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Bus on Board
The novel way of getting from one side of Lake Titicaca to the other - bridges aren´t obviously popular here.We´ve really enjoyed our four-day stay in La Paz, the highest capital city in the world. The journey from Copacabana in a local bus will be remembered for; the lady at the back of the bus hiding a meowing kitten under her blanket, messily shelling monkey-nuts to stave off our lunch time hunger & watching our bus being cautiously ferried on a barge, across one side of Lake Titicaca to the other in a "water is no obstacle" short-cut to the big city.
Arriving into La Paz by road, affords a natural vantage point to marvel at the city, which appears to be built in a huge crater. On closer inspection, the shops, university, business districts and salubrious residential areas, nestle in the centre of the bowl and the poorer residential areas work their way up the mountain side, encirling the city in a haze of breeze blocks, terracotta bricks and corrugated tin roof work. In the south of the city, in between the high rise office blocks, you often catch a distant glimpse of the snow covered Huayna Potosí mountain - a stunning show of the engineering capabilities of man and nature.
You could walk around La Paz
in about a day but we took our time - interspersing museum visits with running a few errands. We negotiated the Bolivian postal "system" in order to send accumulated alpaca knitwear home and then paid a visit to the Museo de Coca - a tiny room filled with interesting facts and pictures associated with this innocuous looking, little leaf. It was well worth the visit to find out that in colonial times, when the Catholic Church demonised the plant and discouraged native Bolivians from chewing the leaves, the productivity of the country´s silver mines decreased. Consequently, the Conquistadors reinterpreted this religous decree to suggest that the plant could be consumed when at work but not during leisure time! By chewing coca leaves, miners could work their long shifts with little food or feeling of pain and therefore extracted more silver to be sent to the Spanish crown. Also, did you know that Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine and the plant is still one of the ingredients in its well-guarded secret recipe!?
After a few days in La Paz you get the sense that the city is one big market where you can buy everything you want from a store
The Bustling "El Prado" in La Paz
The "El Prado" is the main track through the city. and a little bit more...after some haggling! We stumbled upon Eloy Salmon - a road filled with electronics shops and market stalls, selling anything with a micro-chip in it. Perfect when your digi-camera battery is failing - T was in motherboard heaven! La Paz also boasts a witches market where stalls sell herbs, potions and the foetuses of Llamas- useful if you ever need to ward off those evil spirits (warning: picture below). After being slightly sketched out by the witches, we visited the Museo de Tiahuanaco which houses artefacts from the Incan, Tiahuanacan, Moche & Chimu cultures. Given that we visited ruins of each of these civilasations in Peru, we strode in as budding Arch. & Anth. -ologists, only to find ourselves mimmicking the pottery on display. I think travellers´ museum fatigue may be setting in!
We stayed near to the Plaza Estudiente and in front of the bars, restaurants and clubs of the Sopachi district. This was an ideal place to refuel our UK culture batteries and break the monotony of our South American diets - green thai curry, milk shakes, "safe" salads, hot chocolates and other delights were consumed. We also made it to the cinema
Cordillera Real
Seen from the desolate altiplano. to watch X-Men 3 - with Spanish subtitles of course. We considered ourselves refuelled and ready for the road, but were we ready for the next road, "the most dangerous road in the world"...?
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Auntie Heather
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Birthday Girl!
Happy Birthday Laura lots of Love The Welsh Williams Family