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Published: August 28th 2006
Smile! its carnival time
The university´s really went to town!Yes, another Blog! I know they are coming thick and fast but we are behind and want to catch up. Plus with vast distances and differences between each stop, we got into the habit of doing a blog for each one ..... its become quite a challenge. We will have to re-think this for NZ! Oh and its Gray again, my turn for 2 in a row.
(This first paragraph is for you Tom haha) The first glimpse of La Paz was jaw dropping! The bus drove along at the top of a vast valley that houses the city. Buildings are visible on every drop of land including the steep sides of the valley, right to the top. In the background, the triple snowcapped peaks of a giant Andean mountain, tower above it.
Our hostel was everything we had hoped for (Arthy´s guesthouse), we were very tired from the past week (although fully acclimatised now). The hostel was located on the main road through the center of the city so it was nice to not have to go far to see what goes on. La Paz is a crazy place, in keeping with what we had already seen of
La Paz
You can just about see the mountain in the background. Bolivia. All business, no matter what it is, is conducted on the streets ..... there is nothing you can not buy from a street vendor. To the untrained eye, its chaotic. Its a very difficult city to just stroll about and find somewhere nice to spend your evening. We tried it on the Friday night and it was an hour and a half before we found a nice little bar to have a drink in. Whilst there, a drunk local randomly told us that there was a big party in the city the following day, lots of dancing he said, morning until night. What a surprise! ..... this is getting silly, a parade everywhere we go!
Well, he was not wrong! Not for the first time on this trip, we awoke to the sound of large drums and trumpets. It soon became clear that this was more a carnival than anything, impressive costumes, amazing colours, thousands of people and lots of fun. We had a ringside seat from the balcony of our hostel which was great but spent most of the day at an even closer seat down on the street in the thick of the action. It was
university day and every uni in Bolivia was there strutting their stuff. It was a great day and if it wasnt for the carnival, our first view of La Paz would have been pretty much all I would have had to say about the place, as we didnt really do anything else. We enjoyed our short stay there though, next stop is Lake Titticaca.
Gray x
Friday night sessions = a trip to the hairdressers! There was a whole street end to end with hairdressers, everyone of them packed to the rafters on a Friday night. There was no convincing Gray even though he is starting to look like cousin IT!!
Lynny x
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Sophia
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Carnivals!
Even better than Notting Hill! :) xx