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Published: July 25th 2006
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Now on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca, we travelled a windy road along the southern shore before hopping on a worryingly overfilled boat across one of the Lakes tributaries. After 2 sleepy hours back on our coach, we dropped into a Canyon and gained our first glimpse of La Paz, the highest Capital City in the World.
Sitting at 3660 metres above sea level, La Paz is a sprawling metropolis which fills the Canyon from lip to lip with Ochre buildings. As we descended down into the crammed streets, it was clear that this was a world away from that of rural Peru from where we had come. Through streets bustlling with market stalls and blocked with people and ruleless taxis we eventually arrived at Hotel Rosario and the end of our Tour.
Although our tour has been a fantastic experience and enabled us to see and learn far more than we could have under our own steam, Claire and I were pleased to now be on our own for the remainder of the trip. The fast pace of the tour and the speed at which we constantly changed altitudes and climates had left most of the group
feeling unwell and in desperate need of some time to wind down.
As we left our Hotel in the evening for our final night out as a group however, it was clear that La Paz may not be the relaxing place we were hoping for! Every street was completely blocked by an endless traffic jam and the pavements equally jammed with touts and what seemed would be muggers. As we nervously stood around waiting for a taxi and trying our best not to get run over or robbed, an impressively drunk man careered into the road, got nudged by a bull barred taxi and Supermanned head first into a metal wheel barrow full of popcorn!
Laughing, we pointlessly jumped into a cab and into the traffic jam and after about half a kilometre and 25 minutes we started to worry about whether we would enjoy our time in this crazy city!
As was the theme on our Gap tour, we ate in another swanky restaurant owned by one of our guide Patty´s amigoes and consistent with a different theme, both I and particularly Claire were again on the receiving end of table waiting "South American style". Although
I´ve not mentioned this previously, it seems that in every single restaurant we enter we are either completely ignored when ordering, unable to communicate anything from the menu even though certain of pronounciation and sporting a helpful pointing finger and lastly missing at least one of our ordered items. Apparently this is quite normal but when all of the above happen in one place you understandably get a little bemused.
After the meal we moved to Mungo´s, a nearby club for a final shindig and to our surprise, the club was fantastic and made all the better by the brilliant live band ... who played a host of Beuna Vista Social Club tunes and generally got everyone dancing. After several huge bottles of beer we returned to our Hotel to gain what we thought was a final night of luxury before going solo.
In the morning we said our goodbyes to the group who have in the main been a pleasure to travel with and took a cab with our new friends from the group Hayley and Anne-Marie to a nearby hostel called Arthy´s which we found on the Hostelworld.com.
Despite the unwelcoming iron door off the
main Avenida Montes, we were delighted to find that Arthy´s was a beautiful hostel overflowing with bright space and a TV room stacked with DVD´s! The owner Reuben is possibly the nicest chap you could ever hope to meet and over the course of the next few days he would time and again go out of his way to help us. Having come from the spoonfeeding experienced on our tour, Arthy´s was a shining example of why hostel travel is the far more enjoyable way to see the world. Having immediately been made to feel at home (much more than we ever experienced in Hotels) we set out to enjoy our 3 days in La Paz.
In stark contrast to when we first arrived in La Paz as part of our tour group, now on our own we bizarrely felt a greater sense of security. Walking around the city in the day, picking up laundry, visiting the witches market where the vendors (presumably witches) sell potions and dried baby Llamas, it was easy to forget the fear of our first night and really start to appreciate what a unique city this is.
Although the Lonely Planet Guidebooks are
Plaza Pedro D. Murillo
The statues were covered due to the pending elections. not always right , it is true that it is very hard to get lost in La Paz. The valley in which it sits is split right down the middle by a main thouroughfare which changes names along the way and runs like a river through the canyon. On either side of the main Avenue, the cobbled streets rise sharply into countless districts all with a unique feel to them and the altitude of La Paz makes the shade bitterely cold and the sun, skin drying and intense.
Whenever you visit a new city there are certain things that stand out and La Paz is full of what seem strange customs. Aside from the witchy women selling freeze dried Llamas the streets are teeming with "Shoe Shine boys" who sit on wooden boxes filled with polish and tout for business by claiming that your shoes are filthy. Because however shoe shining is not considered a high flying occupation, the shoe shiners wear balaclavas to conceal their identity which makes the first impression of lines of SAS shoe shiners a curious and sometimes intimidating sight.
Other curiousities of note are the way Coca Cola is not given to you
Election Day
The normally chaotic roads were free for people to play football, cycle and rollerblade on. in the glass bottle, no because that would be stupid... it is poured into a plastic bag with a straw stuck in it so the vendor can claim back the money from the bottle. Also, it is easy to find umbrellas under which there will be someone holding a mobile phone on a chain around their wrist... for those who can´t afford to own a mobile of course but it´s an odd sight to see a family huddled around a shackled mobile saying hola to their relatives!
On the Friday evening we went to Restaurant Vienna in the posher lower end of the city and ate steaks two inches high whilst being waited on like at the Ritz and all for about 3 English pounds!! It was about now we really started to like La Paz!
On the Sunday it was election day in Bolivia or rather the day when Bolivians voted in their consitution and everything in the City shut down. Having bought some food so Claire could knock up some of her legendary Spag Bol in the evening we spent the day in the hostel watching movies and standing on the balcony overlooking the now dead
Not so quiet....
The same road on a normal day... streets. Feeling pretty lucky to be in La Paz on election day it was amazing to see the locals all out on their bicycles and rollerblades or playing football in the deserted streets.
With our 3 free days in La Paz at an end, we were planning to head down to Uyuni to see the incredible Salt Plains on Sunday but the elections and a host of road blocks meant we had to wait until Monday. However, after booking our tour with the apparently reputable America Tours on the friday we turned up at their offices on time to find they had allowed our seats to be resold and that we would now have to get on the local bus for the 12 hour journey! After showing our displeasure at their shoddy service, we managed to get America tours to pay for our bus tickets and in the evening boarded our night bus to Southern Bolivia and the Salar de Uyuni...
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