Germany, Austria, Swizterland, Magellan Island Cruise, Machu Picchu, Salar de Uyuni, Iguazu Falls

Prior to moving to Bolivia, Larry had been doing a lot of business travel and wracked up several frequent flyer miles.  We had talked about using those miles to visit Europe back when we still lived in the U.S. but could just never get around to really making that happen.  Well, just a little time spent living in Bolivia fixed that and before we knew it, we had a 10 day trip planned!  Larry had so many frequent flyer miles we were able to fly business class!

We flew from La Paz to Miami and overnighted.  I remember being very happy to be back in the U.S.  The following day we flew Miami to Munich.  We rented a car there and headed for Austria.  I remember being so impressed with the cleanliness of our rooms, cleanliness of everywhere we went!  All of our hotel accommodations while on this trip were super comfortable which was made more noticeable due to some of the hotel accommodations we had in Bolivia.

 

The middle building, Gasthof Simony was our hotel.  So pretty, so clean!

We drove from Austria to Switzerland.  Did I mention I loved the food too!  Below is a picture of Larry in the revolving restaurant called Piz Gloria made famous in a James Bond movie. 

Here we are in the Swiss mountains - it was freezing - we weren't dressed appropriately!

We drove from Switzerland to Germany.  Wine tasting on the streets in Germany.  Everything so clean, so tidy....

We booked all of our hotel rooms online while in La Paz.  We had no problems.  We had no complaints about any of our accommodations.

 

 

Here we are on a cruise on the Rhine River.

We actually had a room in a castle - the patio had a view of the Rhine.

Our final destination in Germany was Oktoberfest - oh my gosh, what an experience.  In the picture below, we were sitting at the table second from the bottom right.  Find Larry!

We met these very nice fellows from Austria who were sitting at the table that we found room to sit at.  We had a great afternoon with them -- talked all afternoon and only one of them spoke English so he was doing a lot of translating. 

 

 

We had such a nice time on this trip and what a way to end it!

Another trip we took while living in Bolivia was to fly to the most southern part of Chile to get on a boat to cruise the Magellan Islands!!  We thought we'd be able to practice our Spanish but turns out half of the boat was filled with people from France and a quarter of the passengers were from the U.S.  We met some really nice people and had a wonderful time.  This was such a nice cruise because it was so informal - very relaxed with great daily excursions.

Great hikes.

Our boat.  All excursions from the boat were made on a Zodiac inflatable requiring that we wear gear that would have supposedly protected us in the cold water should the vessel overturn, etc.

We saw all types of wildlife.

This was a hike to a glacier.  Now, I'm not a whiskey drinker but when they offered me whiskey served on glacial ice, I just couldn't pass it up.  This was one of the neatest trips we took. 

Another incredibly neat trip we took was to Machu Picchu!  Our first attempt at this trip resulted in a cancellation because the company Larry was working for was being bought out by another company and required him at the property in Bolivia.  Our second attempt required an itinerary adjustment due to a blockade of the rail lines by indigenous peoples to Machu Picchu - but we made it!

Machu Picchu was a great experience but the majority of the trip was spent in a train going to and returning.  Because of the blockade I spoke of, we only had three hours there.  But, you take what you can get! 

One of the very most unique trips we took during our South American travel experiences was to the Salar de Uyuni - in Bolivia.  Thousands of years ago, this part of the high country in Bolivia was covered by water.  When it evaporated, it then lay dry for thousands of years.  The salt deposits are the results of the minerals leeched from the mountains and depositied at the lowest available point. 

We took this trip with a group from the Embassy - a several hour trip by bus from La Paz into the Salar to stay at a hotel (Hotel Playa Blanca) made entirely from salt blocks.  The mattresses were covered in plastic (oddly enough, comfortable) and sat on top of salt blocks.  The floors were covered in salt.  Yes, my nose was dry.  Food was great and I don't remember them running out of wine or beer.  Water was trucked in so if someone took too long in the shower, not everyone got a shower.  I've read that this particular hotel was shut down due to sanitation issues.  Mismanagement resulted in environmental pollution and the hotel was dismantled.

People have asked which of our travels in South America was my favorite. I'm not sure I can name a favorite because they were all so very unique. We were just incredibly lucky to have seen the places we did. The world is a beautiful place!

My next blog will be of our time living in Peru.

Documenting Our time in Bolivia (1998 - 2000)

I decided to use the blog to document our time in Bolivia - had to scan a lot of pictures! and was difficult deciding which pictures to use. 

We were living in Oroville, Washington, in 1997 where Larry was working for a company that was attempting to permit a mine there and they weren't being successful.  The company owned an interest in the Inti Raymi Mine near Oruro, Bolivia.  Therefore, we were offered the opportunity to move back to Battle Mountain, Nevada, where we'd started our lives together, OR to Bolivia.  We chose Bolivia; however, I had to ask for a map to learn where Bolivia was.  That's sad.  My geography has gotten much better since then. 

