Bolivia

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Thursday 20 July - Bolivia

We went on a tour of La Paz starting with a walk through a preserved part of the old town with narrow streets made of rather slippery bricks and an alarming array of cables attached to tottering poles and house walls.

We were shown the oldest church Basilica of San Francisco dating from 1549.In the main square, Plaza Murillo, we admired the Colonial style buildings including the Presidents office previously the Presidential Palace, originally built in 1850, and the Government building with a back to front clock which signified the new changes brought in by the state.

We walked through the lively and colourful Mercado de Hechicería, Witches Market, which sold a variety of things including cures for almost everything and a variety of ghastly dried animals and skeletons. We bought some good luck charms made from clay, the condor to protect us while travelling and a Pachamama to look after our loved ones at home.

We took two sets of cable cars, the yellow route and the green route passing over the richest area of the city where we met our bus which took us to Moon Valley. This is a remarkable natural area of river silt deposits eroded over the years into a lunar type landscape.Here we could view what is said to be the highest golf club in the world.

We returned to our hotel in downtown La Paz and adjourned to the nearby coffee shop Alexander's where we enjoyed coffee grown from their own plantation plus some ice cream.

That evening we ate a local restaurant called Vienna, Keith enjoyed talking to the owner Paul, he was an Austrian married to a Bolivian and had spent many years working at the Royal York in Toronto.

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