La Paz

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So finally I arrived in La Paz, a place there was a lot to do here, and I wasn´t sure how much time I´d spend in La Paz.

I ended up loving my time in La Paz and it was by far and above the best place I stayed in. There was a lot to do, but I fell ill for some of my time in La Paz and hence I never got to do as much as I wanted to. I also went from La Paz to the Jungle and back again, I´m not going to bother to have two entries for two different trips, so I´m just going to summarise what happened in each of the events that I went to.

Generic La Paz

We (me the Canadians and the Korean) arrived in La Paz on a Friday and were all pretty tired, so we decided to avoid the party hostel that all of us had been recommended, Wild Rovers. We instead went to a place in the bad side of town. Walking down the street past several hairdressers we saw that the rubbish for these places is just thrown out on the side of the road, here there was a huge amount of hair piled on a street corner. Add to that the Bolivian (and Peruvian) riddle: The street is wet, but it hasn´t rained and voilá, I´m dry wretching on the street. The smell was terrible. We ended up staying a night in what must have been built as an awesome awesome mansion, now however it is several miles away from awesome. Our room, which had a few "small problems", was 30 bolivianos per person, twice what we´d paid in Copacabana and Isle de Sol, but this had it´s own bathroom and it was about 9-10pm at night so we didn´t mind the extra cost.

The "small problems" were indeed small, but the fact that they were plural meant didn´t cover the number of issues. The first was locking the door required both dexterity and strength. Two attributes that I wouldn´t really describe myself with, but still, it only took 5 mins to lock the door. The windows didn´t lock, so anyone who really wanted to break into the place wouldn´t have had too much of an issue. The toilet door was "locked" with a chair and didn´t close properly, which did leave us with some interesting noises to wake up to the following morning. But by far and above my favourite issue was the fact that the light switch was non existant. I´m not saying that there was no light, nor that we couldn´t turn it off and on again, only that the light switch was non existant. I´m sure that this would pass health and safety standards back home.... When I finally get photos up you´ll see what I mean.

The next day we shifted from the bad neighbourhood to the party hostel, which is in the good neighbourhood. I managed to convince the Canadian guys to stay an extra day (since their plans were only for a couple of days in Bolivia) so that we could go to both the Choquita wrestling and the worlds most dangerous road.

Normally this wouldn´t warrant a mention, but I had my first cup of real coffee in La Paz for the entire time that I´d spent in SA. This was found near the witches market and was Pepé´s or something, found in the LP guidebook, for once, LP was right...

That brings me to another place, the witches market, now for some reason I´d heard heaps about this mainly for the dried llama fetuses, which truth be told weren´t as exciting as I may have imagined. It was the thousands of sex potions and trying to improve my spanish by having a good read/laugh where I awasted a good hour. Also bought me a new wallet here, the wallet that I use back home in NZ is a nice leather one, but since it is also a massive cardholder, and I don´t carry any cards I ended up buying a wallet that could simply hold coins and notes. It also has a handy security feature of being able to tie around my belt, which stops simple pick pocketing. (It can easily be cut and may tell the thief the where-abouts my wallet is but security is all in the head anyhow right?).

I cut my hand trying to get a good photo on the walk to the Isle de sol, and I asked one of the ladies in the market if they had anything to put on it to make it better. The lady I asked pulls out this bag with a tin of something in it. I was sure it was another sex potion since it had a hot chick on the front of it. One of the Canadian guys had a chuckle at it and noted that it was pretty much vasoline with lemon in it. So there is a good chance that it would sting, but not actually help. I said no to the lady and she pulled out an old film cannister filled with what I can only describe as ear wax. As tempted (and i´m serious here) as I was to buy it, it was only the fact that I didn´t know what it was and I didn´t want to infect myself with some disease that I turned it down.

Since we weren´t going mountain biking the next day we all hit the piss on Saturday and had a great time. Ended up getting home at around 4am, so it was a long night too. Don´t think I woke up till around 11am which without a doubt is the longest I´ve slept in the whole time on the trip. Easy to sleep in in the hostel since there is no light at all in the bedrooms.

We went exploring again on Sunday and found a place that sell Juice, 100%!f(MISSING)resh and natural juice that i simply awesome. Juices I ended up having: Tumbo, and unripe passionfruit type thing, served with either water or milk. I had it with water and it was OK, but wouldn´t write home about it. Had a few others that we get back home but without a doubt I simply love freshly squeezed 100%!g(MISSING)rapefruit juice. At only 3 bolivianos ($0.70 NZD) for a glass (+ the yappa (the extra bit where you get another 3/4 of a glass filled with the pulp)) you can´t go wrong.

