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Published: February 13th 2007
In Puno we bought our tickets straight to La Paz. We really recommend this bus trip by day as you will see the lake Titikaka in it´s full beauty. Little tip here, make sure you sit on the left hand side of the bus as you will get to see much more. We traveled past the lake for hours before a quick stop at the bolivian border, money exchange (including a purchase of Chilli Cheese Pringles) and we were off to our lunch break in Copacabana. Crossing borders by bus, in our experience, is so much better than by plane, especially as you don´t have to pay "gringo departure tax" as you do at most of the main airports. It seems much quicker and more relaxed too. The boarder was the typical laid back afair we have become acustomed to in South America. Fill in your imigration form, putting down your address, passport number etc.. (which incidentaly seems to be a token gesture as they never check), stand in line, get your 2 Stamps, and away you go.
After the boarder was more travel around the lake. The Bolivian side seems much prettier somehow, and the building styles change rapidly
The Hustle of the Big City
The vans with the numbers on them are kinda busses, you get them in Peru too. They drive along and a bloke shouts the destinations out of the window at high volume.once across the boarder. On the Peruvian side, the mudbrick house rules, but in Bolivia they have moved on to the red bricks. It is the only place we have ever seen in the world where they will put a redbrick extension or second floor ON TOP of a mudbrick groundfloor. Now maybe this is the practical engineer in Andy, but it somehow seems an obvious bad idea. Perhaps we underestimate the strength of baked mud with straw in it, but by our reconing, brick is stronger than mud, and placing bricks on top of mud is a recipe for disaster. But then what do we know, we didn´t see any that had fallen down yet so.......
So there we were on the Bolivian side of the Lake, and we finally reached our lunchstop at Copacabana very touristy but sweet with a little hippy vibe. A lot of people on the street selling anything the tourists might want, from snacks and drinks to jewelry, bags and clothes. Some of the salesmen/women didn´t look bolivian at all. They must got "stuck" on their way through Bolivia 😉
Gladilly we changed our last 15 Soles for Bolivianos as we could
not find a bank in Copacabana. So we had to hunt for a very cheap lunch. No problem in Bolivia!!! We paid about 6.50 Bolivianos for two of us for a road snack and a drink - that is about 50 p!!!
At 13:00 our bus was supposed to leave Copacabana for La Paz - but don´t forget, we are in Bolivia! 13:35 was still more than acceptable. On this part of the journey you will see even more stunning views of the enourmous lake. Blue-green waters surrounded by mountains and in the very far you could even see the snow covered mountains. Difficult to describe such a world beauty. On the bus we made friends with a little boy who was accompanying the bus driver. We are very proud to say that all conversation was held in SPANISH!!! The one week language course was worth it! The boy was asking us questions about England and Germany and was very surprised to hear that you can´t get there by bus from Bolivia 😊
One last piece of excitment on our trip to La Paz and one that we had not been warned about was the boat crossing. Now,
on the map we had seen that there was a watery gap between us and La Paz, but we had assumed a bridge or something. Oh no, this is Bolivia, so we took the wooden raft over the water. Our use of the term raft is in no way downplaying the sheer shonky nature of the thing, it really was a raft with a tiny outboard motor on it. How it a) Didn´t Sink and b) Pushed all the weight with the tiny motor, is a complete mystery. Luckily we got over the river in a more civilised boat, which stood marginally less chance of meeting a watery doom, unlike our bus. Now, this cost us another 3 Bolivianos each, which we hadn´t been told about or budgeted for, and luckily this was all we had, so we lucked out here. But if you plan to take this trip, make sure you have some Bolivianos to spend, you will need them. Boat crossing made, we were on the bus and on our way to La Paz again!
About 3 hours later we reached the outskirts of La Paz. We passed El Alto, a poorer area of La Paz, which
Best Ice Cream in Town
Dumbos - La Paz, highly recommended by these 2 travelers, despite its dodgy name and McDonaldsy feel is placed on top of the mountains. After that a stunning view opend to us as we were to ascend to the vally of La Paz. Another tip here, make sure you sit on the right hand side of the bus this time to have a full view. It is breathtaking to see this vast city enclosed by stunning mountains. Another thing you have to experience yourself. El Alto was once another town to La Paz but it is now so large it is considered a suburb. It really is the poorer area of La Paz, and even this close to the city, the roads are still dirt track. You can really see the poverty here, and it gives the place a rough and dangerous looking edge. Not somewhere you would venture at night, or even by day for that matter, looking like a gringo.