We and our two dogs left on our adventure in early January 1998.  Larry had traveled there earlier to find us a place to live.  What an experience!  I'd had one semester of an online correspondence course in Spanish (was of no help whatsoever!) so we arrived with neither one of us able to speak or understand Spanish.  We both now have an appreciation of what it is like to a) be a minority, b) not be able to communicate in the language of the country we were living in, c) learn a new language, and d) live in a different culture.

Did I say this was quite the experience!?  Larry worked at the mine site which was a three hour drive from La Paz.  He remained at the mine site from Monday until Thursday evening.  Fridays he would work in the Inti Raymi offices in La Paz.  I and and the dogs lived in La Paz.  Lucky for me, two other families arrived the same time as us, and another family had arrived late in 1997 so were somewhat established and knew the intricacies of living in Bolivia.  We both began Spanish classes immediately and our Spanish progressed at a measurable rate.

Below is a photo of the outside of our first home in La Paz.  Razor wire fencing surrounded our home and we paid a neighbor's 24-hour guard to keep an eye on our house as well.  We had a maid and a gardener.  I got to practice the Spanish I was learning on these poor people.  Our home is the one with the wooden gate and tile roofing above it.  We lived here for our first year.



Below is a photo of Bolivian friends Grace and Heinrick, fellow expats Brant and Vicki and their guests from Washington State at a "tavern" in La Paz.

February brought Carnival which included a masquerade party at the mine, a cha'lla in the mine pit complete with sacrificing a bull and party after and then a parade with brightly costumed dancers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, the picture below is of Larry dancing around with the sacrificed bull's head - such a strange sight!

 

 

The picture below is the following day at the parade in Oruro.  In between the dancers in the parade, water fights would break out.  The people on the balcony above were dropping water balloons on unsuspecting spectators below so Larry decided to attack them.  Shorty after this photo, the policeman suggested Larry stop.  Evidently the people on the balconies were guests of the mayor of Oruro.

 

 

 

Carnival, happening so soon upon our arrival to Bolivia, was a very memorable experience - an incredibly cultural experience.

Following Carnival, Brant, Vicki, us and their guests from Washington State traveled across the Andes to the coastal town of Arica in Chile.  I sometimes can't believe the thing we did in those early days upon arrival in Bolivia.  Here we were, this carload of people from the U.S., none of who spoke Spanish well and we crossed the border from Bolivia to Chile - not an easy task.  Upon arrival in Arica, the hotel we'd booked didn't have our reservation.  Somehow, Brant was able to get the hotel to find us an alternate hotel and we somehow found it!

The picture below is of us in the Andes.

Below is Larry at the Tiahuanaco ceremonial center near Lago Titicaca and is dated at over 1,000 years old.  I think this is La Puerta del Sol (Gateway of the Sun) said to be carved from a single block of andesite.

This is a picture of the Witch's Market near the Black Market in the upper regions of La Paz.  It is where we'd go shopping for electrical appliances for our homes (irons, television, stereos, etc.).

We had a combined birthday celebration at our home complete with mariachis allowing Larry and others the opportunity to test their vocal abilities.  I can't remember what he sang?

Below is a picture of Larry, the head of security for Inti Raymi and another expat in front of a government building in downtown La Paz in one of our many trips to a government office in pursuit of the legal documents required for living as an expat in La Paz.

This is a picture of the car we had use of while in Bolivia.

This was our "ferry" boat for passage on Lago Titicaca - scary!  No life jackets that I was aware of.  Not even a bucket for bailing!

I spent a lot of time with these two ladies:  Vicki and Grace.

The husbands:  Brant, Heinrick and Larry.

Battle Mountain House - where Larry lived Monday - Thursdays.  The house had four bedrooms each with a private (primitive, by no means, fancy) bath.  He shared the house with three other expats.

Below was our first Christmas in La Paz.  Our Christmas tree was some pine branches tied together.  We spent Christmas with our expat families.

 

I had to include this picture.  It was another party at the mine site - the expat fellows were having a good time.

Expat friends, Rebecca, Sherry and I at the Columbia vs. Bolivia soccer match.  We were dressed in Bolivia's colors.  Rebecca was from Venzuela so fluent in Spanish so how was it that we incorrectly ended up sitting directly behind the Columbia team where no one was suppose to be seated in order to protect the Columbia team from violence - hence, we were surrounded by armed Bolivian soldiers.  No one said a word to us about moving.

Rebecca's husband was a pilot in the Navy working for the American Embassy in La Paz.  She introduced us to a Mexican food restaurant run by Hector (far left) originally from Texas who had married a Bolivian and moved there to run his restaurant near the American Embassy and thereby ensuring a steady customer supply.  Great margaritas!

Here we were at Cerro Chacaltaya (elevation 17,785 ft.) with visitors from Washington State. 

Below is a picture of Larry skiing the receding glacier on Chacaltaya.  I just read that the glacier disappeared in 2009.  He was skiing at an elevation of around 16,000 ft. and enjoying it but then had to hike back up that hill.

Another parade in La Paz.

Both of our dogs died while we were in Bolivia and both are buried under a big pile of rocks near Cerro Chacaltaya.  This one was a picture of April with Larry.

