We took the bus from Santiago through beautiful wine yards to the coast, passing Viña del Mar, to Valparaiso.
Very beautiful are the colorized houses in Valparaiso. The houses itself are colorful and the graffiti is also very nice.
Typical for this area are the many wineyards; take the time to stop and have a wine testing.
Compared to other South American cities, Santiago de Chile is very different. There are many reasons for that, but one main reason is that the people living there feel more like European people instead of South American people. And you will recognize that everywhere in Santiago – the type of the buildings, the people and the type of food.
From Santiago de Chile you will get by car or bus in a 2 hours drive to the coast area like Viño del Mar or Valparaiso. You will see that in the next blog post.
We arrive in El Alto before lunch time; to be honest, we have visited a lot of cities, especially in Asia. And the traffic was really crowded in towns like Phnom Penh, Hanoi, Bangkok, etc. but in Asia the streets are empty compared to La Paz.
Because of the horrible traffic, the European company Dopplmayr built a cable car through the city. This one we took to get down from El Alto to La Paz.
Take the chance to have a look at the witch market in La Paz. Very nice to explore:
Titicaca Lake from the other side – from the Bolivian side; also very impressive and beautiful to see.
Quite amazing is the way buses, cars and trucks are going to be transferred from one side to another… some people told us, that sometimes, buses will fall over and go down to the ground; but not that often 😉
We arrived at Titicaca Lake at early afternoon, had a cocktail and an boat trip. There are some islands to visit, but nothing worth to see. Enjoy the lake view and thats ist…
We visited the Titicaca lake from both sides – Peru and Bolivia.
Raqchi Temple is on the way between Cusco an Bolivia; it is one of the nicest Inka temples in Peru, but in a very hot are – around 42°C…
When you drive further down to Bolivia ( El Alto, La Paz) you will pass the mountains again and reach again more than 4.000 meters above sea level.
A very nice highlight on the way to Bolivia is the crossing of the Titicaca lake with the bus. You will see that in the next blog post.
Another early morning today, we woke up at 4 am to reach Machu Picchu before noon.
We drove down to the train station and took the train up to Machu Picchu. The train ride was about 90 min.
There are several ways to reach Machu Picchu; you can walk up the road, take the bus – or walk the Inka trail – and in that case, you will walk down to Machu Picchu as the Inka Trail is a bit higher compared to Machu Picchu.
The Machu Picchu itself is not a very nice area as the guides an the staff itself is very unfriendly, very rude and pushing thousands of people through the ruins per day. Unfriendly people but amazing view…
