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Published: October 23rd 2010
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Back to an Actual City
We departed the island the next day on the 10:30AM ferry. Loaded up with passengers, locals then filled the aisles with themselves, their produce, their kids and their kittens. We had lunch at a local cafe with internet (they informed us that we had to pay for the wifi at the end) and a book exchange, where I got myself a new book - “Berlin Noir” by Phillip Kerr. Actually an anthology of three books about a private detective during the Nazi reign, it’s interesting without being breathtaking. Despite ordering at 12:20, we scraped on to our 1:30 PM bus for La Paz.
The bus had been going for less than an hour when we pulled in to a town and a guy stood up in the aisle to say things to us in Spanish before people started getting off the bus. I knew what this meant - we had to pay someone for something. Turns out that we were getting a ferry across the river and it only cost B$1.50 each but the constant coughing up for more was getting annoying. We were ferried across on a little boat, whilst the bus went over on
The War Memorial
I was particularly flummoxed by the decision to have the great war hero sitting down - until I discovered it was because this pose is depicting his final moments. a barge that was little more than a few planks nailed together with an outboard motor on the back. The fact that it didn’t sink was pretty impressive.
On the other side we had to wait a few minutes for the bus to arrive and so we had a moment to admire this small town’s Plaza. The centrepiece of the plaza was a statue dedicated to Don Eduard Avaroa - a Bolivian hero during the war of the pacific. The war of the pacific for South America has nothing to do with America and Japan in the 1940’s, but was a war from 1879-83 that saw Chile annex 350kms of Bolivian land, leaving Bolivia as the land-locked state it is today.
I was used to pretty standard Australian war memorials. The type that has a soldier wearing a slouch hat, head bowed and gun in front of him with “Lest we forget” inscribed on it. This Bolivian war memorial (if you’ll forgive the phrase) blew the Aussie ones away. On one side was a rather gruesome picture of a Bolivian soldier bayoneting a Chilean soldier in the throat (featuring an appropriate amount of blood coming from the Chilean soldier’s mouth).
The War Memorial
Zoom in for a taste of the blood! On the other side was a picture of a modern soldier, standing in front of a soldier from the War of the Pacific and two children and three bombers flying overhead. Below the tableau was an inscription “Bolivia reclama su salida al mar” (¨Bolivia reclaims the landlocked¨according to Google translate) which I can only take as a warning of further repercussions for Chile some 120 years after the hostilities ceased.
(Suffice to say I was suitably impressed with the statue, the Boss told me to stop taking photos of it after my fifth one.)
We arrived in to La Paz at around 4 in the afternoon. At almost 3600m and with a population of around 1.2 million, La Paz is the highest altitude de facto capital city in the world - the de facto part coming from the fact that Bolivia´s judicial seat is in the city of Sucre. Driving through the suburbs it seemed like any other large city - poor and unremarkable. But coming in to the centre of town the flat suburban area gives way to an enormous valley in which most of the city sits. It is an awesome sight, particularly with the snow capped Mt Illamani (6402m) serving as the backdrop.
We were dropped off in the main tourist part of town, on a street called Sagarnaga, where there were an abundance of tour agencies. We wandered about looking for a hostel and ended up going with one recommended by the LP called “Hostal Maya” on Sagarnaga. At B$110 per night for a shared bathroom we knew we weren’t getting a bargain but were past the point of caring to look any further.
(Later that night we found two hostels within a block of Maya for half the price and the Maya was the second cheapest place the LP recommended in the area by a mere B$10. Clearly their idea of a “shoestring” budget is different from anyone whose expenses aren’t paid for by a large publishing corporation.)
We had dinner at a Japanese/Thai/Indian restaurant and I guess by ordering the chicken vindaloo I was able to move on from the incident at Cuzco’s Indian Restaurant.
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