I have a thing for capital cities. After living in Wellington (capital of NZ), Adelaide (capital of South Australia), Canberra (capital of Australia) and London (capital of UK), I thought that I would move to Ottawa (capital of Canada) just to keep the trend going.

So I convinced my sister to take a taxi to Sucre (three hour ride for $6) the capital of Bolivia and back. Turns out that it is also the chocolate capital of Bolivia so she was happy and we went to the dinosaur park as they have found a huge area of foot prints of the dinosaurs that used to hang out here.

Potosi is the highest city in the world at 4090 metres above sea level. Just to give you an idea of the altitudes that I have been living/riding at on this trip.
3755m Aoraki/Mount Cook (highest mountain in NZ)
3954m Highest peak in the Rocky Mountains
3827m Lake Titicaca
3200m La Paz (highest capital in the world)

Sometimes it really does feel like you are riding around on the top of the world.

While we were in Potosi we did a tour of the mine there. I ended up having to come back out of the mine due to claustrophobia. We did get to blow up dynamite though.

After the jungle tour we celebrated with our new friends and then caught a flight the next day back to La Paz and straight to the bus station to catch a night bus to Potosi.

Highlights of the trip were being woken up by monkeys shitting on the roof (turns out we were right under their dumping ground), the group of people we were with (they rocked and we got to play lots of cards) and having my sister with me.

For me the Pampas tour was very similar to the Los Llanos trip in Venezuela. We went looking for an anaconda (and found one this time), fishing for piranhas (I was a bit of an expert by now and caught the most), swimming with the pink dolphins and lots of opportunities to take photos of birds and those big rodents.

We had wanted to do a jungle trip to compare the Amazon jungle of Peru to Bolivia but it turns out that the popular tour in Rurrenabaque is the Pampas tour. The jungle tour isn’t run in English so it was off to the Pampas.

We decided to fly Rurrenabaque via La Paz to save some time. Rurrenabaque is a tiny Bolivian town on the edge of the jungle and pampas which has a grass air strip which was pretty cool to land on as the plane wheels went skidding around on the grass. The girl behind me throwing up didn’t think so. We celebrated getting there on two dollar cocktails.

On our last day in Cusco we went to Maras where there are Inca salt pans which are still in production and then to Moray which is a huge terraced amphitheater. The Incas used this hanging gardens as a nursery.

I also ran into Stephen a German rider that I had met in Quito and my two French traveling companions Court and Sylvan. It is a bit embarrassing to meet other bikers and not have my bike with me.

Just to go on the train/bus and the entry fee to Machu Picchu is $100US. Worth it? You decide! Afterwards we went to the local town for a coffee and a soak in the hot springs.

I am too tired from walking up and down mountains to write anything. But great views and lots of ruins.