Bolivia

I am back at it.  After a summer in Erie (no better place in the world during summer) it is time for me to move on.  This blog will serve as both a vehicle to inform friends who are interested and to proved me with a convenient form for a diary of my travels.

Bolivia is a huge country but thinly populated.  It is the size of California and Texas combined (if you ever drove across Texas and/or down California you will have some idea how big it is).  Despite its size, more people live in LA than in all of Bolivia (10mm). 

There are two major cities in Bolivia: La Paz with a population of 2mm and Santa Cruz with a population of over 1mm.  La Paz is effectively the capital of Bolivia with the true capital still in the mountain city of Sucre.

Not many tourists come to Bolivia. There is only one direct flight a day to Bolivia from the USA and it arrives at 5:30AM.  Less than one hundred passengers got off at La Paz and most of them were Bolivian nationals.  It is interesting that there are so few tourists when there is much to see.  The natural beautry of the country is as wonderful as any where in the world.  There are many mountains that reach nearly 20k feet.  The east side of the mountains are jungle and part of the Amazon River basin.  The ancient ruins and massive ruins of Tiwanaku near La Paz predate the peak of the Inca empire by thousands of years.  The biodiversity of Bolivia is the greatest of any country of the world. 

There is no coast line on the ocean.  Chile took care of that over one hundred years ago.  Bolivians get along with every country in the world except Chile.  It is easy to understand the feeling they must have.  Only one other South American county is land locked (Paraguay).  Despite being land locked huge flocks of pink flamingos inhabit the high desert (and I thought they all came from Florida).