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Pete (the monkey) watched Louis (the man) washing dishes at an animal sanctuary in Bolivia. Pete learned fast! Read more about Pete and the baby he is “babysitting” at Amazing Stuff. Link -Thanks, Duncan!
The remains of Bolivia’s dead get to see the light of day once more during the Day of the Skulls, when the skulls of the loved ones are dug up and paraded around town.
They are decorated with flowers and coca leaves, given cigarettes and sunglasses to make them look stylish, and lavished with praise by citizens who believe this celebration makes their afterlife more enjoyable. A celebration of life that centers around the skulls dead loved ones, sounds like a strange way to par-tay!
Link –image via Reuters/David Mercado
Space travel doesn’t yet allow for planet-hopping, so to see a place that is truly alien-looking should be on any traveler’s bucket list. Personally, I suggest heading to Bolivia, where you’ll find Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat on Earth. Twelve-thousand square kilometers of the smoothest, most reflective land on the planet, rich in gypsum, lithium and halite–and when it rains, the entire plain mirrors the sky. What’s not to love about that? Check out the beautiful photo essay on Kuriositas. Link
Image: Las fotos Claras
Valle de la Luna means Valley of the Moon, an area you’ll find near the village of Mallasa in Bolivia. The towering cliffs and the dark valleys in between them honestly resemble something you might find in a science fiction novel! Read about this unique valley, and see more pictures at For 91 Days. Link -Thanks, Juergen!
Take a visit to the Mercado de Hechecería, or The Witches’ Market in La Paz, Bolivia. But be prepared for what you will find.
We stepped inside one of the stores to get a closer look. Note: this is serious, sacred business to the people who shop and work here, and irony-seeking tourists aren’t exactly appreciated. But after we made a “contribution”, the elderly owner of the store, Dominga, agreed to answer our questions and let us take pictures of her wares.
Of course, we went straight to the dead baby llamas; their hollow eyes and ghastly, grimaced mouths beckoned us. The rows and rows of llama corpses, in stages of development ranging from fetus to toddler, are by far the most disturbing image in the Witches’ Market. Dominga explained that burning these corpses is a powerful way to bless a home, or improve a sick person’s health. Sometimes, they’re buried underneath the lot of a new house.
The llamas are what most tourists stop to take pictures of, and Dominga seemed to disapprove of our morbid fascination with them. She directed our attention to other, more cheerful items.
See some of those cheerful items, but be aware that there are pictures of the llamas as well at For 91 Days. Link
The world’s largest salt flats in Bolivia create a striking illusion when the sky is reflected on its surface. Walking across the flats people and vehicles appear to be floating in the clouds as shown in this amazing photo gallery.
Michael Powell and Juergen Horn are continuing their living experiment in moving to a new city every three months, and writing about them on their blog 91 Days. Now in Sucre, Bolivia, they took a train excursion to Potosi, high in the Andes.
The trip takes almost seven hours, but it’s seven hours of the most beautiful landscapes imaginable, particularly if you’re able to snag the front seat next to the driver. Amazingly, this train isn’t a touristic draw. We were the only foreigners on board (and among a minority who wasn’t carrying a bag full of potatoes or chickens).
Tickets were about $3.50 apiece, already worth the price after the first 15 minutes. Vertigo-sufferers may want to take a pass on the trip… the train never feels especially steady, and I felt my stomach jump while looking down over some bridges. But if you’re a fan of mountain scenery, and not on a tight schedule, this trip is definitely something to consider. It’s also a slow, healthy way to ascend to Potosí’s 4000+ meter altitude.
See photographs and video of the trip at For 91 Days. Link -Thanks, Juergen!
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Guy Nesher, a photographer based out of Tel Aviv, shot this picture of the Salar de Uyuni. At over four thousand square miles, this region of Bolivia is the largest salt flat in the world. It functions like a natural mirror, but I’ve never seen a picture of it that expresses that quality quite as well as this one.
