A high altitude adventure

 The middle of March was my first road trip with the new car.  I was hesitantly optimistic, but kept waiting for something to go wrong.  Nothing did.  At least nothing major.  We made it all the way to La Paz (one of Bolivia's two capitals) without any breakdowns.  What a different way to experience Bolivia!

 A few hours into the trip, we stopped at some large rock outcroppings to stretch our legs and explore a little.  Most of the trip was between 13,000-14,000 ft, which is a bizarre experience when you're driving along an interstate type road.

Collin and Matias had fun climbing around on the rocks, and scrambling up steep slabs of rock.   They also investigated some moss that oozed pine-smelling sap and was hard like a rock.  We saw all sorts of different alpine flowers and other interesting flora.  Much better than a rest-stop along the interstate in the States!

Very bright sun at 14,000 ft!

 These alpine flowers almost looked like unopened crocus buds and were all over the tops of the rocks where we climbed.  The vibrancy of color and rich verdant hills were a breath of fresh air, contrasted with the smog-filled and usually brown hills of Cochabamba.

After driving around 6 hours, we started winding our way down into the valley of La Paz, situated at around 12,000ft.  My old Cochabamba housemates, Drew and Ann, recently moved there with their daughter, Sofia.  We spent the weekend with them, heading out into the mountains all day Sunday to explore the alluring peaks around the altiplano.

Ok, so I'm pretty far behind my generation in learning how to take selfies.  I got myself in the picture, but not the mountain!  Oops.

A cemetery near Huayna Potosí (19,974ft mountain in background) for miners massacred in a miner's strike at the Milluni mine many decades ago.  The cemetery is littered with empty soda bottles, small "trago" bottles (hard alcohol) and other trash.

We drove up and over a pass, which then opened up on a glacier lake filling the upper valley.

The lake is then used to power a significant portion of the surrounding area, spilling hundreds of feet into the valley below and powering the hydro-electric plant on the valley floor.

SNOWBALL FIGHT!  One of the few places in Bolivia where you can have a snowball fight because there's actually snow on the mountains.  Matias has been begging for a snowball fight ever since we left the States in January.

I went on my own little hike up the mountain a bit further to see the glacier on Huayna Potosí (not very notable in this pic, but it's the big blog of white on the mountain). I was rewarded by some biscachas (Andean mammal that's a visual mix between a rabbit and a squirrel) bounding around on the rocks as I climbed.  And a peek at the high-altitude chalet used as a base camp for Huayna Potosí climbers.

We even drove up to one of the highest motorable roads in the world, topping out around 16,500ft.  It was bizarre to be up so high without exerting any effort.  It was easy enough to drive up, but a wee bit sketchy as we tried to drive down and out the other side on crumbling roads.  After an hour+ of attempts to find a road that led all the way down to the altiplano, we finally gave up and went back the way we came.  Our extra detour put us back in the city just in time for rush hour traffic, a lovely way to end our smog free day in nature.

After applying for Matias' new passport at the U.S. embassy and going for a ride on the new gondola transportation system in La Paz, we headed back the 6+ hours home.  Driving in Bolivia is always an adventure, even with a working car.  The four lane, interstate type highway suddenly turned into a rutted, dirt road detour around construction work, with little to no signs other than a hand-written speed limit of 10kmh (6mph).  This was no surprise to me, as the day before I was driving everyone down from the mountains on a newly paved four lane road which ended without warning at the edge of a steep gully.  Bolivia isn't big on traffic signs.  We eventually connected back with the paved highway, now only two lanes, and wound our way down 5,000ft to the valley floor of Cochabamba without incident.  Yay for successful road trips!

an old church and cemetery along the road home