Blogs from La Paz Department, Bolivia, South America

Hola First things first - my laptop is broken and therefore blogs might become a little less frequent, particularly after I leave Bolivia! Had a great week - after recovering from food poisoning last week, went out to see a twelve piece jazz band last friday at Thelonious Jazz Club - pretty special!! This was followed by a night at Ttkos on the saturday, and a reggae night on the Tuesday, again with live music, getting a serious groove on with Felipe, Toni, Maddie and Deshan! Went to Lago Titicaca on the Wednesday with Toni, Danny, Caro and Deshan. Fantastic couple of days....spent the first day at Copacabana, enjoying a tasty Trucha (fresh trout) by the lakeside with a cold one. Went for a laal walk up to a point above the town, a religious and ... read more

Writing from a small island in Honduras it's hard to think of what to say about Bolivia. It wasn't untill we were on the plane that I realised Central America probably wouldn't be the same, and it's not. Being in La Paz you could feel Bolivia was a bit behind the other countries in S.A. Bolivia seemed to have a little less money and a little less infrastructure but more political spirit and drive to improve every difficulty they face as a collective people. Within two weeks there was 2 seperate strikes and this wasn't a bunch of C.N. workers sitting under a tarp with some Tim Hortons coffees and a box of doughnuts. They had firecrackers and small pieces of dynamite (which we were told were harmless) that rattled windows and set off car alarms ... read more

I spent my last evening in San Pedro de Atacama visiting the incredible Valle de la Luna at sunset, a huge dry valley that looked a little like the place where Luke Skywalker grew up. I then got back to my hostel, packed my things and took a night bus to Arica, on the Chilean border with Bolivia. I stayed in Arica for only a few hours, hanging out at the shabby bus terminal and eating some questionable soup with the local drivers, before taking a comfortable bus over the border to La Paz. This took me through the unbelievable scenery of the Bolivian altiplano, a huge high-altitude plateau between two mountain ranges. After about an hour driving through El Alto, the sprawling surrounding city, a huge valley was revealed with thousands of buildings clinging to ... read more

The journey is incredible from Salta to San Pedro, just breath-taking no kidding the scenery changes every 20-30 mins, over a 10 hour bus journey is ALOT!!! highlights, was 7 coloured mountain, such shades of green, pink, oranges, reds, purples, blues, just amazing all thanks to the diff minerals making up these mountains!! then canyons, rock formations, blinding white salt flats, winding our way up to an altitude of 5,000 m above sea level, you can feel it, as you get out at argentina, chile boarder, wind cuts through you despite hot sun, and air is so thin, you've never had to concentrate on breathing quite so much before!! descending only slightly into the beginning of the driest desert in the world!!! San Pedro is unlike anywhere else i've been thus far, the locals themselves will ... read more

Hola Been lazy on the old blog recently - last week was fairly quiet in all honesty. Strikes all week in La Paz and huge marches, as in bigger than usual, all the time, meant leaving and even getting around the city was slightly problematic!! Still managed to have a lot of fun :) Got couple of other articles done and saw another couple of gigs as well as my friend Benjamin´s party on friday which was an absolutle blast!! Definitely didnt end until an early hour. Went quad biking with everyone on Sunday which was a laugh, although I did manage to tip my quad over by turning a bit fast!! The biking was set in the appropriately named ´moon valley´. Incredible scenery and awesome to be racing around on a pretty fast quad!! Went ... read more

Crazy La Paz We arrived on a bus heading through really run down towns first, before skirting the valley to see the massive city of La Paz covering the whole valley... Immense! We were instantly confronted with the sheer numbers of people here - and its altitude! We decided on Wild Rover hostel (Irish run party hostels, chosen by irish friend Darren) and we all managed to get a room for the night... It really was a party place, we were surrounded by 18 year olds on their gap years but it was good fun all the same. We were advised by the hostel to be very careful over the next few days as it was labour day and there were hundreds of protests in the city. With protests come armed police who indiscriminately fire tear ... read more

So as you can tell, judging by the title of this entry, I set up a hammock in the solarium in the flat, which is like a top floor conservatory!! Since the antics of last weekend, kinda of had to get cracking with a bit of work this week so that took a couple of days of casual grafting! Articles are progressing well and looking forward to the publication of the next issue. Actually spent Thursday afternoon distributing the latest edition of Bolivian Express, about the theatre of La Paz and other areas of the country. If you like you can read it here though there are none of my articles in this edition: http://www.bolivianexpress.org/ Had a few nice meals out, couple of trips to Cafe Alexanders and Cafe Beirut were pretty tasty! On my way ... read more