Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/5U9DBFDEPHwfiuUJ8
After a day or so of rest in Guayaquil post Galapagos, I flew over to Bolivia’s biggest airport, Santa Cruz (which is also where my exit flight back to New York was from). I then grabbed a cheap connecting flight to the colonial city of Sucre – my options were either a 35 USD, 45 minute flight, or a 15 USD, 10 hour bus ride, so the choice was obvious. Sucre was actually a really pleasant city – I’d go as far as to say that it is my favorite Spanish colonial city to date. It’s just a super photogenic city that is peaceful to stroll around, with gorgeous white art deco buildings and white colonial churches and white buildings in general…definitely the whitest city I have ever been to. Closest parallel I can even think of was this ruined, giant, white stepped temple outside of Mandalay in Myanmar. Just the pure whiteness of it all. Sucre also had a really cool, decadent cemetery. Not quite as out there as the one in Buenos Aires, but apparently it is a Latin American thing to have over-the-top cemeteries which I think is pretty cool as it celebrates the life of the person who is buried. And in some weird way, it did remind me a little of Granada in Spain with the white buildings strewn over hills, especially when walking to what was an OK sunset view (OK only because of my crazy high standards after 3 years of travel). My hostel also doubled as a nightclub, where the crowd was like 95% Bolivians which was cool. My proudest moment here was getting a group of random people – gringo and Bolivians, female and male – to join me in a mass macarena dance that continued well after I stopped, all to the same generic shitty regatton that is prevalent all across Latin America.
After a nice few days in Sucre, I intended to take an overnight bus to the southern town of Tupiza, whose red rock cliffs and monuments and cactus strewn hiking trails give off a strong Wild West vibe. In fact, it is in the Tupiza area where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were allegedly killed. However, as we all know, South Americans do love themselves a good protest. My overnight bus was supposed to go through the town of Uyuni (which was my next stop, as the base point for the salt flat tours) on the way to Tupiza, but some local protest blocked the roads and I had to walk the final 8km from the road block to a new Uyuni hostel, as the road to Tupiza was also blocked. So unfortunately, had to scrap Tupiza from this trip. Luckily the walk was all downhill or flat, as this was at 3700 meters of elevation and I was lugging all 20kg of my baggage weight, so it definitely would have been tough if it was an uphill walk.
After a day relaxing in Uyuni, I went on a 3 day/2 night trip to see the salt flats as well as the surrounding alpine desert landscape. I was in a group from my hostel with 5 others – 2 guys from Switzerland who were both ethnically Turkish, an Israeli gap year dude, a French study abroad girl who was travelling after her semester in Santiago ended, and a Dutch guy who was taking a break from his Masters’ thesis program. We paid slightly more for a bespoke tour vs a generic one (220 USD as opposed to ~180 USD a person), and it was absolutely worth it. The landscapes in Bolivia were unreal. It was very diverse, where we would see new landscapes literally in under an hour of driving. In a way, it was almost like an amalgamation of all of my favorite landscapes that I have seen…the emptiness and vastness of Namibia, the desert rocks and cliffs of Wadi Rum in Jordan, the alpine desert + soaring mountains of Tajikistan (obviously not as cool as Tajikistan but what is), and even sandy red rocks of the SW of the US. Just such a surreal experience. This whole area is an altiplano, or high altitude plains, as we would be driving at elevations between 4000 and 5000 meters to see the sights. When we got closer to 5000 meters it was literally Martian, with a vast, endless expanse of red sand and rock with the occasional soaring snowcapped mountain in the distance. Again, not as breath taking as Tajikistan or Ladakh, but still a very cool alpine desert landscape nonetheless.
Despite the moon being half full and fairly cloudy skies, that first night of this trip was an outstanding night sky. I can’t believe I forgot to mention it in my Ecuador post, but obviously this didn’t compare to the Galapagos night sky, which is up there with Kilimanjaro as the single best sky I have ever seen. But our guide helped me adjust my manual camera settings via trial and error and I actually snapped my first ever legitmately good nightsky pic thanks to him, which was awesome. Also in that first night, while staying in a lodge in the middle of the desert, there were hot springs nearby. The weather outside that night was well below freezing, but because the hot springs were at like 37 degrees Celsius, it was actually super comfortable to just bop in there in our swim clothes. I actually sort of overcame a huge fear of mine – the ice cold – by sauntering in my swim shorts from the changing room to the hot springs, and even standing up outside of the pool for a few minutes at a time to cool off before going back in the pool again. Not quite the same as overcoming my fear of ice cold water but I think it was a start.
