Advertisement
Published: October 28th 2008
La Paz Skyline
La Paz is set in a deep bowl with snow capped mountains on two sides. It feels like people have just kept on building and building no matter how steep the sides of the valley are.Hola,
So we are back with another entry.
After the Salt Flat Tour we headed to La Paz. Having personal knowledge about the state of the roads in Bolivia we opted to the train as far north as we could. However, we had to travel the last 4 or so hours by coach, which was itself an interesting experience due to the amount of people they crammed onto it everytime we came to a stop, and all the street sellers who would come aboard to sell their wares {some of which got taken along for a ride as it was too packed to get off}. We were very glad to get seats by this point as there were people stuffed in up and down the aisles and whole families in the toilet!
About an hour outside of La Paz the bus started to slow down as we came upon thousands of protesters who were marching on the city. The line of protesters stretched on for miles and was filled with indiginous citizens from all over Bolivia, they had enormous banners, flags, instruments and amazing traditional outfits on. It really was an amazing sight!
The day after we
Cholita Wrestling
You wouldn't want to meet this lady down a dark alleyway! arrived in La Paz the protesters arrived and the city shut down. We realised at this point that we were lucky to have made it into the city as they had put up road blocks and many buses were stuck outside. The hostel that we are staying in has a lovely roof terrace so we decided to go up there and take picture of the march going past. Whilst up there some old Cholitas spotted us and started to shout angrily and throw stones at us! The indigenous population, which is about 90%, aren't too keen on westerners. The people were marching because there was going to be a vote on a new constitution. Bolivia has a lot of oil, but the oil is owned and controlled by a few Spanish Bolivian families who are richer than the government. The new constitution was going to try to redistribute the power and wealth, unfortunately it did not get passed. All in all it was quite an exciting time to be in La Paz.
One afternoon we went along to a Cholita Wrestling event. This really was a slice of crazy Bolivian culture and was full of local families, popcorn, candyfloss,
Unmasked Wrestler
Hanna getting up close to the sweaty wrestlers. Trying to do the pose with him but not quite having the muscles for it. flame throwers, masked wrestlers and best of all women fighters! We watched four fights but the stand out event of the afternoon was an old wrestler against a young cholita in her full traditional dress and long plaits. However, none of these fights were fair as the referee would always get involved and at various points the Ref would hold the cholita down while the old man dropped kicked her! You can imagine the "Boos!" coming from our corner.
Half way through the week we decided to visit Lake Titikaka which is a few hours bus ride from the city. The lake is absolutely enormous and spurned lots of conversations about what constitutes an inland sea as opposed to a lake, is it just salinity or does size count. If anyone has a difinative answer please lets us know. We took a boat journey to the Isla del Sol, which is the birth place of the Incas creation myth. And it was truly idyllic.
Our next big thing is the Inca Trail in Peru. We have been trying unsuccessfully to leave La Paz since Saturday, but because of road blocks and protesters in Peru all the buses have
Bolivian Politics in Action
We watched this march go past for hours as the protesters poured into the city. This photo was taken in between stone missiles! been cancelled until further notice. We are going to see what happens over the next few days and if nothing changes we will book a flight straight to Cusco. South America is an exciting but unpredictable place.
Hasta luego,
Han & Dave xx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.061s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 11; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0337s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Jim
non-member comment
What is the difference between a sea and a lake?
As I read about your dilemma, my immediate thought was that you were both stupid and the obvious answer was... and then I realised you weren't being stupid, so I jono'd it. I think I struck upon a definitive answer with this insightful piece of information on Yahoo!answers: "a sea is way bigger than a lake and has more creatures living in it." But the following answer is much funnier: "Geographers normally respect the names given by the people that first "discover" or at least describe in literature new places. In the past most "seas" are large salty and connected to the oceans - Red Sea, North Sea, Sea of Cortez. However there are inland seas, that are large and salty - Dead Sea, Salton Sea. A few large fresh water lakes have been called seas - Sea of Gallilee. Lakes are inland and nearly always have an outlet, so they remain fresh - Great Lakes. Artificial reservoirs formed by dams are usually refered to as lakes - Lake Havasu, Lake Mead. However some lakes have no outlet and are quite salty - Great Salt Lake, various "dry" lakes. I think in the far past, the term sea meant any body of water sufficiently large as to regularly require navigation by boats as opposed to traversing around by land." x