Less than three months until I leave on the World Race! One of the most common questions I get is what countries am I going to. Apparently it is somewhat difficult for people to figure out how to navigate the website. The countries I will be travelling to are (in order):
Peru
Bolivia
Argentina
Togo
Ghana
Cote d’Ivoire
Nepal
India
Myanmar
Thailand
Malaysia
My squad decided that we would split up the countries and have one person do a blog post about each one. My country is Bolivia!
Let me tell you a bit about Bolivia. It is one of only 2 landlocked countries in South America (the other being Paraguay). It actually used to have coastline, until it lost a bunch of land to Chile in the War of the Pacific in the 1880’s.
Bolivia is approx. 424,200 mi² in size, or about 5 Minnesota’s. However, it only has about twice the population of Minnesota, meaning it is significantly less dense. Which makes sense considering much of the country is covered in mountains and rainforest.
At 3,650m above sea level, La Paz is unofficially the highest capital city in the world. Unofficially because La Paz is not the real capital of Bolivia. That would be Sucre. However, La Paz is the working capital of the country, meaning that is where the government is located.
The name Bolivia comes from the Venezuelan military and political leader Simon Bolivar who led much of northwestern South America to independence from Spain in 1825. He was also the first president of Bolivia.
Lake Titicaca (on the border with Peru) is the world’s highest navigable lake. It sits 3,812m above sea level and is also South America’s largest lake by volume.
Bolivia has 37 official languages, including Spanish, Quechua, and many other indigenous languages, many of which are extinct.
Obviously, I will be learning much more about this country in the future, and I will definitely be sharing with everyone the things I learned there beyond what I read about of the internet. I am getting extremely excited to actually spend time in Bolivia and the other countries I am going to! I would like to ask you all to be praying for these countries and the work that will we be doing there. Thanks for reading!
