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Published: April 17th 2006
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Witch´s Market
Justin checking out some stuff at the Witch´s Market in La Paz. (petrea, check your email)
Justin here.
Well, today was an interesting mix of half-asleep traveling and sightseeing in La Paz. We woke up at 4:30 after about three hours of sleep, packed up our stuff, and took a taxi to the airport. I slept on and off most of the time, so I´m not altogether sure what happened, but we got there fine and on schedule. We got our tickets, went through security, and headed toward our gate - but when we got there, we learned that they had changed the gates for our plane, so we walked pretty much all the way back to where we started and then waited there for a few minutes. We boarded the plane okay, and everything was fine.
The flight was about 5 hours, but we stopped twice along the way, in both Iquique and Arica. We had about 30 minutes at Arica while other passengers boarded, and we wanted to hop off and change our Chilean pesos back into $US, because you can´t buy much with Chilean money in Bolivia, but they wouldn´t let us (probably because we had already passed through international customs in Santiago, and Arica isn´t and international airport). Dad had changed his money already, but I still had 10 thousand pesos - $20, more or less. The only thing I could do with it was buy something from the duty-free catalog they had on board, so I bought two boxes of Swiss milk chocolate ($9 each). Pretty expensive, but I had nothing else to do with the money... and the chocolate tastes great. (On board they have a list of radio programs you can listen to, and I´ve listened to the same one on every flight they´ve had it - this one repeated itself three or fours times, so now I have Coldplay´s "Talk" stuck in my head for the next few days.)
Dad and I both caught up on some sleep on board, and actually felt marginally rested by the time we disembarked in La Paz. The La Paz airport is on the outer rim of the city, at about 13,300 feet above sea level. We forgot to take the altitude medicine we´d so painstakingly purchased (searching for some in Santiago, checking with a doctor back in the States, and finally buying some in Viña del Mar) the day before, which you´re supposed to do to prevent altitude sickness. We made up for it by taking some on the plane... but it wasn´t early enough, as we later found out.
As we got off the plane and passed through customs, we began to feel the first effects of being so high up. Maybe the lack of food and sleep contributed too; I can´t say for sure. But some weird things started happening. Hands and faces began to tingle. Not really unpleasantly, kind of like when you go to the dentist and have your mouth numbed. Then the headaches set in, and the slight bit of nausea - and especially the dizziness. Everytime we stood up (or sat down, for that matter), the room would spin and black dots appear in our peripheral vision. Even as I´m typing this, 8+ hours later, I´m feeling lightheaded and my fingers are tingling. Our symptoms changed throughout the day. The tingling would disappear and reappear at random, although moving too quickly (i.e., at anything faster than a snail´s pace) or exerting ourselves (not too hard at 13,000 feet) would contribute to the dizziness; what´s more, strange parts of the body would tingle, like kneecaps of elbows or toes. My face has tingled for the last hour or so, which kind of worries me, but hopefully I´ll be better in the morning.
Anyway, we left the airport and found a taxi to take us to our hotel. The drive through La Paz was amazing. The city itself is about 12,000 feet, and is nestled in a huge bowl-like valley. We were at the rim of the valley, where the airport is, and so we drove down into the city and got to see the whole valley all at once, thousands of homes and buildings spread out under a misty sky (the mist and fog covered everything, like a lid on the bowl). The streets in La Paz are really narrow and sloped sharply downhill (or uphill, I guess, depending on where you´re standing), and cars drive like crazy on them; you´re always hearing people´s horns honk.
We went to our hotel, Hotel Europa. It´s the most expensive hotel we´ll stay in, but boy, it´s worth it. Huge room - sitting room, two tvs, kitchen, walk-in closet, sauna (not in the room though)... everything. It´s too bad we´re not staying here longer.
After resting at the hotel and eating some room service (and trying to wash our clothes), we headed out into La Paz. We took a taxi up to a street near a church, San Francisco, that we wanted to visit. Right next to where we were dropped off were a few travel agencies, so we went in one and tried to plan out the last few days of our trip. It took some time and some rearranging, but finally we hammered out a pretty good schedule. Tomorrow we´re going to take a taxi to Copacabana, by Lake Titicaca, and look around there, then go on to Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) and Isla de la Luna (Island of the Moon), where we´ll see some pretty cool stuff, some ruins and a great view of the lake. Then it´s on to Perú - the border cuts Lake Titicaca in half, and we have to cross on land, on a strip that spans the lake at the the southern end - and then we´ll take another taxi to Puno and then to Juliaca, cities on the Peruvian side of Titicaca. Juliaca has nothing there (reminds me of La Pincoya - the travel agent tried to persuade us not to go there, but then turned out great), but should have a nice enough hotel - and it has an airport, a huge plus. We´ll fly the following day to Cuzco and then tour cities around there, Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, etc. until the end of the week. Should be a lot of fun.
After we figured all this out, we took a walk through the city. We went to La Mercada de las Brujas (The Witches´Market) and took a look around. It´s just a street with some shops on both sides, but everything they sell is magical and witchy and all that. We bought some small statues of a puma, an owl, a condor (bird), and some other stuff, all for only a few dollars. They all have to do with Pachumama, mother earth. This region is considered by the locals to be the birthplace of humanity, and Lake Titicaca the center. They even sold petrified animals, armadillos and birds and cats and stuff... but we decided to pass on that. (I use the term "petrified" loosely - what they looked like was basically road kill. A freaky, mangled and tangled, squished animal with scary bulging eyes. Something that would freak you out at night if it was in your room)
We then went to the church of San Francisco. We didn´t take any pictures inside, there was a service going on and it would not have been cool - it was mostly like the other churches we´ve been to, but maybe better. We did get some pics of the outside, though. Then we walked back here to the hotel, ate some Burger King (nothing like good old American food), and are just about to head off to bed - we have a long day ahead of us. A long week, as a matter of fact. So, for now, I´ll let Dad take over. See ya later.
Hola,
All sounds good to me. It is a DISASTER trying to schedule the Machu Picchu train. We'll see what happens, but before leaving I had spoken with several travel agencies via email and phone (none of which knew about the later trains), then talked to Peru-Rail 3 times (count them... THREE), all with promises to get me the info so I could wire the money. (no credit cards, only wire, and only after they email you specific instruction, which I never got). Curtis is helping Petrea try to finish it for the past week (THANKS CURTIS) - but more of the same treatment. We'll be in Cuzco by Tuesday morning and just do it there, hoping its not full.
I'm excited about lake Titicaca. Hopefully the altitude will go easy on us, since our "whirl-wind" agenda doesn't leave us the suggested day to adjust.
Hugs and kisses to all,
Mark
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Petrea
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Hi guys!! It's great that you could add to this in Bolivia. I'm the only one still up to read it so the kids can read it tomorrow. Keep telling us what you are doing. I'll check my email. Love, Petrea