Bolivia Topography

The nature of Bolivia is extraordinarily beautiful and varied. Gravel roads meander spectacularly over 4,000 meter high passes in the Andes and lead down into the lowlands of the savannahs and the jungle. La Paz lies at an altitude of 4,000 meters in a mountain basin, dominated by the bare mountain ranges of the Cordillera. Almost a million people live here, but the official capital of Bolvio is Sucre. Famous is the Condor, the national animal of Bolivia, which is not only revered in popular songs, but is still found in the mountains today.

The people of the country are proud and cheerful. Here the most colorful cloths are woven and the scariest god masks carved, but at the same time the Christian Madonna is venerated.
Trips to Bolivia will particularly delight hikers and nature lovers. People who are interested in indigenous cultures also feel at home here.

The people in Bolivia are among the poorest in South America, the country itself is the weakest exporter in Latin America. Nevertheless, the people of Bolivia have never lost their sense of tradition, culture and joy. Material values ​​are not important to Bolivians. This is also what fascinates tourists so much. The product or the brand is less important here; it is often only about the here and now.

Until the free trade agreement between Peru and Colombia with the USA, Bolivia was one of the main exporters of soy to Colombia. Then this market collapsed. Since the free trade agreement made duty-free delivery and import from the USA possible, it was simply cheaper for Colombia to import soy from the USA.
In order to protect the economy of Bolivia, the presidents of Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba signed a “Trade Treaty of the Peoples” on April 29, 2006. The contract states that Cuba and Venezuela will buy their soybeans from Bolivia. The aim is to enable Bolivia to have literacy, health care and the establishment of a national airline.

Topography

According to extrareference, Bolivia is the only Andean country that has no direct access to the sea – previously a constant cause of conflict with neighboring countries. The country borders Chile and Peru to the west, Brazil and Paraguay to the north and east, and Argentina to the south.

The country was named Bolivia in honor of Simón Bolívar, the liberator of the Andean countries from Spanish colonial rule.

Bolivia extends in a north-south direction 1,500 kilometers from 10 ° to 23 ° south latitude and 1,300 kilometers from the western ridge of the Andes to the edge of the Brazilian mountains in the east. The highest mountain in Bolivia is the Nevado Sajama at 6,542 m.

In South America, geologists differentiate between three major forms of the earth’s crust: young folds of mountains that have been heavily lifted and broken into numerous clods, old shields, which mainly consist of crystalline rocks from the ancient world and which are lifted very gradually (that’s why there is here, in contrast to the folded mountains hardly any earthquakes or volcanic eruptions) and finally wide basins, under which the earth’s crust has been sinking for millions of years and which are filled with thick deposits.

Bolivia has a share in all three geological structures. The western third of the country lies in the Andes, which have been folded and raised in the course of the Earth’s Modern Age and are up to over 800 kilometers wide here. They are divided into the western cordillera, which reaches the highest altitude in the Sajama volcano, the average 3,000 to 4,000 m high Bolivian highlands (Altiplano) in the middle and the chains of the eastern cordillera cut by deep valleys on the eastern edge.

At the foot of the Andes there is a depression that merges into La Plata to the south and the Amazon basin to the north.

The most fertile soils of Bolivia are found in the easternmost part of the country, in the area between the tributaries of the Amzona and the Rio Paraguay. These are dark, clay and humus-rich soils that alternate with floodplain soils in a confined space. Only the soils on loose and nutrient-rich volcanic ashes in the highlands have similar favorable properties. Otherwise, the red or pale yellow soils in the lowlands are usually very heavily depleted, while the gray-brown desert soils in the dry Altiplano are stony and poor in humus.