Today's Great Pics

(courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Today's travels take us to..the Alps? Nope. This is actually Lake Titicaca, which sits at 12,500 feet of elevation and straddles the border of Bolivia and Peru. It's one of the highest commercially navigable lakes in the world, and is also the largest freshwater lake in South America at 3,200 square miles (in comparison, Lake Superior is almost 32,000 square miles in surface area - 10x the size!). Lake Maracaibo, in Venezuela, is larger but is also partially saltwater.  Unfortunately, the lake's size is shrinking pretty rapidly due to the melting of the glaciers that feed it in the Andes and the shortened rainy seasons Bolivia has been experiencing as of late. Titicaca is known for the various indigenous peoples that inhabit its shores, and its relative proximity to the capital of Bolivia, La Paz.

(courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

La Paz claims the title of world's highest capital city, at 10,000 feet (some of its suburbs sit at over 13,000 feet, however). The mountain seen in the background, Illimani (nicknamed "the Guardian of La Paz"), rises to 21,200 feet, and is snow-covered throughout the year. La Paz has a metropolitan area of about 2.4 million, and has a pretty impressive skyline for the capital city of one of the poorest nations in South America. However, over the past 15 years Bolivia's political climate has become a lot more stable, and the country has taken advantage of its great resources of tin and other metals. The city is still a very cheap place to visit for tourists; it ranks 270 out of the 282 largest non-US cities in the world for ex-pats to live in.