Bolivia - La Paz

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Another long journey ahead of us: this time overnight from Potosi to La Paz. Surprisingly, even here they had a movie service, showing a movie with Arnie Schwarzenegger, my favorite childhood hero. We arrived to La Paz at 6 am and crashed in the closest hostel to catch up on the lost sleep. The Bolivian capital has a truly spectacular setting - it is situated in the attitude of 3,500 m and surrounded by the mountains as high as 6,000 m. Historically it was just a breakpoint on the journey from Potosi to Lima but over time the city grew to become the largest in Bolivia and eventually, after the civil war, it became the seat of the parliament and government. I quite like the town: it has a feel of a large city with skyscrapers and high energy in the streets, but with a local flare (shaman markets with herbs and lama fetuses, ladies wearing traditional cloth, and indigenous people speaking yamara, their native language). Refreshingly, there also seem to be quite a few restaurants offering fresh and sanitized food, catering to western tourists. By then, diet was on the top of my priorities, making my life bearable or miserable depending on the state of my bowel. Nick and I instantly fell in love with the restaurant “100% natural”, serving mostly salads and fruit dishes. Here I was converted into a vegetarian, eating their phenomenal sueno verde (green dream), a spinach avocado sandwich, pretty much every time we went there. Ironically, Bolivian cuisine is actually quite tasty and nutritious, consisting of lots of vegetables and marinated meats, but my stomach just could not handle that.

We booked a flight to Rurrenabaque, small town north east from La Paz, serving as the jump-off point to the jungle and the pampas, but little did we know that they had terrible storms and floods there at that time. As a result all flights were canceled for next three days and we were stuck in La Paz. This gave us opportunity to eat few more times in our favorite restaurant and to explore the city. One afternoon, we also took an afternoon trip to Tiwanaku, the most significant archeological site in Bolivia, just an hour and half west from the Capital. We were dropped off by the road close to the city and since we only had an hour before the closing time of the museum, we hired a local guide to show us around. The site is still being uncovered, with just a fraction of the town being dug out of the ground, but was nevertheless truly impressive. At the time of its peak, few thousand years ago, Tiwanaku was the most advanced culture in South America, building elaborate temples serving as astrological observatories, carving enormous statues from stones hauled hundreds of km away, and constructing complex irrigation systems for their fields. No one quite knows why they suddenly disappeared.

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