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Published: July 29th 2008
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Arrived in La Paz at 10am desperate for a shower after the overnight bus! Couldn´t get in to a dorm room yet so Max and i dumped our bags and headed out to explore. I really didn´t like La Paz when we first arrived, having come from Samaipata which is such a small, clean place and only 1,650m above sea level we were now at a dizzying height of 3,660m and apart from the fact that i couldn´t breathe because of the altitude, it is so huge and busy and the pollution is really bad. Lots of micro buses zoom up and down the main street with someone hanging out the window shouting the destinations they are going to and you can´t understand them but they are so cheap only GBP 0.12!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We had planned to do a walking tour around the markets but stopped for a long lunch instead because it was so tiring trying to walk uphill! We bumped into Simone who we´d met in Sucre and arranged to do the "Death Road" mountain biking trip for Sunday with him and crashed out at the hostel suffering a bit from the altitude!
We were very lazy and
ordered take away pizza that night but i said i´d call them so ran across to the Entel call shop and attempted to order a pizza but couldn´t understand what the guy on the other end was saying, he was speaking so fast so i asked Entel man if he´d help me out. His dad was in the shop at the time so i showed him where our hostel was and gave him all the details for the order and Entel man´s dad ordered our pizza for us. Think some Spanish lessons might come in handy!
Max went off on a motorbike trip the next day and i did the walking tour that we didn´t do the day before which took me up through the market stalls where they sell everything from batteries to clothes and bags and musical instruments, then on to the Witches Market where they sell lama foetuses which are apparently for good luck! The Bolivian women actually sit in their stalls, even if they are selling food, they actually sit on the big bags of it and you have to duck under the covers of the stalls because they are all set at Bolivian height!
I wandered further into the market and came across the meat stalls, you could feel the heat and there was no refrigeration, it was all just hanging out and the blood was dripping down the path it didn´t smell too pleasant either!
Further on i came across lots of cute little animals all squashed up together in cages, there were chickens, ducklings, rabbits and guinea pigs and with my limited Spanish i asked if they were for pets or to eat and the lady said they were to eat! God knows what i´ve been eating for the past couple of weeks but it might explain the dodgy tummy!!!
Went mountain biking on the Death Road with Max and Simone the next day. We piled into the minibus and met the 6 Brazilians and an Essex boy who were in our group and set off to the top of the mountain. When we arrived at the top we looked over the edge of the cliff and there was a smashed up bus at the bottom but we think that was just for effect rather than an actual accident, although it is called "Death Road" because a couple of
people have died but they have stopped the vehicles on the road now so it is just for cyclists.
I started to cycle downhill and realised i´d left my camera in the minibus so started to run back uphill to get it forgetting how high up i was and collapsed in a heap infront of the bus completely out of breath and the driver picked me up and put me in the bus and gave me a lift back to my bike. The Death Road is 75 kilometres long and i thought it was going to be easy being all downhill but no such luck, the road is just a dirt track with loads of stones and is so bumpy you had to concentrate so much as well as trying to check out the awesome views. My hands were hurting from gripping on to the breaks so tightly for fear of flying over the edge of the mountain into a 150m drop and my bum was hurting as i hadn´t ridden a bike for so long - i could have done with a few tips from my cousin to help me on route but unfortunately he´s too busy training
Laurence DeLalio for a charity bike ride!!!
We arrived at the bottom of the mountain so hot and sweaty and drove the short distance to the outdoor swimming pool we´d been promised and laughed at the fact that we´d asked if it was heated earlier on in the day but we were all now dripping pools of sweat and wanted it to be cold!
We spent the afternoon by the pool then got back into our minibus for our 3 hour journey back to La Paz stopping for beers on route to keep us entertained! Deborah, one of the Brasilian girls, and i spent most of the time squealing and covering our eyes as the Bolivian drivers are a little mental. We´re on a narrow, winding mountain track and the driver tries to overtake lorries as we´re coming up to corners - crazy!!! It´s like they wait until they see a corner to start overtaking, there were a couple of scary moments but we made it safely back to camp in the end!
Said goodbye to Max the next day as he was travelling on and i was stopping in La Paz for some Spanish lessons. I
moved hostels to Loki hostel which is full of English and Irish travellers and known to be a party hostel which was not exactly ideal when i was trying to study Spanish! I bumped into Ed who i´d met in Sucre that first afternoon and ended up going out with him and couple of other people from the hostel and had a heavier night than i had planned to so wasn´t quite as fresh for my first lesson as i had intended to be!!
I became a bit of a hermit after that and spent my mornings having Spanish lessons with Carmen who was lovely and spent my afternoons doing homework in a local cafe where there were only Bolivians so that i wouldn´t get disturbed! A week was not really long enough, it felt like we were just getting somewhere towards the end of the week and using more vocab etc but I enjoyed it and it has made me try and speak more Spanish along the way. I didn´t have a class on the Wednesday because it was "La Paz" day so a public holiday - never a dull moment in La Paz there´s always a protest
about something going on and i was lucky enough to catch the festival for La Paz day although nearly got crushed in the crowds the streets were overflowing with people! Looking forward to getting away from the madenss for a while and visting the jungle!
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