The Cholita Wrestling

Sunday night came around and we went off to the Chiquita Wrestling. I had to miss out on the hostel´s poker night (which is held every Sunday at the same time) so I couldn´t do the boys back home proud and spread the international status. I planned to stay for another Sunday night on returning from the Jungle, but that never happed.

Chiquita wrestling is advertised as women dressed in their traditional garb wrestling. Simply put, how can you not go? The crippler couldn´t miss out on such an event.

Sure enough, it was completly in spanish, but as you can tell from wrestling in english, the plot isn´t too hard to comprehend. In fact pretty much all the fights went the same way. There was the good guy, the bad guy and the corrupt official. Sounds very much like life, no? The bad guy and the official would start off beating the crap out of the good guy and then the good guy would end up winning. However, it wasn´t about the story or the result, this was about the wrestling.

Thankfully due to the amount of wrestling I saw growing up, I knew that luchidors (the guys who wear masks) love their anonymity and to de-mask them is the ultimate insult. So sure enough there are a lot more masks worn in this form of wrestling than the stuff on TV and the baddie almost always tried to de-mask the goodie.

I´ve been to wresting in NZ, and I´ve seem some shit wrestling on TV (WCW->WWE, bring back WWF) but sure enough these guys were unbelievable acrobatic, it was awesome. Also women and wrestling didn´t really go together from what I´d seen, and the majority of the wrestling was male, but the first girl who got in the ring was simply amasing. She, while wearing what looked like glass slippers, jumped through the ropes, flipped, flipped the other guy. I was very impressed.

Highlights:

• Spiderman.
  
• Spiderman being set on fire.
  
• Spiderman not returning to the ring after being set on fire...
  
• Loca (the only name I picked up about this lady who was about 40 years old) absolutly tossing it and pinching the girl beside me´s 1.5 litre of pepsi and covering her opponent. She then grabbed her opponent and threw her into the crowd. While she was in the crowd (on the other side of the ring to where I was), she grabbed another bottle of Fanta and let it fly. This would have covered the whole crowd, and orange soda is not easy to remove from clothes. She cleared the crowd with this action and then proceeded to throw as hard as she could plastic chairs at her opponent, miss and take out the audience. Simply awesome!
  

When I get around to it, check out the photos. The light was terrible, but I took heaps of photos.

The Worlds Most Dangerous Road (The Death Road)

The canadians, the korean and two english girls we met in the hostel went down the worlds most dangerous road, which is correct for it´s title. I wanted to go to the well known brand Gravity (thinking the bikes would be superior), but got talked into a cheaper place which was about 60%!o(MISSING)f the price. Turns out that it was the best move ever! We had the best bikes, best equipment and a small group (There was the 6 of us and three Brazilians).

Within the first hour the Korean girl hit the front brakes too hard on the ashvelt and tumbled. Hurt her hand pretty good and cut her lip, bruised her chin...how I don´t know, we had full face helmets on (which we wuldn´t have gotten if we went with Gravity). I had told her the day before to get the smallest most comfortable helmet, but and she dropped from the XL to the L, but should have been wearing the M. (Being the giant that I am I ended up wearing everything XL, good old SA, my brother would have had to go helmetless as I barely fit mine)

We started off on the ashvelt, which is where you go fast as possible and we must have reached speeds of up to 80-90 km/hr, I was getting the speed wobbles for sure!

After we got off the ashvelt we went offroad, where there was a track where many cars had been through over the years and the bigger rocks on either side and in the middle of where the tires were. You had to be very careful about breaking in rder to not break on shingle (not really shingle as there are big rocks mixed in there as well). One of the Canadian guys, who has the same super tough camera as me, caught a rock flicking up from his bike into his chest. His chest was well guarded with his camera and now he has a good sized dent in his camera.

Once we got offroad there was mist/cloud blocking what should be an awesome view, so we missed out on the view unfourtunalty. Our guide said he´d never seen it like this, so we must have been a little unlucky. Or not, because of this we ended up having no fear of falling off and brakes were only used so that we didn´t pass the guide. We were a fair humming for most of the trip. When we finally got below the cloud we (the canadians and I, the Brazillian guys were soft!) looked at each other and went wow, that was a bit dangerous, and kept going at the stupidly quick speed (except of course for the sections which were slightly uphill). I did find it hard to tell when sections of the road were uphill, since we were going downhill at such a downhill slope that when the slope decreased sufficiently it looked flat, but was still significantly downhill.

Sure enough 100m from the end of the road there was a jump, I was building my speed up to get some air(Was going around 50-70 km/hr at a guess), the canadian guy in front of me, who I thought was as reckless as me didn´t see it until the last minute and slammed on his brakes. A van was coming in the other direction and I slamnmed the brakes as hard as I could, back tire locked up and bike went flying infront of me and I ended up sliding on my head for about 10 metres. I got up straight away thinking that the van was going to run me over but he had stopped. I tore the pants (see photo) and shirt I was given from the company, scraped the knee pads and elbow pads (all of which wouldn't have got with gravity) and put a bit of a graze in the helmet. Apart from a few scrapes and bruises and a small hole in my t-shirt I walked away unscathed and with a good story. I recommend it to all, but now there is no way I could do it again, especially not at the speed we went at.

