We’ve been home for a little over two weeks now, and normally, we would have given up on our trip blog weeks ago. However, Bolivia is truly too spectacular to just not write about.   We were just so completely busy the whole time we were there.  We never had any downtime to compile our myraid thoughts.  Of course, 2 weeks later this is going to be a much abreviated version of what we should have written while we were in Bolivia. 

So after Uyuni and another day in La Paz and a last-minute day trip to Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world, (more on that later, maybe) we were off to Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is in the lowlands of Bolivia (finally!) and also had temperatures around 100 degrees.   The amazing thing is that our flight from La Paz to Santa Cruz was only $35. Yes, thirty-five dollars!  I can’t even remember the last time I got that good of a deal on a flight. Of course, I booked the flight way back in March so I forgot it was that good of a deal.  Seriously, $35 for an hour-long flight.   That’s like flying from KC to Chicago, and those flights haven’t been $35 for a million years.  

We arrived in Santa Cruz during Santa Cruz days so the plaza in the city center was teeming with people (but maybe it always is?)   The Plaza is called 24th of September Plaza and has a big beautiful church that lets you climb the belltower for a panormic view of the plaza, its not super high but it was only a couple Bolivianos each.  We only found like 3 souvenir shops down there, but we did find a special craft fair/vendor fair where we were bought a green and white dress, which is the colors or the Santa Cruz flag, for Artichoke. She just doesn’t know it yet. Artichoke is going to LOVE it!  There’s a name for the typical dress that I knew 2 weeks ago, but now I don’t remember.  Maybe my sister has it written down. (Luckily, someone has an iron-clad memory– it is called Tipoi– which pulls no results in the Real Academia Española dictionary even though Google does.)

The most notable thing about the area surrounding the plaza is the number of ice cream shops. It was paradise! Ice cream shops everywhere.  There were at least a dozen different ones there.   Obviously, we ate ice cream. 

Let’s jump ahead to the next day instead of writing about the obvious.  Why did thetwinsontour go to Santa Cruz? A city that they had never heard of prior to planning this Bolivia extravaganza, even if it is the largest city in Bolivia?  That’s kind of like asking why did the chicken cross the road.   But the answer is a lot more obvious.   And the answer is…jaguars! 

Santa Cruz is near the edges of the Amazon, but we didn’t go to the Amazon.  Nope, we went to a giant privately owned Soy Farm a couple hours from Santa Cruz where we slept in a tent and anxiously looked out the windows of our Nissan SUV hoping to catch a glimpse of a jaguar.  But let’s circle back to that in a bit.  

So, our entourage (or crew, not sure the best word here) picked us up at the Marriott (I was feeling grumpy when I booked that and decided I wanted a nice soft bed and Mattiott bedding before and after we headed out to the wilds  of Bolivia) at like 8am to head out on this awesome adventure.  How big was our entourage? Four people!  Yes, we had f-o-u-r people to take care of the t-w-o of us!  Fancy I know!  We had a driver, a cook, a guide, and a guide in training. So we were very well looked after.  Our Nissan SUV was loaded with lots of gear on the top for our rustic adventure.  I know, I know.  Thetwinsontour aren’t used to roughing it like this, but jaguars…  So yes, we can do it! We left our suitcases behind at the Marriott and set off with just a backpack of necessities and our cameras in a daypack.  

After about an hour of highway driving, we stopped at the supermarket for a potty break and an hour after that we stopped for lunch in the small town of San Pedro which is the last place we had phone signal.  For days, my phone only gave me the weather in San Pedro. Not  like I really needed my phone to tell me that it was super HOT. Then we drove some more and got to the edge of the farm. Almost immediately, we spotted a 6-banded Armadillo! A live armadillo during the day!  I am just sad that I hadn’t pulled my camera out of my daypack yet.  I’ve never actually seen a live armadillo before.  I’ve seen all sorts of dead ones on the side of the road, but never a live one.  So that’s pretty exciting, right?  Eventually, we made it to the dirt road portion of our journey (very well-maintained dirt roads).  If I remember right, it was about an hour of driving on dirt roads to get to our campsite. Yes, I said campsite.  We slept in a TENT.  A real tent with no elctricity and no attached bathroom.   There was a real bathroom there for us to use, and we had matresses to sleep on. But it was a TENT.   There’s a quote un-quote house there where we stayed.  One of the farmworkers (or maybe several?) stay there.  There’s a kitchen and a room the farmworker lives in and a bathroom with running water that is full of little tiny frogs at night. There was also a very nice chicken coop with chickens and guinea fowl, and roosters that start crowing at about 4am when it is still very dark outside. Good thing I remembered my headlamp!

