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Published: December 23rd 2009
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La Paz, Bolivia
Wednesday 25th November - Day 80 We ended up arriving in La Paz 3 hours later than schedule, however that's nothing out of the ordinary for South American time keeping...we ended up getting in at about 7pm! The first views of La Paz are from high up in the mountains and you look down on the whole city in the valley below. The city is one of the highest cities in the world...standing at 3600m above sea level!
We were both a little concerned about Bolivia, out of all the countried we had planned to visit, this was supposedly one of the most dangerous for tourists. We definitely had our guard on more than usual...
The first things we noticed coming out of the bus station were the noise from the beeping horns and the pollution from the buses. We were immediately bombarded with 'taxi drivers' offering us lifts but we'd read never to accept lifts from people approaching you here so we carried on walking. We didn't want to hang around with all our luggage on us but at the same time, you need to take your time adjusting to the altitude.
At night
Our first night in La Paz, view of the market We read that the main centre is at the bottom of the valley so we started heading downhill in an attempt to find a hostel. It's not until we got halfway down when we realised we were heading in the wrong direction to the hostel we wanted so had to turn back UPHILL...not the easiest thing to do being so high up...you notice straight away that you struggle to breath from the lack of oxygen/pollution!
Once we finally got back up, tired and out of breath...we found our hostel - Adventure Brew Hostel. This was the first hostel we found but were so tired we didn't care. We weren't impressed however to find that our room was on the 4th floor and there was no lift!! The hostel had everything..all you can eat pancakes for breakfast, free internet, restaurant and best of all...their own microbrewery! The bar/restaurant was on the 5th floor and overlooked the city, had amazing views at night. The bar also offered a free beer each night which we were impressed with.
We shared our room with a girl called Jess from Buckinghamshire and David from New York. Soon as we got in we freshened
up and headed to the bar with Jess and David. There was also another girl there called Monica from the states who decided to share all these horror stories about tourists getting mugged, attached in La Paz...nice! Turns out that a lot of people never actually leave the hostel unless they're booked on a tour as they're too scared! We couldn't believe it...why come all this way not to explore it??
After the beers we headed out just the 2 of us to find somewhere for dinner. The altitude was having a bad effect on us, luckily we weren't sick but we couldn't walk very quickly from being so out of breath. Downtown was a 10 minute walk away from the hostel and it was really busy! We didn't take anything out with us just incase! There was a huge market close by selling fake DVD's, make-up, clothes, food - everything! We ended up finding somewhere for dinner which was a set menu, noodle soup, rice and beef followed by coca tea and all for 40 pence each! The food wasn't overly complicated but it filled us up!
Thursday 26th November - Day 81 We planned to get
up at 8.30am but as we set our clocks wrong we realised after we'd filled up on all you can eat pancakes that it was infact 7.30am. We wondered why there was no one else at breakfast!
We had a day exploring the city and we disguised our day bag as Lizzy's pregnant belly, covering it with a pashmina....it worked like a charm and a lot of the shop women commented on Lizzy being pregnant. It was funny...
We walked round the witches market which sold the skeletons of dead baby llamas!! We also visited the Palace Square where we had jelly and cream which is served on the street. Taking photos felt really risky and we were on guard all the time.
For lunch we went to somewhere a lot nicer than the previous evening but still a 3 course lunch was only 1.50GBP each.
Spent the afternoon on the internet, updating blogs, catching up with friends and family on Skype. By the time we left it was dark, on the way back we picked up hotdog and chips off a street vender for 1 GBP.
In the evening we planned to go to a club called RamJam which
had an oxygen room which we wanted to try out. When we got there however the oxygen room had been closed but we decided to stay anyway as they were having a live reggae/ska band perform. We ended up getting trashed for well under 20GBP between us drinking cocktails and beer all night. We ended up staggering out at about 4am...good night.
Friday 27th November - Day 82 Woke up feeling really groggy!! There were 3 new girls in our room from New Zealand and Sweden. David hadn't been well the last couple of days and the girls were also not well...we hoped it wasn't contatious!
Lizzy made it just in time for breakfast with Jess but left Rick snoring. Once Rick was ready he took advantage of the English Breakfast they served for only 2.50GBP...real English Bacon, fried egg, toast and their version of baked beans....which weren't really baked beans but it was good! We had to meet our GAP group the next day so wanted to make sure we had everything sorted for that.
We new that we needed to have $1100 between us in cash to give to our tour leader...we already had some on
us but needed to get majority out at the ATM. The nearst ATM was about a 5 minute walk away but in a pretty dodgy area...the thought of getting all that cash out really concerned us! We'd never walked so quickly back to the hostel!!
For dinner we went to a British/Indian curry house and had Llama Tikka Massala which was delicious! There was another English couple in there. It was the best service we'd had in the whole of South America.
Saturday 28th November - Day 83 FIRST DAY OF OUR GAP TOUR!!!
We decided to chill at the hostel in the morning, packing our stuff. More people were ill in our room...we were all joking that this was where people come to die...we were glad to be escaping!
We got a taxi to the hotel and we were showed to the nicest room! It was huge with a luxury ensuite! Nice change from the hostel!
In the afternoon Lizzy filled in her New Zealand visa to be able to work whilst we're there and because of our time in high risk TB countries she needed to get a chest x-ray sorted...great! More expense!
We met
Street of La Paz
Notice how the woman carries her child the group at 6.30pm and there were 12 of us in total plus our tour guide. There were only 3 guys in the whole group. We had Emma and Jack from London, Lesley and John from York, Alexis from Birmingham, Melissa from Sheffield, Chiara from Italy, Emmanuelle from Canada, Julie and Millie from Denmark. Our tour guide was Vanessa from Peru...she was 25.
The meeting was to run through the itinery and already alarm bells started to ring...we found out that every tour guide we had we had to tip and they recommended about US$10 each, then when doing the Inka Trail we had to tip the porters US$40 each and so on...worked out that we would need over $100 just on tips aside from the all the money we'd already paid. We also realised that even though we were told we didn't need sleeping bags there would be 3 nights of camping at the end of the trips where no sleeping bags would be provided...not only that, we would be camping in a hotel back garden!! Didn't go down very well in the group.
In the evening we all went out for dinner to get to know everyone...we had
thai which was good.
The next morning we had to be up at 5.15am to travel to Luquina so we had to cross the border to Peru!
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