La Paz

Spectacularly set between two walls of a canyon, La Paz takes your breath away.

I left Antofagasta on Sunday night at around 9, which was a little heartfelt as Sandy came to the bus station to wish me well, and encouraged me onto the bus, both of us a little teary. The bus was to Arica, a city in Northern Chile on the Peruvian border. Strangely enough I couldn´t sleep very well at all - perhaps because Die Hard 4.0 was playing, or more probably because I had a seat on the wrong side of the bus. I like the left hand side, you know, and I think that it did serious damage to me. We arrived in Arica just after sunrise, in the wee hours of the morn, and I walked around the empty bus terminal looking to buy a ticket for La Paz. Of course everything was closed, so I went to the cafe for my cafe con leche, a delicious mug of hot milk served with a sachet of Nescafe - muy rico! While I was mulling over my Lonely Planet, Bibita, from the UK came over and joined me for some talk about heading to La Paz. We chatted and mulled for a couple of hours until the bus was set to depart for the nine hour journey.

The road from Arica to La Paz was absolutely phenomenal. I might have been tempted to take an overnight bus to avoid spending a day on the bus, but I´m really glad that I went during the day (also, the border crossing is closed at night, so it wouldn´t have done me much good anyway). Turning East off the Panamerican Highway, which leads to Peru, the bus started climbing into the mountains, slowly gaining elevation as we contoured around the range. The scenery was magical, the absolutely bare mountains contrasting with the sky so perfectly, and looking down you could watch the valley below recede. The more elevation we gained the more vegetation there was, soon the mountains were covered with mottled shrubs and grasses, and the endless sand was replaced by rock. Climbing higher and higher I started not to feel so well, and when we got to the border post I was feeling rather out of it, a little dizzy with a slight headache bringing me down. The scenery took away my pain though, Parque Nacional Lauca, on the Chilean side, was absolutely sensational, with herds of Vicuña and Alpaca grazing on the plains below the twin Payachata volcanoes, both around 6300m high. Once in Bolivia, the lakes and herds of animals gave way to a more agricultural feel, with villages and mud houses scattered on the Altiplano, the almost treeless high plain.

Our road into La Paz increasingly became populated, the roads absolutely clogged with honking minivan buses, filled with people before the road deviated from the high plain and plunged into the wide canyon which houses La Paz. Houses cling to the sides of the two walls, framing the centre of the city which sits downhill at the bottom of the canyon. Driving into the city the bus took a few switchbacks around the mountains before we pulled into the bus station - at the higher, northern end of the canyon. I was still suffering from a headache and dizzyness and felt overall rather lame at this point, so I followed Bibita to a hostel just a couple of minutes down the hill from the bus station, a building from the 1880s that probably needs a bit of repair work done to it. By the time that we had put our bags down in the hostel (we first had to go to the hostel proper before being sent to the 1880s hostel annex) it was around 6pm, and I hadn´t had a proper meal in about 24 hours, seeing as I was on the bus. The other problem we faced was neither Bibita or I had any Bolivian money, so we spent a while finding an atm. We were hoping to find one where we could go inside to use the atm, but we quickly learnt that those don´t exist here, so we settled for one with a security guard standing next to it, taking a little comfort in the fact that I wasn´t alone. Not really knowing where to eat, we set off for a walk, but we went back and forwards, down this street and that, before we settled on a place - which ended up being a burger joint. The food wasn´t that great, but it was great to sit down and eat, afterwards we went to the main hostel bar, where I sat around talking to people till it was rather late.

The next morning I was up and about earlier than most. After finishing off a couple of pancakes I went for a walk towards the main part of the city, taking a break to watch a football game in the quad in the university before walking up a hill to a kid´s park and lookout point from where I took many a photo of the city, and the snow capped 6000 metre peaks that surround it. After wandering around quite a bit of the city, and writing messges on whiteboards in other hostels requesting a hiking partner, I returned to the hostel where I sat up in the bar area watching movies all afternoon. Its not that I´m a lazy person, more that I still felt the effects of the altitude - I would feel dizzy after walking up a couple of stairs, and while I didn´t have much problem with breathlessness I still had my headache. That evening Adria, from Seattle, and I discovered a great little local restaurant nearby to the hostel, where for 9 bolivianos you could have a soup and a main course - a little over a dollar. I had discovered another one at lunchtime, and they´re really excellent because half the time they save you the bother of ordering because sometimes they have a set menu. After returning to the hostel to redeem my free beer (there is a microbrewery on site, which might be a little kitch, but good fun none the less) Adria and I got talking to a guy from Sweden, who had arrived that night, and was mighty hungry. It was 11:30, so we agreed to escort him on an expedition for food, but when we found out that he was a vegetarian our task got just a tad harder. We ended up walking the streets for a while, taking a little time out to do some dancing upstairs in a restaurant before continuing our search, which finally ended at a little cafe where they had some vegetarian snacks. I´ve heard stories about how its tough being a vegetarian in South America, but now I really do believe it.

I´ve been in La Paz now for 4 days, and I can´t quite remember which day I did what, because in general I haven´t done a lot, in terms of museums and culture. My main task for La Paz was to acclimatise before hiking the Choro trail, and to find someone to hike that with, but after failing to find someone to go with I´ve decided to go to Copacabana tomorrow and do a 3 day hike by myself around the Island on Lake Titicaca, which is much easier in terms of navigation, food and the fact that there´ll probably be quite a few people about.

Last night I gave in to peer pressure and went to the English pub in town, by the name of Oliver´s Travels, which was a sit around and talk affair before it started to close, when we headed to Mungos, a rather nice bar/club, with different rooms scattered around the bar and dance floor, where I shook it to 80s classics and Shania Twain. I ended up getting back to the hostel at 3:30, and after 6 people noisily came into the dorm at 8:30 with all there stuff and related chatter, I gave up on more sleep and headed upstairs for my daily pancake breakfast. I didn´t really have much plans for today, but when the idea of going to the Valley of the Moon came up, I jumped at it. I shared a cab with an Israeli girl to the area, which was actually out of the city of La Paz, in a smaller township. She wanted to go quad biking, but I just wanted to go walk around. It was absolutely sensational, with trails and bridges around the ´badlands´, a large area of eroded rock in an amazing vertical formation. After I had had my fix of the badlands I took a stroll around the village, taking lots of photos of the amazing mountains in the distance and the colours of the ones close by. After a couple of hours of discovery we headed back to the hostel, where I left to send a DVD full of photos home (hope you get it one day, Mum!) and to visit one of the two supermarkets here in La Paz. Instead of frequenting large supermarkets, most people here buy everything they need at the markets on the streets, which are always full of vendors and almost everything you could need. Nevertheless, I was excited about the idea of a supermarket, perhaps 20 minutes walk from the hostel. It was alright, but not as great as other supermarket experiences I´ve had - either way I sat in the nearby park eating cheese croissants, drinking yoghurt and saying ´no, gracias´ to shoeshine boys who wanted to give my really dusty shoes a bit of a polish, for only 1 Boliviano!

Anyway, here I am in an internet cafe, writing my blog as I seem to find myself doing. I´ll be heading off tomorrow morning for Copacabana, on Lake Titicaca, where I´ll start my 3 day stroll around Lake Titicaca and Isla del Sol, before heading probably to Cuzco.

Hearts and minds,
Mark

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