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Published: April 24th 2008
Hello guys!!
Travelling solo again...
After one month of visit from Norway, I'm now travelling solo again. Siri wen't home on monday, flying from La Paz in Bolivia. And today she arrived in Oslo, after a journey without problems!
The world's highest everything..!!
We crossed the border to Bolivia about two and a half weeks ago, and the contrasts are huge! Argentina and Chile has been really good, but maybe not the biggest adventure. It's a bit too westernized some times. But Bolivia is different. We went from a comfortable semi-cama bus to a rotten bus on dirt-roads. The people was also different. First of all, Bolivia is a much poorer country, actually one of the poorest in South-America...!
But it's a fantastic country! It's the hemisphere's highest, most isolated and most rugged nation.
It's among the earth's coldest, warmest, windiest, steamiest spots and boasts among the driest, saltiest and swampiest natural landscape in the world!!!
As you probably understand, it's a real adventure to travel around in this country!
Round trip in the south-west
As you probably have seen, we had a great trip around in the south-west for 4
days. Seeing a diverse landscape with, volcano's, geysires, salt flats and a lot of lama's ; )
I'm not gonna write more about that, but focus on La Paz, where I am right now.
La Paz
Situated among the mountains in a alltitude of 3660m, La Paz is the highest capital in the world!
La Ciudad de Nuestra Señora de La Paz (the City of Our Lady of Peace) also has the highest international airport in the world. At 4050m, larger planes must land at twice their sea-level velocity, to compensate for the lower atmospheric density. They also need 5 km of runway to lift off in this altitude!
The buildings are spread all over the hillsides of the canyon it's situated in, and on a clear day you can see the snowy peak of Mt. Illimani, 6402m, in the background!
The search for gold The Spaniards founded the city in 1548, because of all the shiny yellow metal in Rio Choqueyapu, which today is flowing under underneath La Paz.
Today the river is full of anything else than gold. According to one source, the river receives 132 000 gallons of urine, 200 000 tons
of human excrement and millions of tons of garbage, animal carcasses and industrial toxins every year!! Not exactly gold anymore : )
But La Paz it self is full of life! In the lower parts of the canyon, you can find the more wealthier area's, with skyscrapers, colonial houses and modern shops, bars and restaurants.
The soul of La Paz is further up along the Rio Choqueyapu. Above the city center are the evergrowing neighbourhoods, which literally spill over the canyon rim and down the slopes on three sides. It's here all the daily hustle and bustle takes place!
El Alto Before you enter La Paz, you drive through a relatively flat part packed with houses, which I thought was La Paz itself. But, it's El Alto. Growing from a melting pot for campesinos, it's now the Aymara (the indigenous people) capital of the world with almost 650 000 inhabitants! And it's still growing with a rate of 5-6%!p(MISSING)er year! It started as a suburb, but is now more like a city in it's own right.
We went up here for a great view from the edge of El Alto over La Paz. On the way to
the Tupac Katari Mirador, we passed through a little street of small blue booths where the locals perform spiritual rituals.
Market's, wool and witches We spent the first day's in La Paz mostly trying to organize plane tickets for Siri. But we also had time to visit some of the market's in town. You can buy pretty much everything in different markets al over. But the most interesting for us tourist's is the handcraft markets with local lama or alpaca wool products and some witchcraft... It's not like in horror movies, but more like product for offering to the god's and spirits in the Aymara world. If you are building a new house for example, you can by a lama fetus to bury beneath the cornerstone as a offering to Pachamama, encouraging her to bring good luck.
You can also by all sorts of herbs and plants to cure different ill's you have.
Other places in the city you can find food-markets, electronic-markets and in El Alto you have one where you can by everything from apples to cars : )
San Pedro Prison - The world's most unique jail!? Yesterday I was on a visit in San
Pedro prison here in La Paz. It's not a regular for shure! It's divided into 8 parts, where I visited only one of them. The prison is unique in that way that there is no guards inside. All is taken care of (both positive and negative) by the prisoners.
It's not easy to get in there. You have to call one of the prisoners to arrange a visit, and it seems that these numbers are going from traveller to traveller....
The section my "group" visited was one of the more wealthier. Some of the prisoners had quit luxurious cell's with privat bathroom and tv! In this section it was only 110 prisoners, but in the poorer section, the number is around 1000! And they don't have their own rooms!!
The prisoner's have to pay for their "rooms" by working, or the tourism. They said that they didn't earn anything from the "entrance fee" we paid, but I'm not shure I believed everything they said ; ) The costs can be up to 150 dollars per month...
Anyway, we was guided around by a junkie, who needed a little "break" in the middle to lit up another joint. He was nice
enough, and had some good stories about the life inside. Around 80 %!o(MISSING)f the people inside are there because of cocaine smuggling, and it was people from all over the world.
The life in this part seemed quit relaxed and safe. But in the other parts it's more going on. On monday it was a man killed on "the other side" of the walls!
It´s also children living in the jail with their fathers, because they don't have any other places to stay.
Tomorrow I'm heading for the mountains for 4-6 days. The Condoriri Massif is a cluster og 13 peaks, and I will try to climb 2-3 of them. It's a nice change from the city life : ) Picture's and update is coming up next week!
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RC Carr
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La Paz
Loved your blog about La Paz. It gives you a good idea of what it looks like without being judgmental about the circumstances of the city. I would have liked to hear more about the effect of the altitude if any and more about the places you visited, less jail more colonial or pre colonial sites.