Advertisement
Published: September 21st 2007
Edit Blog Post
Next up La Paz, capital of Bolivia. Although it isn´t actually the capital of Bolivia, that is Sucre, but everyone thinks and acts like La Paz is the capital, so that is what I´ll call it. A fascinating place which gets a lot of recognition for being the highest capital city in the world, but then I have already mentioned the major flaw in that statement. Arriving here is pretty spectacular. We were driving through the outer suburb of El Alto, about 4km high in the middle of the Andies, when suddenly from out of nowhere a massive great crater appeared. In that crater the city stands, situated there because the Spanish wanted some shelter from the bitter mountain wind. We then descended into a thriving metropolis that awaited us below. Interesting Fact: La Paz is one of the worlds most fire resistant cities, because of the altitude there is a third less oxygen than at sea level, making it difficult for a flame to sustain itself.
After a few days wandering it was time for some action, and that came in the form of cycling down the
worlds deadliest road. This is where we cycled down a very steep road carved
La Paz
We heard it was a good looking city and our first sighting of it didn´t disappoint out of the cliff face, descending 3600m over a course of 65km. Thankfully this road is no longer a main thoroughfare between La Paz and the Yungas district and the majority of traffic on it were tourists on mountain bikes heading in the same direction as we were. Sadly we didn´t really have the best weather for our decent and the first hour was spent inside a cloud. This one though, definitely had a silver lining, as it meant we were totally unaware of the sheer drop offs just meters to the side of us. The downside was we couldn´t see the views. We both made it to the bottom in one piece, adrenaline pumping and covered in mud. It was a great day out.
The next part of the plan was to chill in the Yungas for a few days, enjoy being at low altitude and catch some rays. Coroico, the town we were staying in, had been described to us a the place of eternal spring. Unfortunately there were two problems. The first was that the cloud that set in for our cycle stayed put for nearly three days and secondly I ate something that didn´t agree
View from our hostel window
La Paz doesn´t look quite so good close up! with me and spend two days vomiting. I can´t say I was the best company for Marissa, it was lucky she had a good book.
Spanish Word of the Week: La Paz - meaning the peace.
This Week Likes:
- La Paz restaurants. A welcome chance to eat some world cuisine in the form of delicious Lebanese, fantaistic Sushi and a fat Argentinian steak. Possibly the three best meals we have eaten in South America. The latter was made even better by a donation of beef neck and grilled cheese from the Americans on the next table who had over ordered. If you haven´t tried beef neck, we highly recommend it!
- Possibly the best mountain bike we have ever been on, with full suspension and hydrolic disc breaks. Mind you, given the conditions we were riding in, it was essential
- With market stalls on every La Paz street, it really is amazing what is available. From powdered paint to stockings and llama foetuses to a whole side of cow.
This Weeks Dislikes: * The bad weather at Corioco meaning we didn´t get to try the pool out. We had to stay
in the hammocks instead ...
* When checking into our La Paz hotel, Marissa asked what all the people in the function room were doing. ´Oh, nothing much´ came the answer. 5 hours later that nothing much turned into a full blown Bolivian wedding, keeping us awake until at least 11.30!
* It took us a while to work out what we didn´t like about our Corioco room, then we realised we were staying inside a Neapolitan ice cream (or Neapolitana as M likes to call it)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.203s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 17; qc: 88; dbt: 0.1089s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.2mb
anonymous
non-member comment
i shoud hope sushi up a mountain didn't really compare with minatos..