The South American Odyssey

A 147-day adventure by The Craze for Travelling Read more

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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Laguna Celeste
October 12, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C
Laguna Celeste is a clear-blue lake coloured by magnesium and manganese. There were many flamingos in the lake and it was a stunning sight to see the bright red stand out against the cool blue of the lake.Read more
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Breakfast at Laguna Celeste
October 12, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C
It was a beautiful sight with the clear blue color of the lake and the bright red colors of the flamingos. There was nobody around. Ours had been the only vehicle in this area for almost an hour.
We decided to enjoy the peacefulness of the place a while more. What better place than this to have our breakfast. Where else would you have a view like thos while having food.Read more
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Laguna Morijon viewpoint
October 12, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C
Back on the main road, the road continued to climb up some hills. Pretty soon, we were quite high. From these mountains, one can see a beautiful panoramic view of the Laguna Morijon. There were prayer stones stacked together at the viewpoint. It was quite breath taking.Read more
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Dinosaur or llama footprints
October 12, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C
The road continued to climb steadily and the scenery around, though stark was extremely beautiful. Eventually, we reach a rock that looked almost like the limestone cliff on which we had seen dinosaur footprints near Sucre. There were footprints here as well but most of them looked from Llamas 😆Read more
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Towards San Antonio de Lipez
October 12, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C
The road Eastwards, continued to climb and at some point, we were 5000 mts high.
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
San Antonio de Lipez (ghost town)
October 12, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C
We reached the ghost town of San Antonio de Lipez by about 6 pm as it was nearing sunset.
The town of San Antonio de Lípez was born as an enclave for the exploitation of silver. Fifty years ago it was abandoned and today only its ruins remain. A town that had 150,000 inhabitants and today is a ghost town.Read more
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Legend of the San Antonio de Lipez
October 12, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C
Legend has it that its workers made a pact with the devil to give them wealth through the mines. The miners did not keep their part of the pact, which killed all the mine workers. Some time later, the rest of the inhabitants began to see ghosts and strange facts, which triggered the abandonment of the town.