So prices in general, Gravity charge 600 bolivianos, we went with MTB which is the shop just beside wild rovers and it cost us 420 bolivianos, the cheapest I{ve heard was 230 bolivianos (which was a bike with only front suspension and a little helmet). Supposedly Gravity is the only place that can possibly rescue you iof you do fall down, but if you fall 900 meters, are you going to be in any condition to be saved?

Golf

So after finally getting back from the jungle it turns out that I had a bit of Montezuma´s revenge. It wasn{t as bad as the English guy I went to the Jungle with, he thought that he was just suffering from a bout of altitude sickness, but it turned out to be a lot worse than that, he ended up with an intestinal parasite and a course of antibiotics. Got me a little nervous, when I started coming down with the shits and a mild case of a fever (I didn´t find this out until I was in Sucre so I promptly went to the doctor upon hearing this information where I was given the standard 10 days on antibiotics)

Sure enough, I took the following days in La Paz very slowly, anda without a doubt I found out what it is like to be in a dorm with selfish wankers. I got so angry when they wouldn´t close the door and leave the light on at 2am in the morning. Absolutely no consideration for others. I wish I could clasify the people with a generic country, but twas Kiwis, Aussies, Poms & Germans. I hate to have our name on that list but...

Anyhow, I ended up in the TV room, the first time I´d watched TV in 2 months (bar the American news on TV which makes the most pointless bit of information seem like it´s a super important piece. I found this out when wall st had an improvement, the way the news was told I seriously thought they´d had the best day in 10 months and I got excited about the possibility of the NZD strengthening, but it was simply that they´d had two days gain in a row or something lame. I can see why the news influences the Yanks so much!

Well anyhow, I{m getting off topic. I met a kiwi guy who was heading off for a round of golf at the world´s highest course he had a three and I just said, yup, I{m coming too. SO the 4 of us set off at 2.30 in the afternoon, much later than I would have liked for the fact that when it gets dark in La Paz it gets fucking cold! (Like as low as -2 degrees.) Well we get there, and the kiwi guy is wearing cargo shorts which weren{t allowed and he had a t-shirt on which also wasn{t allowed, he knew this, but had no other clothes (what a good kiwi lad eh?) So he ended up having to buy a shirt and since it was late they let him away with the pants. One of the other guys had a button down shirt that wasn{t allowed but he played ignorant and said that it had a collar so it was fine.

So the 4 was me, another kiwi guy who plays off about a 12 and two poms come australians, one was off a 26ish and the other one had barely played at all. I thought this was a little strange since the round in total cost just under $US100! It also added a bit of time to our round, our first 9 holes took about 2.5 hrs, which considering we were the only ones on the course was pretty damn slow. The two poms bailed after 9 and it was just the two kiwi guys battling on, sure enough we got through 6 of the final 9 holes in about 45 mins.

Call me Brenton Wheat, but sure enough i lost all ability to be able to play golf and chopped it the whole way round the course, what a way to spend my money! I asked my caddie what handicap he thought I was on, and he said 15 😞

My caddie, first time I{ve ever paid someone with money to carry my clubs, was pretty good, but a few times he completly misjudged my club selection. Since I was playing at altitude, with clubs that were a good 10 years older than the clubs I own (which make them 25 years old!) I wasn{t able to make the most of the altitude. My drives went about the same distance they went back home although for some strange reason the measurements were all in yards, while Boliviar measure things correctly in meters for everything else. I did hit a 7 iron from 170 yards out (after my caddy gave it to me, and it did fly the green by a good 10 meters, so I felt pretty tough. I also hit a sandwedge from 100 yards out that flew the green easily which is wuite a change for me. The course itself was green. This was the only green grass I{d seen in a long time. The whole course was watered by hand by maybe 8 people. There were no leaves on the course... they were raked away by several women (I spose they found a role for them on a golf course...).

All in all the cost was, for green fees: 400 Bolivianos, 80 for hire of clubs and 80 + 20 tip to the caddies so all up 580 bolivianos. (This was about $130 NZD so the most expensive round of golf for me)(700 bolivianos is $US100)

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Comments

[marcus]

work searlo
nice blog bro...good advice for me for the stuff to do in la paz, especially the worlds most dangerous road because i was going with gravity, or at least that´s what i thought! in nazca today, just done me some lines...heading to arequipa tonight and cuzco in a couple of days. got machu picchu on the 14th. keep up the good work!!