La Paz and the Road to Rurre

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This blog is a composite of our two trips to La Paz, Bolivia. We are getting far behind and very lazy.

Part I

We left for La Paz from Copacabana mid afternoon on Dec. 28. Our bus took us around Lake Titicaca to the Strait of Tiquina. The strait is so narrow you could swim across. I expect they haven't built a bridge only because the locals would lose out on jobs. Getting our bus and all the passengers across took some doing. The bus was loaded on a tiny barge which looked like it could capsize at any moment. The passengers waited in line for one of the small, crowded boats that shuttle people back and forth all day.

On the other side of the strait our road left the lake and continued across the high grassy plain. Here and there the empty view was broken by an odd house, farm, or llama. The houses, farms, and llamas increased in frequency as the ride continued, and here and there a restuarant or mechanic shop appeared. We had reached the outskirts of El Alto, the indigenous city on the outskirts of La Paz. El Alto has a distinct physical boundary like I'd never seen in any other city. Ahead and to the left of us was dense urbanity, with people, animals, traffic and stores. To the right the city continued for about four blocks, and then ... stoped, like it ran into an invisible fence. Beyond the city edge was a plain, as empty of life as the city was full, and maybe four days hike through the plain were the foothills of white capped mountains.

The capital city, La Paz, lies in a great valley in the high plains. It was so chosen by the Spanish to provide protection from high winds. Driving in over the plain we came to the rim of the valley, and saw the whole city spread out below our feet. We had much the same first view of Cusco a month before. The buildings (with red roofs and white walls) are similar enough, although La Paz is much bigger. We descended the narrow, winding road to the bus station, and then caught a taxi to our hostel. We were centrally located, and got to explore the markets and buildings, including the Palacio Presidential, before nightfall.

The next morning we found a European-style cafe for breakfast, and wandered a modern shopping mall recovering from the Christmas rush. I was surprised. Naively, I did not expect La Paz had a large enough middle class to support such indulgences. Of course they were not for everyone. Half the people in the streets, particularly the women, were wearing indigenous clothes, but I never saw anyone dressed so in the cafes or malls. And yet perhaps the class divisions were not quite so rigid. It was common to see an older, traditionally dressed woman with a younger woman in modern clothes. Did these younger women ever invite their mothers into the cafes?

Most of the day was focused on the business of getting money for our trip into the jungle the next day and booking our bus. Unsure of how much we would need to spend, we wanted a mix of Bolivian and American dollars. I went through a few banks before securing funds. Later that afternoon, we did a little shopping for gifts in the fun, pleasant, and sometimes quirky markets. The shopkeepers were friendly and low key. We bought a few textiles and other crafts. I was tempted to buy one of the beautiful mouth organs used in Andean music, but I was worried I would break it before the end of our trip.

We ended our night at the Wild Rovers Irish pub across the street from our hostel, which was competing with the Cusco pubs for the title of World's Highest Irish bar. These things were aparently important. Wild Rovers was suitably dimlit with good Irish beer on tap and a lively atmosphere. I liked the place. It was much like other places I have enjoyed frequenting for the past 15 years. Actually, most of the other people there were 15 years younger than me. They were making plans to go to some other place at 2 am in the morning. Eva got to satisfy a baffling fondness for shepherd's pie she has developed on this trip. She's had it four times, three times on purpose. Not able to find the foods from her own home, she's developed an odd nostalgia for the food of somebody else's home. We turned in long before 2 am, well stuffed on Irish grub.

The next day, Wednesday Dec. 30th, we left by bus for Rurrenabaque. Much has been blogged about this fourteen to eighteen-hour bus ride by other travellers. Yes it was a physical ordeal. You were packed into seats as uncomfortable as that of a school bus. The bus was loud and smelly. There may have been a gap of six hours between pee breaks, followed by four breaks within an hour, and sometimes the only place to be pee might be in someone's yard. We could only imagine what it would be like to get diarrhea or a stomach illness on this bus. But no, the bus did not take the World's Most Dangerous road, as some bloggers believe. That road was nearby, although this road might have been in the top 10. The road was narrow and curvy with a very steep drop off. Buses and other large vehicles had to creep around each other, taking minutes at a time, when they would meet each other coming opposite directions. The average bus speed was probably 10 mph - and yes, it would have been much easier to have taken the plane.