The second day was more of the same of the first – driving past these vast, endless landscapes with awesome mountains and lakes pockmarking the area. Just so utterly beautiful…I really do love desolation, and as I’ve written before, to me it drives home the temporal nature of humanity and of life, so it makes me appreciate it way more. In a way it’s a big reason as to why I adore Burning Man as well – just the temporal aspect of everything there. That evening, we drove out to a secluded area of the salt flats itself where there were literally zero other tourist cars. This entire area was a giant mirror due to the few centimeters of water still present (we were lucky that such a giant mirror effect was still possible during dry season). Another benefit of going with this specific tour guide was him showing us secluded spots like this. But it was amazing, the sunsets were quite literally out of this world with the insane reflections. I’m not a psychedelic drug guy, but this is how I would imagine the best of trips to look like. Even my Fuji camera photos had zero editing, I just snapped and saved, and they looked like something out of a 1960s fever dream. Just so artsy to look at. Honestly, the sunsets this night and the next night topped the one I saw in Namibia in Aus as my favorite ever sunset (Aus was awesome because we were on top of a ~100 meter cliff with nothing but a vast expanse of plains before us, so you could see the giant ball of fire drop down the horizon with literally nothing else in sight).
The final day was spent fully in the salt flats. This was basically a bigger version of the salt flats that I saw in Etosha National Park in Namibia. Honestly the daytime, dry salt flats was the “lowlight” of the trip for me despite being the most famous part. Like it was OK, but nothing special. Some of the photos the guide took were cool, since the plain white expanse led to cool perspective shots, but I don’t know. It was fine but nothing special. One cool thing we did this day was hike up a hill in the middle of the salt flats that was entirely made of dead coral, as it was all underwater millions of years ago. Just so cool to see coral in this atmosphere, especially after my recent Galapagos diving trip. And we of course ended with another wet section to get another beautiful sunset reflection. Unfortunately, both of our nights with the salt flat mirror were super cloudy, so no night sky. If I was here with no clouds and no moon, I can only imagine how trippy the Milky Way reflection on the salt flats would be…I think it would easily be the coolest thing I would have ever seen in my life. But oh well, still was an incredible, incredible experience. Our guide this final night took these crazy night photos that he called “light painting”, where the super long exposure and pitch black meant you could wave lights around to create designs. Just a very unique experience, especially as someone who isn’t usually a fan of that type of “forced” photography.
After this great 3 day trip, I took a full day of bus rides to go from Uyuni to the city of Cochabamba. This was really a launching point to visit Toro Toro National Park, which I did the next day via another four hour bus ride – Cochabamba is the closest city to Toro Toro. Toro Toro is distinctly a B-list destination in Bolivia, but because I had time I decided to visit it. I actually thoroughly enjoyed it, and it’s made me reconsider visiting B-list places in other countries over my final year as I normally skip them. By backpacking standards I am definitely a fast traveler, as a lot of the people I have met the past few years take their own sweet time crawling through countries to explore every nook and cranny, which I am usually too impatient for…I just shoot for what I think are the coolest spots and then move on. But obviously I am happy with my methods, given all the amazing things I have seen over the past few years. I guess the exception for visiting B-list places for me is India, as I have (and plan on continuing to do so) really fleshed out the country, but that’s because I am Indian so obviously have more of a natural interest there. And I guess you can say that these so called “B-list” places in India have not failed to disappoint either – in fact, some of them have been absolute highlights, like the various sights of Tamil Nadu or Karnataka.
