Blogs from La Paz Department, Bolivia, South America - page 229

Back in Puno, we bumped into a few fellow backpackers we had met en route and decided to celebrate the occasion with a slap up meal and some pisco sours (local drink). 'Slap up' in Peruvian terms means a 'hefty' food bill of 35 Soles each! this equates to six pounds back home!! It was nice to see familiar faces again. So it was a 'muy triste adios' to Peru, the land of the Incas after our six week stint. We loved the country and what it had to offer; the hospitable people, the ma-husive and very impressive Andes, the never-ending deserts, the ancient ruins and sacred valleys, the pre-Inca sites, and not forgeting of course our time with Bruce Peru. But once again it was time to groove on. South America is a huge continent ... read more

The first thing to say is Bolivia easily my favourite place so far, an excellent place to travel and loads of fun. It exactly what I´m looking for when I come to these distant lands. Nothing entirely works as expected which makes getting around and doing things way more fun. There are loads of fantastic sights to see and great things to do, in the north is Amazonian Rain Forest, Andean Mountains run through the middle, Salt Plains and spectacular parks in the south, Deserts, Mines and as its a 3rd world country everything is dirt cheap. Could easily have stayed alot longer. La Paz, its claim to fame being its the highest capital city in the world at 3500m-4000m. The city is in a canyon which means the streets either go up or down. You ... read more

Day 28,29 and 30 We arrive in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, around lunch time. While deciding what to do that afternoon we found out that there was a football match on at the local stadium. Not only that but it was a local derby between Bolivar (the Champions) and The Stongest. So we and a couple of the girls made our way by crazy taxi down to the ground. We got the best seats in the house for around 3 and a half quid. It ended 2 each and although the football wasn´t the greatest we had a really good time. Fot the next 2 days we spent out time wandering round the city and chilled out. Visting loads of markets one of which was a witches market, which was selling things like condor ... read more

The self styled 'World's Most Dangerous Road' (WMDR) is a stretch of dirt 'road' from La Cumbre high above La Paz (4700m) down to Corioco (1200m) and is a notorious must do for travellers to this part of the world (recommendations from Marcus, Fionne, Kim, Ricky and multiple others). The trip with Barro Bikes started with a 07.30 breakfast where we unexpectedly met Kevin/Claire who had enjoyed the same bus journey as us from Uyuni to La Paz. We were also joined by Joe, a professional poker player from California. This was obviously a trip for risk takers. An hour's drive out of La Paz brought us to La Cumbre where we were introduced to our bikes which were in the same good condition as the one on display in the office, something we weren't pinning ... read more

November 26, 2005 (Puno, Peru) Sean: After visiting Machu Picchu we spent the day wandering around Aguas Calientes, just bumming around after our long day trekking up and down the stone steps and alleyways (the Incas must’ve had great leg muscles). Even with our previous night’s refreshing slumber, we didn’t dally about until the wee hours and went straight to bed. The next day it was up early and out the door to catch the train and head back to Cuzco. After a fairly uneventful 2 hour train ride we managed to catch a cheap ride for the final two hour leg into Cuzco. Side note: Today was Thanksgiving and in keeping with tradition and the spirit of the pilgrims, I ate grilled Alpaca. It was quite delicious. It tastes like a very lean beef, but ... read more