Link via Super Punch
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We’ve got human rights, animal rights, … but what about the rights of Mother Earth? That’s right – Bolivia has just drafted a United Nations treaty giving "Mother Earth" the same rights as humans:
The bid aims to have the UN recognize the Earth as a living entity that humans have sought to "dominate and exploit" — to the point that the "well-being and existence of many beings" is now threatened.
The wording may yet evolve, but the general structure is meant to mirror Bolivia’s Law of the Rights of Mother Earth, which Bolivian President Evo Morales enacted in January.
That document speaks of the country’s natural resources as "blessings," and grants the Earth a series of specific rights that include rights to life, water and clean air; the right to repair livelihoods affected by human activities; and the right to be free from pollution.
It also establishes a Ministry of Mother Earth, and provides the planet with an ombudsman whose job is to hear nature’s complaints as voiced by activist and other groups, including the state.
Coca-Cola used to contain coca, a plant that can be refined into cocaine. Bolivians are now putting it back into cola and calling it “Coca-Colla”:
The drink, made from the coca leaf and named after the indigenous Colla people from Bolivia’s highlands, went on sale this week across the South American country.
It is black, sweet and comes in a bottle with a red label – but similarities to Coca-Cola end there. One is a symbol of US-led globalisation and corporate might; the other could be considered a socialist-tinged affront to western imperialism. [...]
It is made from the coca leaf, a mild stimulant that wards off fatigue and hunger, and has been used in the Andes for thousands of years in cooking, medicine and religious rites. [...]
Bolivia tried to wipe out the leaf at Washington’s behest. But that was before Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and coca grower, was elected president, championing coca as a crop with legitimate uses.
Link via Fast Company | Photo: Dado Galdieri/AP
The largest and highest salt flats in the world, Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, has to be seen to be believed. Quite an unearthly experience, your attention is first drawn to the mysterious mounds of sand that dot the landscape. But that’s not all. Salar de Uyuni even has rock trees and a locomotive graveyard to boot.
You may not have heard of Uyuni, but our astronauts have. It is used as a target for calibrating and testing remotes sensing systems on satellites in orbit. Why? It is big – very big – and has an incredibly smooth surface which is highly reflective when it is covered in water, making it perfect for that task.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.
We love chili peppers, the hotter, the better! The ingredient that gives spicy peppers their heat is capsaicin, but what is the purpose of capsaicin in nature? To find the answer, ecologist Joshua Tewksbury traveled to Bolivia, home of many kinds of peppers.
“Capsaicin demonstrates the incredible elegance of evolution,” says Tewksbury. The specialized chemical deters microbes—humans harness this ability when they use chilies to preserve food—but capsaicin doesn’t deter birds from eating chili fruits and spreading seeds. “Once in a while, the complex, often conflicting demands that natural selection places on complex traits results in a truly elegant solution. This is one of those times.”
Link -via Boing Boing
(image credit: Tomás Carlo)
A team of Bolivian bowlers has stormed the bowling world with their unusual two-handed technique, winning medals and championships in Argentina and Brazil. Originally invented by Australian bowler Jason Belmonte, the two-handed bowling technique is relatively simple to perform:
Just two fingers are inserted into the holes and the thumb is left out. The right hand is used to cradle the ball and create extra spin on release. Then, if you’re lucky, you get a strike.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
A hotel in Bolivia always has salt on its dining table – actually, its dining table is salt! Here’s the strange Salt Hotel of the Uyuni Flats:
The hotel was built in 1993 by a salt artisan who saw a mint in the number of tourists looking for places to stay while visiting the flats. The lodge has 15 bedrooms, a dining room, a living room and a bar.
The buildings’s roof, and bar are built of salt and even the floor is covered with salt granules. The walls are made of salt blocks stuck together with a cement-like substance made of salt and water. During rainy seasons, the walls are strengthened with new blocks, while the owners ask the guests to avoid licking the walls to prevent deterioration.