Anyways, the main attraction of Toro Toro for me were the impressive trove of well preserved dinosaur footprints. There was one in particular that was bigger than me lying down. Was incredible to see how well preserved some of these were given how unimaginably old they were, and this was yet another childhood fascination that I was able to experience. It is interesting to me how a lot of my interests have stemmed from my very early childhood – the sense of freedom and newness you experience fronm travel (and of course from Burning Man) that you really only get to fully live through in the real world as a kid, the whole Indiana Jones jungle/discovery vibe as that was my favorite childhood movie, and now dinosaur footprints that I went well off the Gringo trail of South America to visit and see. I do think that from a societal perspective that overt nostalgia is bad (see: MAGA, Brexit, etc.), but personally I guess it makes sense that the things that shape you the most are those experiences that take place when you are most mold-able. Which is what makes Burning Man even more impressive because I was a fully formed adult when I went and it still had that big of an impact, but probably precisely because it was like being a kid again.
So besides the dino footprints, there were a couple of hikes in Toro Toro that were cool, and reminded me a good bit of the American southwest with the rocks and cliffs and short shrubbed rolling hills (very California here actually). But still, after the magnificence of the altiplano and salt flats, this was “just” good yet forgettable in terms of the hiking. The coolest part of Toro Toro was actually this cave that we went into for a few hours, which was my first time caving. The pictures do not do it justice at all, as we had headlights and helmets (would be pitch black without the lights), and had to climb up and down these slippery boulders with ropes – was basically using all arm strength to pull yourself up and down as it was impossible to get a grip on the surface. And the clear highlight here was shimmying and crawling through a 15 meter long tunnel, where at some points I had to contort my body to raise my arms so I could squeeze through the cracks. I definitely learned that I am NOT claustrophobic during this experience…it was honestly so exhilerating.
After Toro Toro, I went back to Cochabamba to sort of relax for a day. One of the German backpackers I was with was absolutely raving about this street food burger stall he had in Cochabamba the night before Toro Toro. I am always a big fan of street stalls that get people uber enthusiastic (hell, I’ve been known to do the same), so I humored him and went to this stall for dinner after getting back from Toro Toro. Legitimately one of the better burgers I have ever had, I was shocked at how good it was. It was so good that we created a Google Maps entry for this street stall – see here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/afesc6MvA94bK8MTA.
Cochabamba is also known as the culinary capital of Bolivia, so I went to some highly rated restaurant serving local food. Beyond mediocre and stupidly overpriced, so of course for dinner I went back to the burger stall to eat another masterpiece. I then took a night bus to the city of La Paz, going back up to 3700-ish meters in elevation (Cochabamba and Toro Toro were just under 3000 meters, which in a country like Bolivia almost qualifies as the lowlands).
La Paz honestly might be my single favorite Latin American city, even over CDMX. It’s perfectly chaotic, maybe not to the level of cities in India, or Baghdad, or even Kampala (in Uganda), but it certainly is up there. I just love that hustle and bustle, and having that slim (but existant!) chance of danger when crossing the street. It is just so invigorating, and so much more exciting than a boring, orderly city. And much like the rest of Bolivia, La Paz is decidedly very indigenous, which to me makes it more unique. In many ways, La Paz is sort of the quintessential Latin American city, the way I had imagined it before I had gone to Central America for the first time last spring. Everyone is dressed up in Andean indigenous garb, it’s nice and chaotic, with nary a traffic light anywhere, and the food is cheap and delicious . Speaking about food…I honestly think that Ecuador and Bolivia have just as good of a cuisine as their much ballyhooed neighbor, Peru. Obviously my final dinner in Lima with my family at that swanky restaurant Mayta was head and shoulders my best non-Mexico and non-Argentina LatAm meal, but otherwise it’s a very similar brand of Andean mountain food, with heavy emphasis on potatoes, maize, and meat. But one thing I like about La Paz was the seemingly easy nature of finding local, cheap street food. Honestly probably the best street food culture I have seen in Latin America outside of Mexico. There were so many different varieties of pastries stuffed with meat, which has been one of my favorite types of local delicacies going all the way back to my first trip of retirement in eastern China.
But yea, La Paz was just such a colorful city with the indigenous culture. And because the city is on a slope that basically goes from like 3600 meters to 4000 meters, there is a public transport cable car system that wheels you all around the city while providing magnificent views. I took like an hour loop for less than a dollar and it was such a unique experience for a big city. Really cool system and another check for La Paz. One other notable part of the city was this really cool art gallery by this modern artist named Mamani Mamani. The style was, to me, a fusion of indigenous Andean style with an almost Picasso and Dr.Seuss combo, which led to a vividly colorful, trippy display of some beautiful paintings.
