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Published: June 15th 2010
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Crossing the Peru-Bolivia border The estimated 5-6 hour bus journey turned into 10 as Ricardo had booked us on a crappy bus that dropped us in Copacobana for an hour or so before we had to catch a different bus to La Paz, meaning we missed the footie. As you can imagine, the boys not too happy. And the icing on the cake was an annoying travelling companion, we nicknamed Jesus, an irritating American guy who had issues at the border that kept us all waiting, as US citizens have to pay 130 bucks to enter Bolivia and of course, while he acted like a travelling guru know-it-all, he had no money (and apparently no common sense). It was a pretty easy crossing apart from him though, and we had lunch in Copacobana - a dodgy minced tuna sandwich for me and a burger for Ian. We set off again on bus number 2 on which we had to cross Lake Titicaca on the Bolivian side, involving an interesting crossing for the vehicles and a short but bumpy boat ride for us (Lisa's eyes closed the entire time). Once safely on the other side we hopped back on the bus and proceeded, travelling through mountains,
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Lunch stop at Copacabana agricultural land and little towns before reaching the suburbs (El Alto) of La Paz, a busy, dusty, crowded town which was a sign of what was to come. Driving into La Paz itself, you're presented with the most amazing views as you come into the valley from up high and progress down to the city. All you can see are houses everywhere, clinging to the mountain sides, where over a million people live. And all overlooked by Mount Illimani, which you can’t actually see from the city itself unfortunately. We got to Hotel Sargarnaga, which is the first proper place we've stayed in with a lift, a bar and even maid service. But once again the telly wasn't working properly! We dumped our bags and went for a delicious dinner at Luna Cafe, an Arabic place serving great food - hummus, kippe, kebabs, falafels, taboulle, the works! And the friendly guy running the place added to the experience too. More rum was drunk whilst playing cards downstairs in the lobby (oooh, how posh!) before we headed off to Sopacachi for some La Paz nightlife. We started in a local bar with some local band playing super loudly, smoked Koen's Havana
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Local ladies cigars and met a strange local girl who became our new best friend. Then it was off to Mongos, a rammed travellers and locals hangout, where we had a bit of a boogie, got sufficiently wasted and Lisa has no memory of leaving...
Suffice to say, the following day was a ""Day of Death" for Lisa (but it was a Sunday so therefore allowed), spent in bed trying to watch the crappy TV and sleeping while Ian computerised and then went for pizza with the Dutchies, kindly bringing Lisa back a take away.
Managed to actually leave the hotel the next day and went wandering to Plaza San Francisco, with its endless Aymara market and huge colonial church with people just hanging around outside not doing very much. Next square, Plaza Murillo with a million pigeons and people feeding them (why??), a cathedral with a crazy lady preaching inside, the Palacio Presidencial with ceremonial guards outside and the Parliament building. We stopped for lunch - a slice of pizza and a hotdog for Ian and salad for Lisa. They served the most amazing looking ice creams too which we managed to resist. A wander down Calle Comercio led
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How our coach crossed the lake to us adding to the ever growing cheap DVD collection.
In La Paz, you're always walking up, up, up and constantly getting out of breath because of the altitude (over 3500m) so the only thing to do was drink some more medicinal rum and watch the footie, even though the hotel guy had told Koen the score. And it was back to the same pizza place again for dinner, although it was only soup for me. A night of debauchery followed in the hotel room until the wee hours. Poor Carissa and Koen then left for La Pampa the next day and had the joy of an 18hour bus journey (but they're young so can handle these things!). Us? We spent the day in bed recovering, had another pizza takeaway dinner and watched a few movies, just about all our brains could take.
The next day we decided we should get out of La Paz, as it was doing our health no good, so we got up, packed and stored our luggage, before checking out tickets to Cochabamba at the bus terminal. We squeezed in a bit more sightseeing - Calle Jaen, the best preserved colonial street in
the city which was pretty and colourful, Calle Ingavi where we had a mooch round Museo de Etnografia y Folklore, in a 17th century mansion built around a courtyard, exhibiting atrefacts from the 3 Bolivian cultures - Aymara, Uru Chipaya and Tarabuquenos. There was also an interesting money exhibit and a freaky mask display. We saw dried llama foetuses at the Witche's Market too, which stirred the appetite so went for lunch at Banais Cafe - a veggie filled pitta bread for Lisa and a club sandwich for Ian plus a yummy fruit shake. We then hung round in the hotel, basically to keep warm (it's cold at altitude!), used the Internet and what not, before eating again. This time dinner at the other Luna restaurant across the street - pasta and burger to share. We left the hotel with slightly bitter taste in the mouth as the hotel guy got arsey at the fact we'd stored our bags there all day (no idea why) and so he refused to help us get a taxi, saying they couldn’t come down street, which was a bald faced lie and ended up with us having to catch a taxi off the street
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Ian waiting to board our little ferry (not the safest) to the bus terminal. But we were greeted with a lovely, comfy bus courtesy of Crucero bus company, and a friendly local lady wrapped up next to us in 400 blankets...with good reason as it was bloody freezing! We had seats with a view again at the front and they started to show a film but switched it off halfway through so it was sleepy time for us.
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