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Published: April 12th 2009
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HOla,
So after out 5 days of non stop on the go we finally got to sit back and do nothing for a day. Our first day in lap paz was spent snoozing mostly, then some walking around to see the city. This city is really interesting. The city sits in a valley surrounded by mountains. They call it the bowl. In the center is , well the center or downtown area, and then as you look to either side the hills go up and houses cover them all. Unlike most citys with mountains and hills, the higher you are the richer you are usually for the views. Here its the opposite, the poorest people live the highest up on the hill. Actually the richest people here live below, or lower than the downtown area. Our hotel is near downtown, and is on a cobblestone street with vendors all around, and on every street near us. The street vendors here sell mostly the hand made type clothing, colorful inca looking garb. Its a shoppers paradise (for C). And things here are pretty cheap, our dollar does pretty well here. Its lucky for us this is near the end of our
trip, so whatever we buy we wont have to lug around for months, haha. The people here seem really nice, and there is still a ton of character and culture here. Most of the older women still dress in the full customary clothes carrying their baskets of products. C and I both really like the city, and just the whole feel of this country. While the country seems like its still stuck back in time, i think thats the charm of it. La paz is pretty up to date, unlike the other towns we were in, so it is a big city, but it still feels like bolivia, not anywhere usa....So our second day here we decided to take the customary dorky city tour, on the Ol double decker bus. I know it very touristy, but it really gives you a feel for the city, where things are, and helps us get our bearings on a new city. The tour was good, saw most of the downtown area, lots of statues, new buildings mingled in with very old buildings, and they also gave us some interesting information about thie city sauch as; The average bolivian lives until the age of
62, BUT the age of retirement here is 65??? nice. The average bolivian makes only U.S. $1500 a YEAR, thatS like someone in the states who say works in a sub par box office selling tickets for 2nd rate concerts and acts would make in a year (mike G., hahaha, kidding), and the average famlily has 5 kids. But an average goverment worker here earns U.S. $4000 a month!! That is why they have soo many protests here, the people are trying to get a fair shake in the dealio here.
So day 3 we decided to do a little hike up a near by mountain called Chacaltaya. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chacaltaya
Luckily they drive you most of the way ! haha. The drive was interesting, an old Toyota van going up this narrow steep dirt road to the top of the mountain. Now when i say narrow, it was pretty hairy in my opinion. It was just one of those dirt roads cut into the side of a mountain. It took about 2 hours, and we were up at about 16,000 feet again. We had some snow flurries once we got really high up tooo. So you get to the top,
and then its time to hike, its a short hike, about 45 minutes to reach the summit. We got to the summit and sure enough the clouds surrounded us, not too good of a view. The summit was at 17,700 feet, again a new altitude record for me. You could really feel the height on the walk up, wow my heart was a pumping. It was pretty windy and chilly up their, we had hats, gloves, the whole deal for the hike. After our time on the top we headed down, and we noticed the clouds finally started to lift, so the we were able to get some decent pictures. So back down we go, back down to narrow, dirt, cliff sided road, and back in la paz we are. I tried to do a decent map this time, to show the route we took on our 3 day tour in south bolivia.
We plan on being here a few more days, maybe until the 15th. Then we will take a bus to Cusco, peru and see machu pichu, then its back to lima and time to head home on the 21st.
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