Two notable things that I skipped in La Paz was mountain biking down death road, and visiting Lake Titicacca. For death road, while I do enjoy taking risks and adrenaline rushes (for context, I am hoping to visit Afghanistan end of Oct/early Nov), I have literally zero experience with mountain biking, and literally every backpacker I spoke with said that people in their group got injured while going down. And given my lack of experience (like with skiing!), that was something I did not want to mess with. And for Lake Titicacca…I base a lot of my nature travelling on how cool things look on Google Images (not as much Instagram because Insta pics are for clout and exaggerated), and I don’t know, Lake Titcacca looked cool, but given my limited time, I chose not to see it. Instead went for a couple of days in La Paz and a day trip to Tiwanaku, which are these set of cool pre-Incan ruins near La Paz.
Tiwanaku was surprisingly cool. Like Copan in Honduras, but on a much smaller scale, there were a couple of stelae that were in-situ that had wonderful carvings on them. I love seeing intricate design in a historic sight – it’s one of the reasons the Incan ruins of Peru were slightly disappointing, as it was all just base structure (almost like a lot of Greco-Roman sights actually, though some are obviously amazing, like Termessos in Turkey or obviously Pompeii and Herculanium in Italy). In many ways, it almost reminded me of Monte Alban near the city of Oaxaca in Mexico, with the sort of dry desert landscape and spread out ruins. Overall, definitely a decent but nothing special site. But obviously still glad that I visited.
So after Tiwanaku was arguably the personal highlight of the trip, and definitely up there with the Uyuni salt flats. I summited the mountain Huayana Potosi, which is my tallest peak to date. It’s no Chimborazo, but was a good substitute at a steep 6088m, or 19974 feet. And like Chimbo, this was a technical hike, with the entire summit day being with crampons, a 25+ meter tall 90 degree ice wall we had to climb up, and some super exposed, narrow ledges that would have been high key dangerous if we got unlucky and it was windy – more on these later.
The night before, after Tiwanaku, I got dinner with my German friend who was the hamburger street food stall afficionado from Cochabamba. We went to an Argentinian steak house since he was craving meat and I figured this would be a good last supper before my 3 day hike. And because Bolivia is so cheap, this entire meal (no drinks) cost like 10 USD a person.But the most interesting thing about this place is that the meat platter we got was supposed to be served with rice, and it was straight up served with curd rice, which is a south Indian specialty. Just so weird to see this in a steakhouse of all places.
Anyways, the next day, I got to my agency’s shop and then drove off to the mountain. I went with a company called Jiwaki because I had met numerous independent backpackers in Bolivia who recommended them. Needless to say, even though all 7 of us in our group ascended, I would 100% not recommend these guys. Again, more on that later.
The drive to the mountain was gorgeous. Much like the altiplano near Uyuni, this was a vast expanse of flat, dry land all at 4000+ meters. But unlike Uyuni, in the distance you could see absolutely massive, snowcapped mountains from the border with Peru. Once we got to the base camp, at a hearty altitude of 4700 meters (up from La Paz at ~3600 meters), we ate lunch, and then proceeded to hike up to 4900 meters to do some glacier training. This was pretty straightforward, with hiking up and down glaciers which is what I had experience with in Iceland and especially Argentina. Afterwards, we got to a sheer 90 degree vertical wall, about 10+ meters high, to practice some ice climbing. This was obviously perfectly safe, with the guide free climbing ahead of you and then you climbing behind him, but he was secure in the ice so if you missed/slipped and lost footing (like I did), you just dangled until you could swing yourself back into the wall. After this incredibly fun exercise, we headed back to the lodge, got dinner and slept. This is where the trouble started. I have never once in my life gotten altitude sickness, and was also taking diamox since 2 days prior to this trip, twice a day, morning and night – this is basically a magic altitude sickness drug that prevents anything from happening (at least for me, for places like Kilimanjaro at a shade under 5900 meters and Peru where we were consistently at 4000 meters plus), but you get a strong tingling sensation in your face, feet, and hands. And we were “only” at 4700 meters, and I had a week plus of acclimitization in the Uyuni area and La Paz which ranged from 3600m to 5000m, with a dip in Cochabamba and Toro Toro at just below 3000m which shouldn’t have had an impact. Anyways, from between 10am to midnight that night, I had 4 seperate cases of painful gut pain followed by outrageously explosive diarrhea (think the scene in Dumb and Dumber when Harry goes to take a dump). When telling the guides about this the next day, they said that this was altitude sickness, so I thought whatever. However, 1 of the other 6 in our group had this same experience as me with no other altitude sickness symptoms. And over the course of the 3 days, we ran into other Jiwaki clients who were at different points in their itinerary (coming down to base camp when we were going to high camp, and coming up to high camp when we were going to base camp), and literally 1/3 of them had this only symptom of explosive diarrhea and intense stomach pain. This led me to believe that this was just shitty cooking, especially given how strong my stomach is.