Anyways, we dropped off our gear and headed right back out for our safari.   What can you see here and why?  Well, like I said this is a privately owned farm.  They grow mostly soy, about 6k hecactres and about 3k hecactres of corn which they let dry completely before they harvest it.  So a 9k hecactre farm is pretty darn big.  There is a river that runs through the middle of the farm, which floods during the rainy season, making that land not suitable for farming.  It’s just kind of a jungle in the middle of the fields of soy.  The owner doesn’t allow hunting on his land, so it is teeming with wildlife. And, you can also find lots of wildlife hiding out in the soy fields too. So it is very neat and of course we were the only tourists  there. The owner only lets our tour company go there.

It was about million degrees as we set out on our safari.  Our guides sat on the roof of the SUV with their binoculars looking for wildlife while we sat inside with the windows down.  We did not have the AC on because the windows were down, and also because the dash was covered with a blanket  because of all the dust. 

Birds, lots of birds in the river and the irrigation canals.  Lots of big white birds and pretty pink spoonbills.  Our guide was not into birds, so we didn’t stop to look at hardly anything feathered.

Capybara!  Adorable, cuddly, squeezable capybara everywhere!  Our crew was not nearly excited by the capybara as thetwinsontour were. Especially when we kept passing the same ones over and over and thetwinsontour squealed capybara every single time we saw them.

Macaws!  We saw our first ever wild macaws!  We’ve seen loads of macaws in zoos, wildlife rescue centers, and hotel lobbies, but we’ve never, ever, ever seen wild macaws.   Red macaws!  Blue macaws! And green macaws!  We saw them all.  Birds are evil, and capitve macaws will peck your eyes out at the Rennaisance festival if given the chance, but seeing a macaws in the wild is a life-altering experience (maybe not life-altering, but I think I have used amazing too many times in Bolivia and I am on a roll so no time to look in the thesaurus). 

Caiman. Which I always take a picture of and pretend to be excited by, but I think caiman are boring.   But as you know, we never pass up a photographic moment.  

Pink river dolphins, so that was a surprise.  Day 1  we just saw little blips of them and I had to take the guides word for it that we were seeing dolphins.  But let’s come back to the river dolphins. 

Noticeably missing from this list is jaguars.   But we did pass a lot of places that they have seen them regularly in the past. 

We probably saw some other wildlife too, but it  was time to head back for dinner.  But right after dinner we headed back out to look for more wildlife! 

Fox, we saw a boatload of fox.  Cuter than the fox that sometimes hang out in our storm drains at home.  

More cabybara (probably the same ones every time), birds that lay on the road and just jump up in the air when they saw our car.  And probably some other stuff that I can’t remember. It’s been 2 weeks afterall.  

So we got back to our tent where it was pitch black and brushed our teeth and went to bed.

Frogs!  Lots of little tiny frogs on the walls of the bathroom. Kind of a pale light colorless frog. And the biggest cockroach I have ever seen on my sister’s shoe.  Good thing we hadn’t switched to flip-flops.  

It was quite toasty out still. Do you want to know how hot it was?  It was so hot that I did not wear socks to sleep in!  thetwinsontour wear socks 365 nights a year, make that 363 nights in 2023 since we were there 2 nights.   You know it’s hot if we sleep barefoot.  I didn’t even cover up with the sheet.  

Mosquitos!  Lots of mosquitos.  I tried hard to keep them out of the tent, but its tough to master that zipper door and be fast getting in and out.   We slathered ourselves in bug spray, but mosquitos still get ya some.  

And before you know it, it was 4am and time to get up for our morning game drive.  

Ocelots, or so I was told.  It was so dusty I couldn’t see anything in the dark, but we did run across a soy field looking for the little sucker, but instead of freezing in fear and hiding, he ran away. Of all the nerve!  

Still no jaguars.  But we saw a lot more of the same.  Saw some turtles too.  And eventually we ended up at the river again to watch the dolphins. This may actually be one of our all time wildlife highlights!  So the dolphins were farther down the river, so we kept walking to see them.  Sad story, we saw lots and lots of egg shells on our walk along the river. Turtle eggs. Stupid cute little foxes. No wonder they were so prevelant the night before– they were well-fed on turtle eggs. 

