Bolivia, a brief overview of a beautiful country
Bolivia is located in the center of South America, its geographical location allows it to have such varied regions, diversity within its borders include: mountains, highlands, valleys, deserts, wetlands, rivers , lakes, glaciers, volcanoes, Amazon jungle and even the largest salt flat in the world. Did you know about it?
Countries all around the world are organized in different ways… for administrative purposes, Bolivia does not have states, it has departments, each department has provinces, and each province has municipalities. Bolivia’s departments are nine: Chuquisaca, Cochabamba, Tarija, Potosí, La Paz, Oruro, Pando, Santa Cruz and Beni.
In 2009, the government changed the Political Constitution of the State and the name of the country, it was Republic of Bolivia and currently it is Plurinational State of Bolivia. It is not the goal to go into political topics in this article, it is enough for you to know that Bolivia is a democratic country, voting is mandatory for all citizens over 18 years of age, the government is led by a President who is elected every 5 years.
Some sources say that the capital of the country is La Paz because it is where the president governs from, but the truth is that since it was founded as an independent country in 1825, the capital of Bolivia has always been Sucre, located in Oropeza province, Chuquisaca department, in the region of the Bolivian valleys.
The official currency is the Boliviano, although the international acronym for this currency is BOB, its abbreviation is usually used in the country, which is: Bs. In addition to the national currency, the American dollar is used mainly in the area of tourism and commerce of electronic equipment (computers, mobile phones, etc.), cars and real estate.
Bolivia does not have any highlight in industry matters, but it does export a lot of raw materials. Lately, the main sources of economic income comes from exporting: natural gas and oil, minerals, and agricultural products.
To describe Bolivia, I could use “it depends” as part of each sentence I write, everything could be so different among places all around the country, every description depends on the area to talk about, so in an attempt to group these diversity, regions could be classified as following: departments located to the east of the country as Bolivian Amazon, central and southern region as valleys, and the west of the country as the highlands or Andean region (due to it is nearby the Andes Mountains).
As Bolivia is in the southern hemisphere, summer begins in December, autumn begins in March, winter begins in June and spring in September; temperatures vary in each region, anyways there are no extreme changes, they vary at most by ± 10~15 °C between summer and winter.
The official language is Spanish, mostly used in cities, because of this reason knowing Spanish brings better opportunities for indigenous population within the country. Bolivia also has 36 native communities, each of them with its own language, the most known are: Quechua, Aymara and Guaraní; although in recent years the preservation of native languages has been promoted, there are few or almost none documentation about their writing, it means they are only kept alive from generation to generation in spoken form.
Regarding tourism, there are places that are more popular and therefore are better prepared to receive local and international visitors. Tourism activities are offered in Spanish and English; and also, although not many, activities in Portuguese, French, German, Japanese and Korean can also be found. On the other hand, there are also many places, beautiful ones to visit, where local language may be a native one and where even speaking Spanish would not be enough. It is important to make a research about places to visit and the facilities they offer.
Bolivia has a large local food production, it is very easy to find a wide variety of fresh products in the markets (related to this topic, there are also particularities in each region of the country).
Traditional Bolivian families usually have four meals a day: breakfast in the morning which is usually light, lunch at noon as a main meal consisting of a soup and a main, tea in the afternoon, and dinner at night that is also a plate of food.
Office hours at companies (including museums) are from 08:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Monday to Friday, with the exception of some, such as financial institutions, which are open continuously from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. On Saturday, offices are usually open only until noon and on Sundays and holidays most places are closed. So, if you are visiting Bolivia for a short period, it is better to organize the activities very well and always check the opening hours to avoid bad experiences and make it to cover most of the places from your wishlist.
Bolivia has a messy public transport, there are buses and vans self-managed by their owners, they have fixed routes, normally do not have fixed schedules or frequency. Lately, some alternatives from municipal governments have been implemented, for example: in La Paz and El Alto, there are cable car and urban buses; Cochabamba and Santa Cruz de la Sierra have train and metropolitan bus respectively. The rates for taxis and motorcycle taxis are defined by the driver, taximeters are not used, so it is better to ask and negotiate the price to pay before jumping in.
You can arrive to the country by air, through any of these airports as they are have international flights:
- Viru Viru (VVI): located in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, in the department of Santa Cruz (~410 m.s.n.m.)
- El Alto (LPB): located in the city of El Alto, next to the city of La Paz, in the department of La Paz (~4150 m.s.n.m.)
- Jorge Wilstermann (CBB): located in the city of Cochabamba, in the department of Cochabamba (~2558 m.s.n.m.)
As Bolivia has borderlines with Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile and Peru, there are roads that connect these countries by land; also there are places such as Guayaramerín in the department of Beni, where crossing the border means crossing the river by boat from Guajará-Mirim (Brazil) since there is no bridge that connects the road.
Bolivia is a country with a lot of history, warm people, delicious and varied food, adventure, majestic nature, music, traditions and contrasts. It is a country continously looking for growth and better days. Those who visit Bolivia are amazed because they find much more than they imagine.
This brief overview has already a lot of information, so I invite you to follow me to not missing the following articles that I will write about Bolivia and other places I have been. Thanks for your time!
