La Paz

---

So, we arrived in La Paz at about 6am in the morning, absolutely frozen.

Fortunately we´d had the foresight to look up a hotel on the internet a few days earlier, so jumped in a taxi and were soon snuggled up in a proper bed for a few hours of much needed sleep.

After our awful journey from Uyuni we and a group of fellow backpackers agreed to visit Todo Turismo to complain and hopefully get a refund of sorts. The abridged version goes a little like this......... "Thank you, BUT, no thank you...GOODBYE!" Not even an apology!

TODO TURISMO - to be avoided like the plague!

Anyway, La Paz. What a city! So many people, so many cars and so many demonstrations. It seems as though having a rally of some kind is the National hobby!

Whilst in La Paz we must have witnessed at least 5-6 a day, all non-violent but very, very loud with firecrackers going off every few minutes! Well we think they were firecrackers, it could well have been one of the many thousands of policemen on patrol using one of an assortment of weapons at their disposal.....hand gun, machine gun, shotgun, teargas, etc. No expense is spared in controlling these affairs with everything on show, except tanks!!

There are so many people downtown it´s difficult to walk up the street, workers, shoppers and street vendors just seem to be everywhere! Don´t even bother thinking about stepping in to the road because you face very low odds of survival!! Most of the vehicles on the road are either buses, collectivos (minibuses) or taxis and they are all intent on getting to where they are going in the quickest amount of time, irrespective of whether they run anyone over in the process!!!

Having said that, La Paz is a beautiful city. It may not be as clean or as organised as most European cities but it has character and colour and looking around at the old buildings you could see that at one time this must have been a great place.

Needless to say we did a lot of walking around La Paz. San Francisco church, various craft markets and the witches market - where we saw dried llama foetuses, dried frogs and other weird and wonderful things undoubtedly used for some ailment or other.

It seems that all we did for the first couple of days was walk and shop as we found that everything here is sooooo cheap!! You can buy almost anything, from one of the many street vendors, from a pirate DVD to boot laces.......and we nearly did!!!

Having seen enough of La Paz we decided to take a tour to a nearby archeological site known as Tiwanaku.

What an eye opener! We had a fantastic day learning about this pre-Inca civilisation and how they developed from a small farming community to rule most of southern Peru, western Bolivia and northern Chile, spanning over 2500 years.

They are currently excavating the site where they have already found the remains of a Sun gate, Moon gate and a subterranean temple along with many stone carved monoliths.

The subterranean temple for example has 175 stone head carvings built in to the walls, each representing a town/community conquered by the Tiwanaku. Each carving no more than 4 feet from the ground, again representing the dominance of these communities by the Tiwanaku.

Efforts are currently underway to excavate what I can only describe as a palace in the shape of a pyramid, where only weeks before our arrival a mummy had been unearthed.

Having seen evidence of the way they lived and worked and their beliefs, there are very close similarities between the Tiwanaku and the Inca, but for me the Tiwanaku civilisation, lasting over 6 times that of the Inca´s has a far greater depth and is far more original.

With the tour over, we enjoyed a traditional meal of Quinoa soup and llama meat - quite nice, (0% cholesterol!!) and headed back to the hotel for preparations for our early morning departure to Copacabana (not Rio) in the morning.

---