So on day 2, we had to lug about 15kg of equipment up to the high camp, so from 4700m up to 5130m. Of course, the rental hiking backpack that I got (all included in my final price of 145 USD…Bolivia is crazy cheap) had a broken waist belt clip, so I was forced to lug this up at this altitude up that amount of meters using only a chest clip and the regular shoulder straps. Needless to say, this made the hike up even more difficult than it should have been, and I had sore traps for days because of this experience. The cherry on top was that two guys in our group of 7 requested rental headlights that the company forgot to bring, so the guides had to give them theirs and then guide us by moonlight. Despite Jiwaki’s stellar reviews, really cannot recommend them at all, again, despite the fact that all 7 of us summited.
Day 2 was just hiking to high camp and resting. Lowkey this 400+ meter ascent carryign 15+kg was tougher than pretty much the entire ascent of day 3 besides the final 200 or so meters. Day 3 began at midnight, were we got our gear ready, had a light breakfast/snack, and then headed out by 1:15am. We were wearing plastic boots, which are honestly terrible for hiking, but amazing for keeping your feet warm and perfect for the sort of professional crampons that we needed. But we had to hike from high camp at 5130 meters to the start of the mountain glacier at 5230 meters, which took roughly 45 minutes as we struggled to navigate the rocky terrain in our subpar plastic boots. There was a section of straight up rock climbing with ropes attached that ascended about 60+ meters as well, which was doubly fun with the shitty boots. But this was not a Jiwaki issue – every company did this, because the alternate is that you lug your regular hiking boots all the way up to the peak once switching to the plastic boots for crampons and you want to minimize weight for the summit. My broken backpack was not an issue here because I was basically only carrying 3kg worth of weight – 3L of water with electrolyte powder, along with my sunglasses case and emergency painkillers, so I didn’t need my waist strap. Once we put on our crampons at around 2am, it was just a straight walk up the glacier to the summit. On the glacier, we all had to be roped to the guides for a safety precaution, in case anyone slipped on the ice. It was a limit of 2 people per guide, and since the other 6 were all 3 groups of either siblings or friends, I got a guide to myself which was awesome, as it meant that if I didn’t make it to the peak it would be my fault and not another’s – if one of 2 need to turn around due to altitude sickness, the 2nd attached person has to go as well as you cannot ascend unguided. I honestly found the ascent *largely* easy because I deal with difficult hikes almost like meditation. I just clear my mind, and then focus on stepping and breathing, always going at a pace that is slow enough where my heart rate doesn’t increase too much. I also keep my head down and don’t look at the path, since I didn’t want to be mentalyl flustered by any upcoming difficult sections. Because of this slower pace, I am definitely on the slower side amongst experienced hikers, but because I can basically go without stopping at all, I am far faster than otherwise more athletic or fit people who don’t hike, as was the case on this trip.
