Discovering the Tiwanaku Civilization

What a pleasure to have a good night sleep without the bar noises and in a comfortable bed. We are refreshed – plus the pick-up point for our tour to Tiwanaku is right in front of our accommodation.

We head downstairs and wait – and wait and wait some more. The staff of the agency that we bought the tour from come and call to figure out where the driver is. It seems that there is some delays and too much traffic. The bus arrives to pick us up with 1h delay.

Tiwanaku is 1h30 from La Paz and the main archeological remains of a civilization that span the coast of Peru, most of Bolivia and part of northern Chile. They were before the Inca and lives up from 600 to 1000 AD. It precedes the Inca in the region. 

The tour in itself was quite good, our guide even though we were late, didn’t rush us at all and took his time explaining all the exhibits and point of interest of the ruins. We found it very interesting. It’s great because we know nothing about Latin American ancient civilization and we slowly start to get the timeline in our heads. 

The visit is 2 museums which have large monolith statues and beautiful potteries. We couldn’t take pictures inside but they were really nice exhibits. ( and bonus, with English explanations too ). The guide added more information in the museums than what was written which was good.

The ruins themselves are massive, about 3 km2 and it took us more than 1h to walk around the various structures, get the explanations and pictures. Without the guide, this is not interesting, there are some rare panels, the guide is a must to make this visit truly educational.

Time for a (very) late lunch, where I could order lama meat. Nothing notable for this meal other than it was filling and tasty.

The last stop is Puma Punka which is a small temple with surprising smooth, perfectly shaped stones. The guide explains that it was a mystery how they managed to get such perfect shapes. Some stones were also magnetized. The answer seems to have been found very recently, some geologists have studied the rocks to realize that they were composed of plants, minerals from Uyuni and other elements from the coast. The very first cement of some sort. That explains why this temple has smooth, perfectly square block of stones.

We enjoyed the tour. The only hickups we had that got us annoyed was that not everyone came from the same agency in the tour. Some had bought all inclusive tickets ( which included the lunch, the entrance fees) and others not. We had all included, and the guide started to ask for us to pay again the entrance fee or the lunch. Luckily we had the voucher where everything was written, and he didn’t insist.

This is something about tours in Bolivia that Alexis had read on reddit. You have to ensure that all that is included in written in the voucher. If it is, they will not challenge – otherwise you will end up paying more. So do pay extra attention, get them to write everything down and bring the vouchers with you on your tour.

The drive back to La Paz was very long – many roads were blocked and the bus had to make many detours. We finally arrived at the apartment about 7pm. We fixed ourselves diner and chilled for the evening.