Small plots and hard work.

Farmers in the mountainous region south-west of La Paz have a hard life. High in the mountains (Altiplano) they scrape a living for themselves and their families.

The arable land consists of small plots and terraces scattered across the landscape. Farmers are working the soil by hand.

The people are poor and their houses are small and simple with tin roofs.

The crops are harvested; autumn is on its way.

Washed clothes are drying on the bushes alongside the road.

The countryside looks awesome, but the life is extremely hard.

More terraces.....

Some of these vegetables look like salad.

Higher up are even less possibilities for farming. Height and cold are taking their toll. 

Sucre to La Paz by air

Sucre airport. We are leaving for la Paz.

Flying over the Andes.

A large cement factory. Part of the mountains is disappearing.

Snow and ice. 

Snow on the fields.

We are nearing La Paz. The landscape gets more and more flat.

El Alto, with more than 1,5 million inhabitants lies above La Paz, on the Altiplano. The Altiplano is here as flat as the polders in Holland.

Farms on the edge of the town.

Small fields along winding rivers.

Here you can see the claimed plots. Some of them still empty.

A huge city lies down there.

It is high (over 4000 meters) and cold. Houses are not very well isolated.  

In some places the uniformity of squares is broken by other forms. 

Almost there.....

Churches everywhere, but this one makes me think of a Russian cathedral....
To get to La Paz we have to go down into a steep slope almost into a crack in the Altiplano.

The Atacama desert (part 1)

 The first lake was an ice lake. Just a few open places where birds could swim. Because it was sunny again it was nice to be outside. The altitude made some of us (me included) feel terrible. The next weeks we would stay up ( 4000 meters). It took a long time before I got a bit used. This combined with the extreme cold at night and the normal kind of cold in the daytime (hotels / hostels were not heated) was exhausting.

 It was a pity we couldn't see the tops of the volcanos. But apart from that the scenery was again stunning.

 Further down, next to the icy lake was the green lake - Laguna Verde. Green because among other minerals it contains arsenic. The mountain is again the Licancabur.

Endless dirt roads and majestic scenery.

We passed the Salvador Dali desert, but any surrealism was to far away. There would be more surrealist structures the next day.

After some driving we came across a lake with thermal pools. Some people went in. But as we were dressed against the cold (many layers) and we felt every movement because of the altitude.....  No, not many were tempted.

 At this stop (lunch) the drivers went straight away under their cars as to fix something. At first we thought something was wrong with the cars.... No, this was what they did during the whole trip through the desert just to keep their very old cars going. You get used to it easily. 

Next stop: Steam and the smell of sulfur. Vents to active volcanic layers. 

Then there was this fine fault-line. 

We were nearing the red lake - Laguna Colorada. The cars were parked at a distance. I was so tired and the wind had such force that I could hardly stand. Walking along the lakeside was a torment.

The color of the lake is caused by algae that turn red under influence of sunlight. Because the sun had disappeared again the red color was not as red as it should.  

But... we saw lots of flamingo's (at reather a distance).

Mountains with a thin layer of snow, the colors of land and water, the flamingo's....  a poetical landscape.

After this stop we went to our hostel. Somehow I hardly remember anything of what happened that evening / night. The brain was not working anymore. Altitude sickness.