It is a very frigid area, the average height is 4100 m.s.l., there are only camelids (llamas and sheep) in this region.Read more
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Sunset at San Antonio de Lipez
October 12, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 10 °C
The golden rays of the setting sun gave the ghost town of San Antonio de Lipez a very eerie feeling. Its just a mass of hundreds of stone buildings all lying in ruins now. A place where just a few years ago 140,000 people used to live is now just a high altitude abandoned town. The sun had set on this prosperous town just at it was setting on while we were still pretty far from any place where we could stay.
Another 25 kms from the ruins is the new mud brick village of San Antonio de Lipez. We decided to get a place to stay. Once in the village, we tried to find out where to stay but it was getting dark and people were all indoors.
Just when we had lost all hope and had almost decided to sleep in the vehicle when we met a local who guided us to a person who could host us for the night.
Thankfully we managed to find a place to stay once again.Read more
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Fish Island (Isla de los Pescados)
October 12, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C
After spending some time taking the pictures, we proceeded to the Fish Island, so called since when there is water in the salar or when its very hot and tge island is in a mirage, the peculiar shape of the island gives it a fish like appearance.
Its an island in the middle of the salar and is made of fossilized coral. There are 1000 year old cactii, some of whom are 9-10 mts high.
There's not much else to see or do on the island and there is a fee of 30 b$ for the visit plus we were getting late by now, so we decided not to enter. We saw the island from the entrance and then were off to the Devil's Cave.Read more
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
New San Antonio de Lipez
October 13, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ⛅ 13 °C
The place which we had managed to sleep in was an old mud brick house. There was a lot of dust everywhere. Even the beds we slept in had sheets that smelt of dust. But, we managed to get a good night's sleep and woke up fresh the next day ready to take the last day in this wonderland.Read more
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Breakfast with a view
October 13, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C
We started early and continued on the road. The views were amazing and we enjoyed every moment of the trip. We stopped on the way with a beautiful view to have our breakfast.
TravelerLooks like you were the only ones driving on the roads ?
10/19/17Reply
The Craze for TravellingYeah.. Like Ladakh
10/19/17Reply
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Through a dry riverbed canyon
October 13, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C
Further on, the road passes a beautiful, dry riverbed canyon. The tall sides of the canyon with stunning formations towering above the riverbed made for a very unique experience.
It was really an amazing experience.Read more
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Eroded mountains
October 13, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C
Further Eastwards, the mountains were made of loose top soil, there were deep erosion channels across the mountain faces. At one place, there was even a patch where there was marble.
TravelerKake ne geology kinni dhyan nal padi hai.
10/19/17Reply
The Craze for TravellingHa ha ha... Fir kay??? 🤣🤣
10/19/17Reply
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Colorful hills
October 13, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C
From there on, the road wound its way across some very beautiful landscape with multi colored hills and fantastic stone formations.
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
More views around El Sillar
October 13, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Quebrada de Palala
October 13, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C
Just outside of Tupiza we reached Quebrada de Palala.
The Quebrada de Palala is a broad riverbed which flows abundantly just a couple of rainy season months out of the year, but serves as a southwestern wilderness highway during the dry months. The tall thin rocks that provide a backdrop to the quebrada make formations called fins, which are impressive enough alone, but standing against the multicolored mineral deposits and scattered cacti are all the more stunning.Read more
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Fins of the Quebrada de Palala
October 13, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Tupiza
October 13, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C
We exited the wonderland we had been traveling for the last 6 days at Tupiza. Tupiza is a small town that lies on the tarred highway in Bolivia. There are many hotels and restaurants.
We stopped over and had a good hearty lunch. We also got data connection after almost 5 days.
After the lunch, we drove off to Potosi swaying to the beats of Punjabi songs 😁😁Read more
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Potosi to Sucre
October 14, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 9 °C
We woke up early in Potosí. After a quick breakfast at the hotel, we were off to Sucre.
We reached Sucre at about 12 pm. After returning the vehicle, we took a taxi to the local bus terminal to catch a bus to Cochabamba, where the next phase of adventure awaots us.
We had checked for the flights as well but the last flight to Cochabamba had left Sucre at 11:30 in the morning so we decided to take the bus so as not to waste a day.Read more
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Sucre - Cochabamba
October 14, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 9 °C
The taxi dropped us at the bus terminal at 1:30 pm. The next bus to Cochabamba was at 8 pm. But, there were quite a few smaller vans going between town. We took one of them. It costed us 100 b$ per head and took us about 6 hours to cover the distance of 333 kms.
I got enough time in the van to catch up with the blogging I had been lagging by 2-3 days.
Time to close the previous chapter and begin a new adventure in a new place.
We plan to go to the Toro Toro National Park tomorrow.Read more
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Cochabamba
October 14, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C
We reached Cochabamba at 8pm. Found a very good but cheap place opposite the bus terminal (Hotel Arasan). It was 320 b$ for a night. We had our dinner in the room. I finished updating the blog and then we slept.
The next morning was a bit cloudy but much warmer than what we've been used to in the past week or so.
We had our breakfast at the hotel and went to check for the bus to Toro Toro National Park.Read more
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One more Laguna Blanca
October 14, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C
After Laguna Celeste, we started driving Northwards towards Laguna Amarilla. On the way, we crossed many small mountain lakes. We crossed another lake, also called Laguna Blanca. (White Lake).
The views on this road were again very beautiful.
On the way, we saw a board pointing to a lake to the left of the road stating Lake Amarilla (Yellow Lake) which didn't look yellow at all. On Maps.me, it was another lake that was marked Laguna Amarilla. We continued till that one. Even that didn't look yellow.
It was getting late, so we decided to turn back and join the main road and continue Eastwards.Read more
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
El Sillar
October 15, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ⛅ 15 °C
After an hour or so, we reached El Sillar.
Sillar are giant columns of clay formed by erosion.
El Sillar, in English--The Saddle.
The winding road climbs up another quebrada (Quebrada Chiriyoj Waykho) and eventually crosses from peak to peak across two valleys. The Sillar sits below the road, and is a masterpiece of eroded rock formations cut through by a (in the summer months) dry riverbed.
One one side of the viewpoint, there is the El Sillar formations and on the other side are very colorful hills.Read more
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Off to Toro Toro
October 15, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C
At the bus stop we found that the bus to Toro Toro goes from a different place, so we took a local van to the bis stop for 2b$ each. From the bus stop we took a shared mini van. It waited till all the 9 steats were full then we were off to Toro Toro.Read more
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The South American Odyssey The Craze for Travelling
Cochabamba-Toro Toro Colorful mountains
October 15, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ☀️ 26 °C
The route to Toro Toro was really beautiful with mountains of many colors and hues. Prominent among them were white and red. The road was cobbled for quite many kilometers.
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