Oh what a trip this one was!  It was the road to the Yungas - described by some as the most dangerous road in the world.  Perhaps that is an exaggeration but I'm telling you - it was scary.  At the time we drove it (we followed Brant and Vicki in our car), vehicles traveled one-way downhill from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. (as I remember).  Thank goodness - I couldn't have imagined that road with two-way traffic.  The return trip was as scary.  There was a line of vehicles waiting to make the trip back up resulting in so much dust, if there happened to be a straggler vehicle making the trip down the road, you never would have seen it until the very last moment. 

A picture of us with Lago Titicaca in the background.

A picture of us in the Yungas.

The line up of vehicles waiting to drive back up the road from the Yungas.

The picture below was actually at our going away party. 

Larry's Spanish class held in Oruro...at a bar.

I'm going to end my Bolivian blog with a picture from the flower market...conveniently located near the cemetery.  We had so many pictures from our time in Bolivia - I had trouble narrowing it down to the pictures that I did.  It has been fun putting this blog together - brings back good memories of this very special life experience.  My next blog will be of a vacations we took while we were in Bolivia.

March Visit to Nebraska

Following the memorial service for nephew Todd in Nebraska, Larry's mom Dorothy returned to Arizona with us for a few weeks visit.  Sunsets cooperated as did sightings by Dorothy of a bobcat and a buck.  (FYI: Bobcat picture was taken with Dorothy's camera through a window.  Buck picture was taken with my camera ... through a window.)

 

Larry and I returned to Grand Island, Nebraska, with Dorothy in early March.  We had heard about the migration of the Sandhill Cranes and decided to check the event out ourselves.  We witnessed the beginnings of this migration which means we were maybe seeing around 20,000 or more and that was interesting in itself but the total number of cranes passing through this area reaches 500,000!!  It was noisy with what we saw and my pictures don't capture what we actually saw and of course heard - these birds are noisy when they return to the Platte for the night after a day feeding in the surrounding corn fields.

According to the brochure I have, for six weeks beginning in late February to early April more than 80% of the world's population of Sandhill Cranes pick Nebraska's Platte River as a resting point.  They travel from southern wintering grounds to northern breeding grounds in Canada, Alaska and Siberia.  They stop along the Platte to rest and gain body fat.  The brochure says it is an amazing sight and one that can only be truly appreciated in person - so true. 

Sunset on the Platte River was pretty too.

 

 

 

In addition to the thousands of cranes we saw, we saw hundreds of geese in the fields as well.  I must be getting old...I'm not sure I would have appreciated this when I was younger?



We came upon this fellow when we were driving the back roads looking for the cranes feeding in the corn fields - the fence keeping him in didn't look sturdy enough.

 

And it snowed while we were back! and was then 70 degrees a couple days later - weather in Nebraska, I'd forgotten how erratic it can be.

 

 

 

 

 

We toured Monsanto in Gothenburg and learned a lot about corn seed hybridization (is that a word?!) We also did a road trip to the Samuel R. McKelvie National Forest by Halsey, NE.  The majority of the trees in this forest were planted by hand beginning in 1902 as an experiment to produce trees in this previously unforested region.  It is a combination of grasslands and pine forest "islands".  It is billed as the "World's Largest Man-Made Forest" and in small print, in the Western Hemisphere.  Hmmmm?

We then headed south to North Platte to visit The Golden Spike Tower!  It is where east meets west on the Union Pacific line and where 10,000 cars are handled each day on 2,850 acres of land stretching out eight miles.  It operates 24-hours a day, seven days a week where workers ensure the trains keep traveling down the tracks.  Below is a photo of Larry and his sister Linda with just a portion of our view from the tower in the background.

We ended our long weekend trip with a stop at The Great Platte River Archway just east of Kearney.  Oh my gosh, turned out to be more interesting than I expected. 

Between 1843 and 1869, a half a million people rode and walked the trails to the West Coast.  The Archway pays tribute to those pioneers, the birth of the railroad, the Lincoln Highway (America's first transcontinental road), and I-80 - the nation's first interstate.

The Archway, which crosses I-80, was built beside the interstate and lifted into position.  The roll out began on 8/16/99 at 10 p.m. and finished at 6 a.m. the following morning.

Again, The Archway does a great job of sequentially documenting The Pony Express, man's invasion and migration west and its affect on the native Indian population, the building of the railroad, the Lincoln Highway and its contribution to the development of motels and continued advancements to current times.

And then it was time to return to our warm Arizona winter weather and see the progress on our bedroom/bathroom remodel.  The 4-6 week project will turn out to be a 9 week  project. 

On the health front, I had my three month scan and it shows the drug continues to work - yay!

February Family Photos

 

These are a couple of family photos taken in February while back in Nebraska.  It is a photo us, Larry's mom Dorothy, Larry's sister Linda, niece-in-law Lauren, nephew Joel and niece Sophi.

 

 

 

 

 

Linda and I like to have our photo taken with Sophi whenever we are all together to show Sophi growing.