I digress. On to happy news!  Pink river dolphins!  I didn’t even know that this was a possibility, which makes it even more special.  I thought they were just in the Amazon, not in this little river that runs through a soy farm in Bolivia. But they were there. And they were frolicking!  FROLICKING I say!   The water level was fairly low, and there were a couple of sandbars that I swear they were laying on! Actually, I think they were scratching their backs on it, but I got the best photo ever taken of a pink river dolphin.  I got his face and 75% of his body in the picture, which is UNBELIVABLE.  Our guide was so jealous. He never gets photos of their faces. Never. 

It was a spectacular experience that I don’t think could ever be duplicated.  Our driver Jose was super, super excited by the dolphins too.  Our guides even got in the water with the dolphins, but by that time they had moved down the river a bit.  I did not feel compelled to get in the water.  It was so hot that up untlil that point our guide had been inside the car with us because it was too hot to sit on the roof, but on the way back they were on the roof beccause they were all wet with gross river water.  

So then we were back to our campsite for lunch and a siesta. Later our driver told us that the heat index had reached 114 degrees farenheit and the actual temp was like 104.  So when I say it was hot that day, I am in no way exaggerating.  My siesta was not very refreshing.  But my afternoon shower felt amazing.

So, as we were leaving, the farm foreman stopped by to tell us that he has just seen a jaguar!  10 minutes earlier and we would have seen it!  Needless to say we spent a lot of time waiting for him to reappear. We finally did see a part of him. I got a single picture of about 50% of a jaguar and several of where he had been in my attempt to get more pictures. 

But what did we see while we were waiting for that jaguar?

Tapir! During day light! Usually, they are more active at night but he was swimming in the river and then he was crossing the road. 

Peccaries! Which is like a wild pig.  They were on one side of the road and then they crossed the road and wasted no time swimming across the river. They were like get me out of this water! And I assume it is because they are scared of caiman. Does it make me an evil person if I hoped that the jaguar felt like having some bacon? I was hoping the jaguar would give chase and come out of the trees so I could get better pictures of him.  Alas, it was not meant to be. 

After a late night safari and a 430am safari and all day safari-ing, we were exhausted.  So we did not repeat.

But the next day before we left, we had Intel that one of the farm workers had seen a pair of jaguars walk right past him while he was working on one of the irrigation canals. Again, so close but so far away.  We went looking and after we gave up we saw them! Of course, I was sitting on the wrong side of the car, and by the time I launched myself across the seat and the ever-present dust had settled, they were gone.  So technically, we did see three jaguar even though I only have photographic evidence of a half a jaguar.

Did I mention that we were promised loads of Sloths? Have I mentioned any sloth sightings yet? No! They are only in specific trees on another part of the farm which we didn’t make it to yet because of all our time trying to be silent jaguar sleuths.  But on the last possible chance we saw him!  Our best ever wild sloth sighting! Usually they are a mile up in a tree and I just have to take the guides word that that dark blob in the tree is a sloth. 

This time, he was in a baby tree right on the side of the road. The tree was so small it was bent under his weight and blowing in the breeze. Breathtaking, and my heart was near to bursting! It was just like rock a by baby in a tree top. I was a bit worried he would fall off the tree, but he was very tenacious and just hung on for all he was worth.

So with that it was time to head back to civilization. We headed back to camp and took our quickest shower ever before packing up the car and leaving. 

Guess what we saw on our way out of the farm?!?  Another sloth!  Coming down a tree for his weekly potty break.  So we saw him pretty close too. Had we not just saw that one in the little itty-bitty tree, this would have been our greatest wild sloth sighting ever!  Don’t ever believe that sloths are slow.  If they want something–like to get out of a tree to take a dump–they can move pretty dang fast.    

And then we saw a whole bunch of monkeys!  Howler monkeys!  So that was cool too.  But clearly, by now, I am out of words. The howlers did not howl, though.  Still cool to see.

Oh and we saw the armadillo again. Of course, I had already put my camera up by that point.  

So that pretty much sums up our safari experience! Can you believe this is the abbreviated version?

Anyways, there’s a lot more Bolivian adventure but this is more than enough for one blog. If you’re lucky, I might tell you about it.

Love,

thetwinsontour

PS Rheas. We saw millions of rheas which are the South American version of the ostrich and emu. We never stopped to admire them because our guide said they were the most common animal there, and I think he was right. Watching them run across a field or trying to outrun the car as you drive down the road sure does bring a smile to your face.

