Blogs from La Paz, La Paz Department, Bolivia, South America - page 18

Geo: -16.4983, -68.146La Paz proved to be a challenging city in more ways than one: The first challege was getting in and out of our hotel. The street outside was congested with traffic edging in both directions past market stalls atrracting huge numbers of passers by making purchases for the Festival of the Virgin and its accompanyng parties and carnival parades. Stalls were selling masks, florescent wigs and costumes for both adults and children, together with silver and gold confetti and flower petals to throw at the parade. Huge water pistils and foam canisters were also on sale to kids and teenagers - we often got caught in their cross fire in the crowded streets. In the day we saw young kids dressed in imaginative costumes leaving their parade and late the adults started partying - ... read more

After arriving so early in the morning and with so little sleep the last few nights, we had everything crossed we would be able to check into our hotel! Luckily for us, they were brilliant and we were checked in our room before 7am! So we went back to bed for a few hours to give us some sight seeing energy. La Paz is a city built at high altitude, 3660m! It is built into the hill sides and is really quite fantastic to behold! There are just thousands of houses up the mountain as far as you can see. Although there are specific sights to see in La Paz, a lot of the interest lies in just walking around the streets. It's a really busy market town, and we spent a couple of hours just ... read more

We ended up in La Paz ahead of schedule (not that we have much of a schedule to speak of to start with) as we had planned to meet with friends of mine here. Ann-Marie and Andrea were on a 3 week holiday and were planning to head to Rurrenabaque via La Paz. We had a couple of days until they arrived and figured we'd follow almost every tourist who comes through here and attempt the death road on mountian bikes. The road runs from La Paz to Coroico and plunges from 4600m to 1600m in around 80km. It was built by 10,000 Paraguayan prisoners of war in the 1930's (Bolivia started a war with it's neighbour to gain access to the ocean, having lost it's costal region to Chile in a previous war. Bolivia lost ... read more

Puuuh too much to tell... So the first place I visited was Lake Titicaca, with James. Arriving in Puno, we visited the local market to get some breakfast, as this is the only place thats open at 5.30 in the morning (surely will miss that when I return home...)!! Our tour finally started at 7.30am and the first stop was a floating island. Its weird, they are built on floating roots, covered with plants and very soft to walk on, they have to put new grass on them every short while, as it would be too muddy otherwise. The island hosts 10 families, in total about 32 people. There are about 70 floating islands on the lake! And each one of them lasts about 15 years I seem to remember. The president of the island that ... read more

30thSeptember – La Paz La Paz is the seat of government in Bolivia and is also known as the defacto capital as well. La Paz is built in a canyon created by the Choqueyapu River (now mostly built over), which runs northwest to southeast. The city's main thoroughfare, which roughly follows the river, changes names over its length, but the central tree-lined section running through the downtown core is called the Prado. The geography of La Paz (in particular the altitude) reflects society: the lower areas of the city are the more affluent areas. While many middle-class residents live in high-rise condos near the center, the houses of the truly affluent are located in the lower neighborhoods southwest of the Prado. And looking up from the center, the surrounding hills are plastered with makeshift brick houses ... read more