Last Day in La Paz

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So I started off this morning hitting a few of the museos I have yet to see. My Spanish teacher mentioned a pretty special part of town and she was right. It had kept the same old architecture style from years back, which is almost not possible to find in other places of La Paz. They have taken the neighborhood and created museos with colonial art, pottery, etc.

The first museum dealt with the Japanese influx into Bolivia. I did not find it very exciting. The next was a display of natural wealth. I walked into a vault that was three levels full of gold jewelry, head pieces, wool sweaters with gold plates, basically a ton of gold from before the Spanish influence. There was also quite a bit of silver. The most interesting piece was a recreation of a body burial that was seen through a glass case. It had the body mumified, but also the material that constrained the body had deteriorated enough to show the bones. The knees were tucked underneath the rib cageand the arms were left to hang by the corpse´s side. In front of the mumified remains, there was a allotment of coca leaves, silver, and tea. I had no idea the body could be shaped that way.

The final museo I hit was full of religious paintings, furniture, pottery, etc...All in all a worthwhile morning.

Also, the big news of the morning was that I went to the bus station to get a ticket to Copacabana and cross Lake Titicaca to get into Peru. As I was buying the ticket, the lady got a phone call that the Peruvian immigration folks are not stamping passports. In other words, it isn´t worth the risk to get into peru without a stamp and then face a potential fine when leaving. So I have purchased a bus ticket to Arica, Chile and then will take a taxi across the Peruvian border into Tacna, and then get a bus to Arequipa to rest. That should be about an eighteen hour journey. It sucks a little bit because I was looking forward to crossing via boat on Lake Titicaca, but perhaps I will find a way down to see the lake on the Peruvian side once I get there. I just hope my alarm wakes me up at 5 AM. I have enjoyed La Paz and I can see myself returning to the area. I highly recommend it although they charge Americans a large visa fee.

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