I know I skipped over days 2 & 3, but it’s my blog, and I can do what I want to. I’ll try to go back later (yeah, right) to cover our other days in La Paz.  But Uyuni is truly thetwinsontour travel dream come true!  We have always, always, always wanted to come to Bolivia to visit the largest salt flats in the world– well, ever since we found out it existed.  It did not disappoint!  It was like all my dreams came true, and then some dreams I didn’t even know I had came true, too! 

So, let’s start from the beginning.  We left our hotel at 6 am (before breakfast of course!)  for our  7:40 flight. Finally a country where the tour guides think you only need an hour at the airport instead of 2-3 hours.  But it took us forever to get checked in because of slow people in front of us. It was mayhem!  There are separate lines for each destination, but people don’t read those. They were letting everyone for the 7:25 flight go ahead of us. Our flight was scheduled for 7:40. Mind you, it was now after 7:00! By the time we got checked in and through security (they let you take water bottles with no problem!), it was time to board, so I did not have time to pee. Luckily, it was only an hour long flight.   

So we got off the plane, and there is a sign in the first room at the airport that says baggage claim, but there is no baggage carousel, just people standing around, and a bathroom thank goodness!  So, you basically just stand there, and they bring the luggage in on a cart and set them in a row. I missed the actual process and chaos because I was in line for the much needed and aforementioned bathroom. So, as soon as I came out of the bathroom, there my suitcase was! Just waiting for me.  

Enough about that, we met our guide and set off on the real adventure.  However, we made her stop for a quick morning snack since we had missed our hotel breakfast.  We got a Bolivian specialty called a salteña from a street vendor cart.  The best way to describe this is an empanada with soup inside..   I’d definitley call it soup and not stew.  There was a lot of steamiing hot broth in there.   Obviously, I made a mess and got it all over my hands. Luckily, I did not get any on my shirt because they give it to you in a little plastic bag that conveniently catches most of the soup– even if it isn’t environmentally friendly.   It was quite yummy!  And only 6 Bolivianos, or a little less than a dollar.  There is an art to eating a salteña, and they say that if you can eat it without making a mess, that means that you are a good kisser. Oh well. 

Then we were back on our way.  Next stop the train graveyard!  The first trains brought to Bolivia were for the mines because they had been  making llamas carry all the silver to the ports to ship it to Europe.  Obviously, that’s not very efficient.  But the trains did not last long due to a decline in mining.  Silver lost its value as European countries started using more paper money instead of coins.  Our guide didn’t mention it, but I think the mines were depleted also.  Anyways, with the decline in mining, the people that knew how to maintain the trains left Bolivia. The indigenous people were never trained how to repair them, so as they broke down, they just put them all here together.  I think there’s over 100. They date back to the late 1800s and early 1900s. The salt has not treated them well, but they are fun to climb on!

Directly across from the train cemetery there were some statues made out of recycled metal– we are talking Transformers (this country seems fixated on Transformers, which you would know if we had written about days 2 and 3. Oops!), Terminator, a giant giraffe, an alligator, and other assorted wonders. They built these during covid to try and earn extra money, and to combat boredom. A nice little 10 minute selfie photo stop. Who am I kidding? thetwinsontour take a bazillion photos. It was more like 15 or 20 minutes.

Our guide in La Paz had told us if we were lucky, we might see vicuña in Uyuni. And, he was right! Vicuña are part of the camelid family, but they have never been domesticated like Llama and alpaca. They have the softest fur, very thin and light. A human hair is equal to 4 vicuña hairs. And you only harvest like 250 grams from a vicuña per year–and don’t forget, these are wild animals! So they would have to catch them in order to harvest their fur.  That’s all the details I have because I was busy taking photos out the car window of my sweet vicuñas. But you knew that.  

But all of this greatness is nothing compared to what came next–the Uyuni Salt Flats!  There are no words to describe the vastness and amazingness of this place that has been at the top  of our wishlist for so many years.  It’s like a dream come true!  This is the largest salt flat in the world, and it seems to stretch on forever. It’s like being in another world, and at times you think it is snow, and other times it feels like you are on the moon.  Driving through here is mesmerizing. I don’t know how the driver doesn’t get lost.  There are no roads, but there are some visible paths where cars have gone the same way over and over, but those get washed away in the wet season.   The photographic opportunities are endless!  And amazing!  And well, I hope that you have all already given a love to the pictures we have posted on Facebook and Instagram because they are just amazing. See, I have already run out of adjectives to describe them!  Truly no words for this amazing experience 

