Bolivia is Almost a Tourist Destination

  Should you go to Bolivia?  Yes, and no.  It is a wonderful place to not feel like a tourist.  If you want adventure without the neurotic safety of Europe or the US then go.  If you want unbelievably inexpensive everything (a chicken meal might cost $1.5), even in tourist areas where local companies have not yet learned to jack up the prices for tourists, then go. But, as I have described, be prepared to get sick by the food and the altitude.  Be prepared to experience a lacking tourist infrastructure that might have prevented our unsafe and uncomfortable 4x4 jeep experience.  The tourist infrastructure is lacking to the extent that even decent postcards are hard to find!  Tour operators even have difficulties.  For example, the double decker tour bus we took around La Paz had to avoid clipping the mass of electric wires hanging on the streets.  The top deck of the bus was open, which threatened any passenger with decapitation should they have stood up at the wrong time.  Lastly, while super dangerous roads are being replaced with only slightly dangerous roads, they aren´t being replaced too quickly.  We once waited over an hour for the road ahead of us to literally be built.  The road workers razed and cleared about a 100 foot section of road as we waited.  Bolivia is almost a tourist destination, but not yet for the feint of heart.

Never will I complain about the Pennsylvania department of transportation road construction again.

The Bolivian version of the Guillotine.