North Bolivia Travel and Tourism Information
Rurrenabaque
Rurrenabaque located about 300 km (186 miles) north from La Paz, is a charming little settlement on the river “Beni” in the Bolivian lowland. It is famous for its original inhabitants who resisted Christianity and Western-style during the Spanish civilization. Until today they have preserved their way of living, customs and traditions of their forefathers.
Trips from Rurrenabaque are unbeatable as the environment is abundant in Amazonian wildlife. That’s why most travelers use the lovely village as a starting point for tours in the jungle or in the pampas. The jungle tours invite you to get to know the diversity of tropical flora and fauna of an enormous diversity of birds, monkeys and plants). The Pampas consist of a grassy, flat plain with many rivers and waterholes that swell several times during the year. The immense quantity of water in this region gives home to an impressive amount of wildlife like a great variety of birds, alligators, monkeys, capybaras, anacondas, pink river dolphins, as well as jaguar or tapir.
La Paz
La Paz is situated in a narrow bottom of a canyon surrounded by Andean mountains, snow covered peaks and volcanoes, what makes its scenery mystic and unique in the world.
It’s Bolivia’s administrative center, as well as its most populated state department. Over the last 20 years its population has doubled and is estimated today at nearly 1,3 million people. It is the highest capital in the world (located at 3,580 meters/ 11,740 feet above sea level), where people apparently never stop selling food and walking up and down the endless thin streets from the foot to the top of the city.
You will find an incredible mixture of Bolivian poor people dressed in traditional colorful clothes, business men, churches and places, colonial and modern buildings, interesting museums, and innumerous markets with the most famous “Witch market” where you can buy dried llama fetuses or the rarest species of potions you have ever seen in your life. The geographical location causes cold temperatures during the nights in La Paz, although the day sun keeps usually strong during the whole year.
La Paz has a good tourist infrastructure with many good restaurants, hotels and travel agency to various attractions close to the city.
Some of the most famous trips are the steeply falling jungle road to the little town “Coroico” in the Yungas”, the blue-colored “Lake Titicaca”, the Cordillera highlands and the ruins of “Tahuanaco”.
Lake Titicaca
For sure, the lake, with its crystal-clear and apparently untouched waters, is one of the must-see attractions in Bolivia as its colors change constantly from dawn to dusk, depending on the clouds and the angle of the sun. Lake Titicaca is at 3,800 meters (12,507 feet) the highest navigable lake of the world.
It reaches immense dimensions: a length of 233km (145mi) from northwest to southeast and a width of 97km (60mi) from northeast to southwest with the maximum depth of 280 meters (918 foot). Theses measures combine an area of unbelievable size of 8,300 square kilometers (3,240 square miles). The lake possesses many small bays and 36 islands, including the legendary “Islas del Sol” and “Islas de la Luna”, two islands in the lake, famous sites of the Inca’s creation myths.
Hundreds of centuries it has already been the focus of human settlement in Bolivia as the living conditions in terms of climate and food (good agriculture and fishing possibilities around the sea) are much better than in the rest of the Bolivian high plateau “Altiplano”.