Why We Chose to Travel to Bolivia

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 Posted in Argentina, Bolivia, Peru

After nearly 3 months in Peru it was time to move on. We knew we wanted to get to Argentina and spend a couple of months traveling around the western part of the country before we headed to Buenos Aires to meet up with Gina’s mom in August.

Baby LLamas Are Cute

Sitting in Cusco we basically had 2 choices to get to Argentina overland. One took as back to the Pacific side of Peru, more desert and long bus rides, through Northern Chile and back over the Andes in Argentina. The other route took us to Bolivia.

Bolivia was never part of our itinerary, although now that I think about it our “formal itinerary” ended sometime around January and we have been winging it ever since, but then neither was Chile. These 2 countries, Chile and Bolivia, present quite a contrast Chile being one of the more economically prosperous countries in South America and Bolivia being one of the poorest.

Our decision to head to Bolivia was based on 2 factors; 1) we were tired of the desert after having traveled and lived in it for more than 2 months, and 2) we enjoy traveling in the Andes. So, Bolivia it was! When we began researching Entry requirements we found that Bolivia required a Visa from U.S. citizens and they charged a $135.00 per person fee. The fee we found out was a reciprocal fee, the U.S. charges Bolivian citizens the same amount to enter the U.S., but who wants to spend $540.00 to cross a border. In the end we still felt this was the best route for us so we bit the bullet and paid the money.

For those of you with maps here is the route we took, along with the time spent in each place we stopped, as well as the mode of transportation and length of travel time required to get to the next destination:

LOCATION	LENGTH OF STAY	TRAVEL TIME	MODE OF TRANPORT
Cusco, Peru
Puno, Peru	36 Hours	3 Hours	Bus
Copacabana, Bolivia	48 Hours	5 Hours	Bus/Ferry Boat
La Paz, Bolivia	12 Hours	3.5 Hours	Bus
Oruro, Bolivia	30 Minutes	3 Hours	Bus
Uyuni, Bolivia	10 Hours	7 Hours	Train
Salt Hotel, Bolivia	18 Hours	5 Hours	4×4 Jeep
Laguna Colorado, Bolivia	12 Hours	10 Hours	4×4 Jeep
Uyuni, Bolivia	8 Hours	13 Hours	4×4 Jeep
Villazon, Bolivia	2 Hours	10 Hours	Train
La Quica, Argentina	36 Hours	10 Minutes	Taxi

Bolivia for us was a quick, whirlwind trip but we saw some amazing parts of the country and in the end we are glad we chose this route. You can tell by our Mode of Transport that between the buses, taxis, boats, 4×4’s, and trains that we had about all of the ground transportation covered.

We will post pictures of our time in Copacabana, you can read about our reaction to seeing La Paz for the first time, we have lots of photos we want to share of the remarkable landscape of the country, and of course we need to get our story and pictures put together for the incredible Bolivian Salt Flats tour that we took…an adventure to say the least.

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