So, here we are again! It’s always good to give you a glimpse of where I am: I’m currently at Buenos Aires airport waiting for my flight. This ties in nicely with my previous travel update, which concluded in Buenos Aires, but that was about three months ago. We already established last time that I was behind on my travel updates, but now you have a sense of how far behind I am. So, three months ago I flew from Buenos Aires to Asuncion, and I bet if you hadn’t read the title, you’d have no idea which country that was in. And there’s no shame in that; I hardly knew anyone who had been there before. But that’s exactly what makes traveling fun: discovering new places! 😊
Asuncion, in Paraguay, to be clear. A country many backpackers skip. But I was lucky, because I found another backpacker to join me. I traveled with Grace for these four weeks! For the observant reader of my travel updates, a bell should be ringing now. I met Grace in Peru on one of my hikes. We were both already interested in going to Paraguay and knew it wasn’t a heavily traveled country. Traveling together would be a potential solution to that. We were able to plan it so that it worked out well for both of our schedules, so we were able to meet up again! And that was a good decision, but more on that later.
First, let’s briefly (re)introduce Grace: Grace is a Kiwi, which means she’s from New Zealand! I’ve come to know Grace as one of the funniest people I know; we have a great match in terms of humor. Grace has come to know me as someone who imitates rooster sounds, so by meeting up again, we can also conclude that Grace is a bit off. Just kidding, of course. Besides that, Grace is very positive, independent, and super helpful. In short, a great person to travel with. When I met Grace in Peru, she had been traveling for about a month, and now she’s obviously been traveling longer. In the meantime, she had spent a lot of time in southern Colombia and flew from there (with many layovers) to Asuncion, where I was waiting for her at the airport.
Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. Almost all the capitals I’ve visited on my travels are chaotic. Not Asuncion. We discovered this when we did a walking tour, an activity I love to do when I’ve just arrived in a new country. You often learn a lot about history from a local perspective and also get good recommendations for restaurants and museums. Normally, there are at least four other guests on walking tours, and often more. Not in Asuncion. The walking tour became a private tour; we were the only ones there. The walking tour was in Spanish, because with the low tourism, there’s little reason to learn English for the locals. As you know, my Spanish is more than excellent now; understanding it is often effortless. And Grace’s Spanish is up there too! I discovered this once in Peru after she told me she barely spoke Spanish. Then she suddenly ordered effortlessly in Spanish, and I discovered that Grace isn’t someone who likes to brag about herself. She was still learning, so traveling in Paraguay and Bolivia was perfect for her. Back to the walking tour. As quiet as it is in Asuncion right now, as loud it was in the past. Paraguay is a country that has experienced several civil wars. And the proof was in the lampposts: they were riddled with bullet holes, quite impressive. We also tried the traditional Paraguayan breakfast: chipá with cocido (a cheesy biscuit served with sweet tea) and thanked our friendly tour guide profusely.
Besides good food, there wasn’t much else to do in Asuncion, and that was fine. I had just returned from two busy weeks with Max, and Grace had worked in a hostel in Colombia for a few weeks before that. So we both thought it would be nice to slow down. We left for Encarnación and discovered we were quite possibly the only tourists in the country. Time to visit a tourist destination, and Ciudad del Este was the place to be. It’s close to the Iguacu Falls, which are world-famous. Ciudad del Este borders Brazil and Argentina. The falls are in two of these three countries, and you can guess which one they’re not in: Paraguay. I think I’d start civil wars too if I lived there. We stayed in Ciudad del Este and visited the Monday Falls (also open Tuesday through Sunday), which are actually in Paraguay (and where maybe 30 people were that day?). Compared to the Iguacu Falls: there were thousands of people there. That day we walked across the border into Brazil, planning to visit the Brazilian side of the falls. However, we got on the wrong bus and suddenly found ourselves on the border with Argentina. For Grace, who generally travels very slowly (I mean, she’d been in Colombia for five weeks and only seen the south?), it was quite a highlight: almost three countries in one day. But we decided to turn back and stick to the original plan. The waterfalls were enormous, and so were the crowds. A big difference compared to the quiet Paraguay, but a successful day nonetheless 😊
Then it was time to say goodbye to Paraguay; a long journey to Bolivia awaited us. We took the bus back to Asuncion in the morning and were leaving for Bolivia that evening. A bus ride that would take about 20 hours, and that was just the second bus. To avoid getting depressed, I’m not even going to calculate the total travel time from Ciudad del Este. But we couldn’t leave Paraguay without drinking tereré. Remember when I wrote about maté, a tea popular in these countries? Tereré is the same tea, but cold, a kind of iced tea! Because Paraguay is a hot country, they prefer a cool drink. We found a woman at the bus station in Asuncion selling it, and like true locals, we waited for our bus while sipping our tereré. Integration process completed, if you ask me.