The first (and only) spicy part of this ascent came at roughly the halfway point, between 5600 and 5700 meters. It was just before 4am at this time and we were making good pace, without any stops. However, before us was a sheer vertical wall of ice that was god knows how tall (the guides would later tell us over 25 meters). This is quite obnoxiously tall. Anyways, my guide would go up in front, and then I would follow him, using my axe and crampons to climb up this 90 degree wall while having the failsafe of being attached to my guide who was dug in. The guides all lengthened the ropes here so the gap between the guide and gringo was wider, and they would hike up a good amount, secure themselves, and then tell us to hike up until we were fully secure, and then so on and so forth. Was honestly such a fun experience, but I was beyond exhausted at the end and had to lie down and rest for 5+ minutes at the top of this wall to recover. Got to enjoy a decent sky, but the almost full moonlight ruined the stars (though this aided the hike since, as mentioned before, 2 of the guides didn’t have headlights and were relying on the moonlight due to giving their lights to 2 clients due to the company messing up). After this rest, it was more smooth sailing for a little over an hour until we hit what was really the only straight up difficult part of the ascent. The final 200 meters or so of elevation to the peak was all at a steep, 45+ degree angle. Well before this point, we had all been accustomed to the ice, and it honestly felt like walking on regular land so the crampons made no difference mentally. But obviously that was with trails that were nowhere near this steep. We were all also walking at roughly the same pace (all 7 of us made it to the peak within 5 minutes of each other, unintentionally). Anyways, this part was a real struggle, as I was averaging a footstep every 3 seconds in order to keep my heart rate low. There was one part that was a small straight almost-vertical climb, but no more than 10 meters and had some steps for us to lean into as opposed to being a literal wall. And the final stretch to the peak was potentially really dangerous, as it was so narrow that it was one foot at a time. It was super exposed, we were all exhausted from 5-6 hours of hiking and only a few hours of sleep, and if there was strong wind it could have been a second spicy part of this hike. Got to the peak at 6088m and felt wonderful, and was granted some phenomenal views of the mountains and altiplano and clouds all around us. Just an incredible personal achievement for me to finally break the 6000 meter mark (while I fell 26 feet short of 20k feet, I don’t really care as I am now a full time convert to the metric system).
However, and this is a real problem that I have with all hikes, but all the motivational zen that helps me stay focused and find uphill relatively easy disappeared once I reached my final goal, and the downhill portion of this hike was absolutely brutal. Bad enough where I would comfortably rank this as the most difficult hike I have ever done – this is also because my body literally broke down and I was in a state of absolute exhaustion later that evening when back in La Paz. Had never felt that tired before after a physical activity, not even close. Honestly thing my “meditating” while going uphill was what let me do this hike as otherwise exhaustion would have kicked in during the hike itself. But yea, the walk down was no bueno, but the highlight of this was rapelling down the vertical ice wall. Here, the guides set the ropes up around their axes that were dug into the ice, secure so that we could basically slide down. While sliding, we were basically like “Holy shit, did we actually climb this entire wall? How on Earth did we do that?”. That’s the beauty of hiking in the dark I guess, as you can’t fully see the height of the wall. And the sheer motivation of just going up step by step (or in this case, climb by climb?). Anyways, we finally got back down to the end of the glacier, and removed our crampons. Now was the doubly fun part of going down these now-slippery rocks (due to sunlight) in our plastic boots, especially when descending the rock wall with ropes. Got back to high camp, had a light lunch and packed, and then I had to lug my 15 kg worth of equipment all the way down from 5130m to 4700m with my backpack and its’ broken waist strap, causing yet more trap pain. Finally made it back, got in the van, and drove off to La Paz, where I basically lazed around and had a (no joke) 2 hour long hot shower, before flying off to Santa Cruz the next day. Was in Santa Cruz for a little over 24 hours as my flight back to JFK was out of Santa Cruz.
To be honest, even though Potosi was “only” just under 200 meters higher than Kili, it was leagues more difficult. I think there were a couple of reasons for this…for one, Kili was a week long trek where we slowly acclimatized, which is always easier than driving to a base camp and hiking in 2 days (our first day wasn’t really hiking, just ice training), no matter how long you’ve spent in high altitude. Secondly, Altezza, my high-end Kili company, were just so incredibly brilliant and made the whole process so easy, the way they constantly fed us and kept us hydrated, and that level of service was basically impossible to get for Huayana Potosi.