This time we had our hostel prebooked. Arthy´s is just 7 minutes walk from the bus station, so it was nice not to have to hail a taxi. However, we soon discovered how strenuos walking through the city can be. Because it is placed in a sort of valley you always walk either up
or down. Obviously, the walk down is much easier than the walk up but with a backpack on with all your possesions in, a walk anywhere is always a chore. Lukilly we were aclimatised to the altitude by now, due to our stay in Arequipa and Puno, so we had no trouble with that despite us being over 3500m in the sky.
We left the hostel as soon as we arrived to find a place for dinner. The city welcomed us with warm sunshine, avenidas full of street vendors and beautiful open plazas. It felt touristy in places but far less hassle than in parts of Peru. The only thing that was new to us were the "shoe shine boys". They are absolutely everywhere and they try hard to polish as many shoes as they can. They can look frightening to us gringos as they wear full face covers, a bit like a balaklava, but apparently this is their way of not being recognised doing such a job. They look a little like your average Chav back home, clad in baseball cap with hoodie up over the cap, but with the added menace of the balaklava. After a great
View up the hill
As you can see La Paz is surrounded by rock. Up that hill was Arty´s Guesthouse, our rather nice hostel. Deffo would recommend, it had a shop in and everything. restaurant dinner, that cost us two together about 8 pounds, and let me say that is a lot in Bolivia, we went to bed exhausted as if we were climbing the Everest.
The next day was again full of sunshine and we walked all the way through La Paz, visiting various markets. La Paz is really a buzzing and busy city, with lots of traffic noise and people everywhere. The place feels very different from your average capital city, with very little in the way of traditional tourist attractions to keep you busy. We discovered a great ice cream place and treated ourselves to a big one 😊 A bit more walking to walk the ice cream off and wine and a DVD "Oliver Twist" for dinner and so our day came to an end.
On our last day in La Paz the weather didn´t look too promising and it really started to rain and HAIL! in big chunks during mid day and afternoon. This was an ice storm of epic proportions with chunks of ice big enough to take your eye out. We have never experienced anything like it and it had people running for cover everywhere! Due to the steepness of all the streets in La Paz, rain causes massive rivers of water to start for flow down the streets. Not sure where it all ends up in the end as everything seems to be up or downhill but where ever it is, there must be one hell of a puddle! We escaped to the hostel and grabbed our waterproof jackets to be on the safe side. It was crazy to see all the water coming down the streets. In the evening we caught up with Kim and Luke from the S-Squad and luckily we discovered that all of us got over the Arequipa bug. Later at night we grabbed some local specialities on the market (pizza, salchicha-pappas, and a fanta) and headed home to pack our bags for the journey to Santiago.
After we arrived at the airport we discovered an unpleasent surprise, US$ 24 EACH!!! Gringo Departure tax was asked of us... that is more money that we spent during our whole stay in Bolivia. Now it isn´t strictly a Gringo tax this one, as they seem to make everyone who leaves the country pay, not just us. Still it is a real kick in the balls to find yourself $50 lighter for the pleasure of leaving their country, especially as you have very little choice in the matter. How crazy is that?!
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Ginger! Nuts ! I'm sorry I've not written in a while, started a new job and been busy ! Wow Bolivia ! It looks just as beautiful as when kat came back.. I wonder where youre off to next ? As I said I've started the new job and doing a fair bit of travelling myself, but only in Europe. You'd be proud Josie Im off to Germany next week! But its not nearly as beautiful as Bolivia !! Im glad to read youre both well and dare I say it I think you've even got a tan ?!!! Kat said you might be popping your head to Fiji and Im planning on doing the same towards the end of the summer, so our paths might cross soon eh ?! Take care, Jabuticaba x p.s - Thats ice cream looked lush !! It was always about the food for me !