It’s not all just salt. I mean, there’s a lot of salt, but there are other must sees here too.  Like the volcanic islands that are in the middle.  Millions of years ago, the Salt Flats were covered by the ocean, hence all the salt that was left behind.  So in addition to being made of volcanic rock, there are also fossilized corals on the island.  Pretty fascinating!   Oh, and did I mention the gajillions of giant catus that cover this island?  Well they are everywhere, kinda like Saguaro cactus of the Southwest (maybe they are the same?).  Appearantly, its more humid around the islands (think more just a little mountain, but it’s called an island) and the humidity is enough to keep all these cacti alive for hundreds of years.  Cacti grow about 1cm per year, so some of these could be over 600 or 700 years old. See, no words.  

There’s also underground rivers which obviously, you can’t see.  But there is a spot where it pops up, and also sometimes there are small holes called “ojos” or eyes in the salt.  I stuck my had down in one to break off a piece of salt crystal, and my hand came out completley covered in salt. If you are lucky, we may post a video of that later.  But only if you promise to give it a love on FB. Surely it deserves more than just a thumbs up.

What else did we do?  Well, we stayed in a Salt Hotel the first night.  It is literally made completely of bricks of salt harvested from the Salt Flats.  The walls are salt, the floor in the lobby is just chunks of salt, the bed frames are made of salt, the restaurant chairs/tables are made of salt.  Everything is salt.  It’s a lot of salt. (But I would not recommend trying to eat the walls.)

We also went out and did some stargazing.    There’s quite a few stars visible there even though we didn’t go that far away from the city lights, and the pretty big moon. This is the southern hemisphere, so no Big Dipper. We enjoyed taking night time Salt Flat star photos.  But it got super cold!  Good thing that I packed my winter coat with me.  It goes from intense daytime sun that requires sunscreen every two hours (or you end up with a sunburned neck and sunburned hands…) to downright cold at night.  The Salt Flats are still at altitude and per my Google search, even a higher altitude than La Paz. My phone said it was about 51 when we went out, but by the time we came back, it felt (to me) like it was in the 20s.  Crazy!

The next morning, we were off for more Salt Flat Fun.  We literally drove for over an hour to get to the other side where we stopped to see, are you ready for this?  Llamas and flamingos!!!!! A flamboyance of flamingos! All together in the same spot.  There is water on the edge of the flats where the flamingoes like to hang out.  There are 2 different species there too!  So that is cool!  We saw Chilean flamingos, which are ligher in color and have some black on their butts, and we saw James flamingoes, which are a vibrant pink and have some pink stripes on their backs.  Needless to say, we spent way too long here taking millions of photos.  But the thing is that we had to walk through a llama pasture to get to the flamingos.  So for us, this would be the equivalant of walking through a cow pasture at home, but with smaller poop. There were gigantic piles of Llama poop everywhere. They do use it as fertilizer, but there is more than enough to go around. Evidently, llamas just nibble the grass and don’t tear it out at the roots, so their grazing doesn’t destroy the landscape. I can’t speak for the poop though.

So, it would have been possible to climb the adjacent volcano if we were more physically fit– Note, walking on the treadmill for 2 hours a day does not prepare you for climbing at altitude. At all. Anyways, there was more to this volcano than llamas and flamingos. There were also chullpares, which are these little caves where they buried the dead. Except they used to bring them out once a year to celebrate Day of the Dead. And then put them back until the next year. Until the Spanish conquered them and told them they couldn’t be playing with mummified skeletons anymore. So they filled in the little caves. Our guide said the remains had been studied and then put back into the chullpares. We saw multiple skeletons in there. Quite the experience. After a quick panoramic photo stop, we headed back down the volcano for a picnic lunch. Let me tell you, Bolivia doesn’t mess around when it comes to picnics. We are talking tables. Plastic lawn chairs–the stackable, but non-foldable kind–that they put chair covers on–and wrap with fancy ribbon like you are at a wedding or something. The driver was always taking pictures of the table after he got it all set. I think this is so that he can show his boss that he did it, and not so that he can post it to his Instagram account. But wouldn’t that be neat if he did? An entire page of “picnic” tables in the Salt Flats that are fancy enough to double as a table at a wedding.

So that pretty much sums up the highlights of our time in Uyuni. It is everything i imagined and more. 10 stars. Highly recommend.

Love,

thetwinsontour