Still, let's give the bus trip its due. It gave you a chance to see life, Bolivian life, up close. On our trip, life included a couple of young male friends, maybe tour guides, getting a start on New Year's festivities just in front of us. They polished off several wine bottles through the trip but didn't get excited. Across from us were 2 young lovers, cuddling and wooing and oblivious to the chaos that was sometimes happening around them. A whole family was sitting just behind us. At night they laid blankets down on the bus floor for the two children to get a good sleep, even with adults attempting to step over them getting to and from their seats.

The bus trip also provided an experience with nature. The views of mountains, rivers, and valleys were fantastic! The most exceptional aspect of the trip was the encounter with three different natural environments. First the bus passed through the cold and barren Andean mountains, where it was a struggle just to breath. Then it descended into the Yungas cloud forest. Here the air was temperate and warm, and the trees alive with bird song. Sometime in the night, it passed into the Amazon rainforest.

I was awake for dawn on the second day of our bus trip. This was my first time in the Amazon. The air was already hot and humid. No longer descending, we were traveling over fairly level land. All around were dense, green bush, broken up occasionally by small banana farms. I saw birds flying, or sitting in the trees by the roadside. I wondered what kind of creatures lay just beyond view, maybe just a minutes walk into the forest. We had come to find out.

Part II

Once on the bus was enough. We took it back from Rurrenabaque to La Paz, leaving at 11 am on Jan 9th and arriving at 7 pm on Jan. 10th. This time, Bolivian life included the bus driver's family, a wife and 2 daughters. The daughters had the roam of the bus and seemed to enjoy themselves. Still, we couldn't help but wonder whether this was a regular occurrence. Were the girls growing up on the bus? Whatever joy the driver gained from having his family was perhaps rivaled by his love of music. There were two kinds of music we heard throughout Bolivia and Peru. One was the Andean music, the pipes and flutes which always sounds pleasant, if a little boring at times. The other kind comes from the Pacific coast. The genre is typified by thin, tinny drums (probably from a synthesizer or drum machine), uber shrill brass, and exuberant, over the top dramatic vocals. Imagine the 'Mexican music' in bad westerns, and you'd be pretty close. This was the music our bus driver liked. He played it straight through the night, too loud to ignore even if you covered your ears. Bad enough in the daytime, but it was torture at night as we tried to get some sleep. The worse thing about the driver's music was that 75% of the songs had an identical drum beat - same tempo, same rhythm. We had heard this beat many times before in South America. A common joke among the tourists is that this beat is 'track #1', a default beat setting on the synthesizers they use down there. That night we listened to as many as 20 songs in a row with this beat. Sometimes we were unsure where one started and one left off.

And so we arrived back in La Paz, back to cold, thin, high altitude air, after a sleepless and uncomfortable night. We got a taxi to the Adventure Brew Hostel around 8 am. Unfortunately we couldn't check in until 1:30 pm, so we lounged on the couches waiting. After check in, priority #1 was a few hours sleep, after which we went upstairs to redeem our vouchers for pints of beer brewed on the premises. I ordered the kolsch, while Eva ordered the best bitter. I drank them both. They were welcome changes to the light pilsners that dominate most of the countries we have visited since leaving the US.

By next morning I had a cold and fever. Eva was surprisingly well given her lack of sleep the day before. We debated seeing the rock formations in the nearby Valle de Luna, but decided to skip on account of our tiredness and my illness. Instead, we booked our tickets for the train ride to Uyuni and explored the La Paz markets again, including the famed 'witches markets' which feature all kinds of home brews and medicines. Items for sale included herbs, enchanted objects, and dried llama fetuses.

That evening we had supper in the dining area on the top level of our hostel. Surrounded by glass, the dining area had a fair view of the city. I was ready for bed afterwards, but Eva wanted to stay for a Texas Hold'em poker tournament. I went downstairs, but I promised I would come back to help her if she won, since the prize was beer. The tournament lasted a long time, maybe three to four hours. I checked on her a few times and took some pictures. Each time I came back there were fewer players, but Eva was still in it. By 1 o'clock that night, it was down to Eva and two others, and I stayed to watch the end. The other girl was taken down quickly. After a long struggle the other guy got a strong chip advantage on Eva and put her 'all-in', and finished her off on the turn. She left a field of 30+ competitors in second place. There was indeed a beer prize for 2nd place, but the guy let her redeem it with wine instead, so I was never really needed. I bought a beer to join her and celebrate the win. It was around 2 am when we went to bed. We had to be up by 7 am for our 9 am bus to Oruro, enroute to Uyuni and its famous salt flats.

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