Via Santa Cruz de la Sierra, we finally arrived in Sucre and immediately noticed one thing: the altitude. It reminded us of Peru. Every place we planned to visit in Bolivia was going to be increasingly higher, with La Paz, at 3,600 meters, as the icing on the cake. And this was the first time I’ve had a hard time truly adjusting to the altitude. At the end of our time in Bolivia, I was still short of breath, but hey, I’m from the Netherlands, which is below sea level, so what did I expect? 😉
In Sucre, which literally means sugar, we saw people walking with large backpacks for the first time again. Who were they? Ah yes, that’s what other backpackers looked like. We almost forgot. The bus ride to Sucre was actually the worst bus ride we’ve ever had, and not so much because of the route or the driver. Several passengers got into an argument, someone allegedly stole something, and a whole group of boys kept yelling at the woman who got angry about it. The thief didn’t only stole some stuff, he also robbed us from some sleep. That’s reason for jailtime, if you ask me. But Sucre was a beautiful city with plenty to do. For example, we visited the best-preserved dinosaur footprints in the world. These were placed on a tectonic plate, pushed upwards, and are therefore incredibly well-preserved. And we even found a café that had bitterballen and kaassouflés (deep fried Dutch snacks)! It’s funny because Grace has never been to the Netherlands, but she’s already experienced a lot of the Dutch culture and even put effort into learning several words and sayings. And now she knows bitterballen and kaassouflés too. The next step will be riding a bike without using her hands, but that will probably end up in her riding her bike without her teeth, so let’s not do that 😉
From Sucre, we continued to Uyuni, a place known for one thing: the salt flats. Quite the opposite of sweet Sucre 😉. You have to give it to them, they have a good balance in Bolivia. We booked a tour to explore the salt flats and were really looking forward to it. It’s funny because I booked almost everything for us, but Grace took the initiative to book this and immediately hit the jackpot. This tour was by far the highlight of our time together, one of the best travel days I’ve ever had, in fact. So, I’m clearly more into quantity, and Grace is more into quality. No, we were lucky because we were the only ones who booked for that day. Our tour guide, Roberto, had informed Grace about this and would normally cancel it if there weren’t enough people. However, he got along with Grace and agreed to give the tour for us (read: for her) privately. He had some new ideas for his tour company and asked if it was okay to use us as guinea pigs, and of course, we agreed. As is often the case, it’s impossible to describe exactly why it was such a highlight, but besides giving us a private tour, Roberto was also a photographer, so we have hundreds of photos to show why it was such a highlight. A picture is worth a thousand words, right?
No, but to dedicate a few words to it: Roberto took us out in his jeep and at one point told us to put on a blindfold. Normally, when a Bolivian tells you that, you’d be terrified, but thankfully not this time. We were almost at the salt flats, and he wanted to give us a unique first experience. At one point, we arrived and he even asked us to take off our shoes. He escorted us out of the jeep, and there we were, blindfolded and barefoot. 3, 2, 1… and blindfold off. Wow! This was bizarre. We might have been in the car for an hour, but apparently, we’d traveled to a new planet. It was truly unbelievable. Of course, we licked the salt to check if it was real, and it definitely was. Then we drove to a hole that almost no one knew about. By the way, maybe it’s good to put things into perspective: the salt flats are about eight times the size of London. And this hole was 1 by 1. And there are no signs, everything is white. Well, normally it’s easier to find the hole, let’s just say 😉. Thanks to car tires that had been laid out, we did have some clues and eventually found it. We could sit in it. Well, off you go! Grace first, then me. Such an unusual experience. There’s so much salt in there, of course, that you’re just pushed up. I tried to go down, but no way, José. So cool. The highlight of that day was yet to come, and that was the sunset. Yes, the only thing I can describe: all the conditions were apparently perfect. Roberto said he hadn’t seen such a beautiful sunset in a long time. He took us to a spot with a thin layer of water (which made the sky reflect off the water), the cloud cover was perfect, and we were the only ones there. It was truly magical. Yes, the photos really have to speak for themselves. We finally drove back under a starry sky and a full moon and couldn’t help but thank Roberto profusely for this unique experience. Bottom line: Grace should book more things.
The next stop was our last stop together: La Paz, which means the peace. We went there with big plans: we wanted to climb a 6,000-meter mountain. We checked in with each other to see if we both still wanted to do it and came to the conclusion: we both didn’t, haha! As I wrote at the beginning, we were still struggling with the altitude, and we hadn’t expected that. We did La Paz justice and spent some more peaceful (hehe) days there. We explored the city, and it was honestly really cool: La Paz has a huge cable car network that connects everything, something I’d never seen before. The cable car is just public transport there. Imagine a big city with enormous elevation changes and cable cars everywhere, it was a very futuristic image. We did go on a hike and felt completely at peace again; we didn’t encounter a soul! I also went to a football match (duh) between the country’s number 1 and 2 teams: The Strongest vs. Always Ready. Say what you will, but Latin America does place names and club names much better than the Netherlands. Always Ready showed why they’re called that and were 0-3 up at halftime. The supporters of The Strongest showed their discontent by throwing all sorts of things at the players (and those supporters can certainly throw far, I mean, they’re called the Strongest for a reason). It worked, as The Strongest came back to 2-3, but unfortunately, that was it. From now on, they’re called Almost The Strongest 😉
A small side note I want to write about: during the weeks in Paraguay and Bolivia, two people achieved some great things. First of all, my good friend Carlo got his PhD, something I’m incredibly proud of. Carlo and I have had countless conversations, from the initial interest in possibly pursuing a PhD to the very moment he actually obtained it. It made it disappointing that I couldn’t be there, but luckily I was able to follow it virtually. The beautiful speeches, which, besides the impressive performance, also focused on Carlo’s personality, definitely gave me goosebumps. Hats off, bro!
In addition, Grace’s brother, James, made his debut for the New Zealand national hockey team at a tournament in Malaysia. He went as a player who was on the reserve list but came home as an international, even scoring goals and giving assists! It was really nice to see firsthand how proud Grace as an older sister was. This year the World Cup is being played in the Netherlands and Belgium, and there’s a good chance I’ll try to catch a New Zealand game!
Four weeks of traveling together had come to an end, and as usual, they flew by. Grace was staying in Bolivia, waiting for her mother, whom she was going to travel with (very cool), to arrive. And I was heading (back) to Brazil, especially looking forward to get off the high altitude. But more about why I was going back and my time there, in the next update. For now, a big hug and see you soon (very soon…), bye!