Honestly, summiting Huayana Potosi was a fantastic end to Latin America for me, considering that I will, in all liklihood, not be revisiting Latin America in my final year of retirement (you never know, but still…). My ideal plans for my final year (which of course will never go to plan) are to do some trekking and roadtrips in the Himalayan regions of North India (from like mid Sep-end of Oct), maybe one or two more cultural trips within India, a trip out to Afghanistan, fully flesh out Indonesia, check out East Asia (Japan/Korea), go to Iran with my dad in March, check out Lebanon and Syria, do one sort of big desert trip, whether in Tunisia or Morocco or elsewhere, a trip to Madagascar with my sister, and see more of Europe – Martin in London for a bit again, Germany, Trans Nistria if that is possible, who knows. If I’m able to achieve this, the top of my my post-retirement bucketlist would be Chile (Atacama, Patagonia, Easter Island), Antarctica, New Zealand (LOTR!!!), Nicaragua (volcanoes!), Alaska, Hawaii, Botswana (river safari!), Pakistan (mountains!), and of course China.
But yea, Bolivia was fantastic. Was obviously a little bittersweet as my original plan was to meet my uncle here in April after Argentina, but his unexpected cardiac arrest at 59 was what led me to cut Argentina short, go to NY to see my mom and attend the funeral, and then go to India with my mom to see my grandma for a bit (where I got to travel a little in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, and also Cambodia again), before finally returning to South America. But I suppose because we had only ever discussed Bolivia at a high level (beyond him confirming he was visiting with a rough date range, we never discussed specifics of the trip), it wasn’t too bad, as there wasn’t any one specific activity where I was like “oh we would have done this together”, since he was always a more off-the-beaten-path traveler which means our final itinerary together really would have been unpredictable, since he would have only been with me for two weeks anyways. But again, given how much I enjoyed Bolivia and given the shock of his untimely passing (since then, one of our neighbor’s passed away of cardiac arrest suddenly in her 50s…she was the mom of a girl from my grade), it’s really only reinforced even further my belief that I’m doing the right thing by doing what I want now while I am young and healthy and able.
Other random fun parts about Bolivia…they have easily the 2nd best fruit juice culture I have seen in Latin America so far after Mexico. Tons of random exotic fruits and most are con leche, or with milk, making them de facto 1 liter milkshakes that you can get on the street for like 75 cents US equivalent. Fantastic. As mentioned before, Bolivia is by far the most indigenous country I have been to, and unlike the indigenous cultures I saw in Peru and Ecuador which seemed to primarily be Quecha, here it was both Quecha and Aymara. Speaking of Quecha, not sure if I brought it up in an earlier post, but I love how all these reputable outdoor companies use South American terminology for their brand names, like Patagonia, Cotopaxi, and Quecha. But yea, regarding the indigenous culture, much like India, it seemed like every single woman who was middle aged or older was wearing traditional clothing, which again, like India, was vibrant and colorful and honestly just flat out gorgeous. It just made the country that much more aesthetically pleasing and memorable.
Anyways, Latin America as a whole…it has two absolute bombshell locations in Guatemala and Bolivia (Guatemala is better for me), another all time great spot in the Galapagos, another excellent destination in Argentina, and then some good, good spots like Peru, and to a lesser extent Ecuador and Mexico as well. And yet, despite how great Latin America has been over multiple trips, I still feel like, regionally, Central Asia and East Africa take the cake for me (to say nothing of India). Hell, sub-Saharan Africa as a whole is still just magical to me. I don’t know if this is because of some cultural subconscious “white/gringo savior” mentality that seems to exist in the West for “Afrika” or what, but there’s definitely a pull to sub-Saharan Africa that does not quite exist in Latin America, or even in India or Central Asia for that matter. But India has the nostalgic and family pull for me, while Central Asia was just magnificent with crazy adventures and gorgeous landscapes in Kyrgyzstan, pure cultural beauty in Uzbekistan, and what is at this point my all time favorite trip in Tajikistan.
So will be back home for a bit, seeing family and friends in NY, Chicago, and SF (in SF to catch the bus to Burning Man!!!). But main reason to come home besides BMan is to work on my grad school application essays. Will be applying for 2 year MPP/MPA programs as I want to eventually do international NGO work, ideally in environmental/human rights/wildlife. The 9 programs I am applying to are Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, NYU, London School of Economics, Sciences Po (in Paris), Hertie (in Berline), and Lee Kuan Yew (in Singapore). Fingers crossed I get a good scholarship since the jobs I want don’t pay much so a loan makes zero sense.