experience to see Bolivia, and they have some very beautiful areas, so it was definitely good as well as bad.