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Published: November 23rd 2009
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Our bus trip from Copacabana involved a quick ferry crossing and leaving the blue waters of Lake Titicaca and on to the desolate altiplano of Bolivia, long desolate stretches of high altitude flat yellow grassy land, where there are mountains they are dark and creepy looking with white caps. There were a few isolated villages up there but it must be a hard life up there, the towns again seemed dusty, half built buildings and people dotted around here and there.
When arriving to the actual city of La Paz it more or less comes out of nowhere, not like the other large cities you see, you are more or less driving on the flat altiplano and it opens op to what looks like a huge crater filled with a mish mash of buildings, the largest at the bottom and then working there way out, clinging to the sides of the crater. (A guide told me they have a few collapsed buildings on the perimeter every year).
We arrived at Cruz de Los Andes for our stay, with a taxi driver that wa happy for his 3 year old grandson to stand in the front passenger seat. La Paz is different
to the other capital cities we have seen, even though you are in the centre of town it still has a traditional feel, more traditional people than business people. At 3660m and the worlds highest capital it was hard going walking up the many steep streets around town and we were out of breath on more than a few occasions, the buses were big old american things and the sidewalks were filled with traditional women in their tophats sat on the ground with their produce out for sale. It was hard to believe this was the capital.
We went to the cinema the first evening to watch an English language film but that is where the good run came to an end. We have to admit we have been lucky here in South America so a bit of bad luck we were due. I had to cancel a trip to Chacaltaya after having already paid as I was feeling awful and spent the next day in bed, the following day taking it easy we went for a wander to the Plaza Pedro D Murillo, Legeslative Palace, Presidential Palace and the Cathedral and a walk down to Mirador Laikakota which was
closed but still gave a reasonable view of the city.
I guess a few of you have heard of the Worlds Most Dangerous Road which you can ride down from La Paz, just to keep my integrity as a man in tact, the reason I didn't do it it because Deb wouldn't let me! (really) I guess the headline Honeymoon disaster wouldn´t be a good one, and having seen some of the gringos on crutches and badly bruised I guess the wife is right.
Now we had both been looking forward to the Pampas tour to get to see some wildlife on the edge of the Amazon, we had the flight the next morning at 6.15am so we were up early and at the airport (the bus was 16 hours and it would have been there and back on some horrible roads). We were told that instead of landing at Rurrenabaque we would be landing at Reyes, but there would be delays and possible cancellations, we waited till 8am, and were told (well you had to search out the information yourself) to wait till 11am, we were demented by this time having been at the airport so long, come 11.30am
still no news. Finally after pestering the company enough they said wait to 12 but eventually they cancelled the flights. It was the worst day of our trip! Endless waiting and all for a cancellation. We decided in the end not to do the trip, if we arrived tomorrow again and it was cancelled we would have been even more annoyed and that never guaranteed we wouldn't have the same problem getting out. We got a refund from the agents and the guy was telling us that they were doing maintenence on Rurrenabaque (it only has a grass runway) and that Reyes was probably the worst located airport as it always rains there.
Disappointed we decided to leave La Paz that afternoon (very tired and annoyed).........little did we know there was more bad luck on its way!
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