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Published: June 29th 2006
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Well our bus journey from Puno to La Paz was pleasant and really scenic. Other than the nerve racking experience at the borders, we had no problem.
The drive took us all along Lake Titicaca which was beautiful! Unfortunately we had to head straight to the British Embassy first thing on the Friday morning, so stopping and spending a leisurely few days on the lake was out of the question.
(Isla del Sol, a big destination for most was given a big skip.......maybe next time!!!)
Our first view of La Paz was incredible. It is a huge city, nestled in the mountains and built right high up onto the surrounding mountains. Really amazing!
We booked into this huge old, draftly hotel called Torino. It was cheap (kind of cheerful.....okay. Scrap that. Just cheap!!!) It was run by a group of oldish men, who, although being rather sweet, were pretty clueless. Each time you asked a price of something, they would all give you different prices...to the extent that after we paid our bill (they had given us a special price because we had looked so tired!!!) they reduced the bill and charge us even less!!! Am really not
Kids Clothes in the Market
No we did not need to buy any. sure how they made any mone!
We roared bright and breezy to the Embassy on the Friday morning and were reassured by this really lovely lady that we had nothing to worry about and that our new passports would be waiting for us the next friday. What a relief!
At this stage I was not overly impressed or bowled over with La Paz and we decided we would pack our week here with tours...starting with the famous Death Road!!! (Sat) then follow this with a three day Jungle tour to the Amazon (Sun to thurs am). The aim was to get back to La Paz on Thursday, get our new passports that Friday and head onto the Salt flats.
Our bike ride was fantastic (see next blog) and we came back to La Paz after a rather packed and exhausting day, only to pack furiously and set our alarm clock to rush to the airport the next morning to catch another tiny plane to Rurrenabaque.
Wired and excited for anacondas, crocodiles and other dodgy wildlife to pack our days with.
As more bad luck would have it...the jungle was experiencing some herrendous heavy rains and the runway
Mels Favourite Pass-time
The ice creams were amazining at this one only cost 50c can you blame us? was under water (was a grass runway) and all the flights were cancelled!!!! We tried our luck to fly the next day, but no luck!!! We were doomed to not get to the jungle. I was guttered and bitching that I didn´t want to spend a whole 5 days in La Paz (claiming pouring rains in the jungle were no reason not to go !!!)
Well.....I was pleasantly surprised by La Paz and to be honest our ´forced´ week here was great fun and time flew by!
We shopped (artesan work here is SOOOOO cheap) and ate divine ice cream, walked aimlessly around and just generally mooched around!
The day we were supposed to fly to the jungle, I got sick and so we treated ourselves, booked out of the old and ricketty Torino, into a much nicer sunny hotel room closer to the action of the famous Sagarnaga Street.
Bolivia is incredibly cheap, even eating out at a very nice restuarant wound cost just over $10. Those wicked ice-creams we ate everyday (at these two great pplaces called Brusco and Dumbo!!) were only around 80 US cents and they were yummy!
These are tons of really smelling
and to be honest, dirtyu parts to La Paz, but we also discovered the upmarket downtown areas that were lots more residencial and gave us the feel that we could be almost anywhere in the world.
We shopped so much that we now have a whole extra huge bags, just for all the gifts and goodies we bought!!! I am starting to wonder how we are going to get all this stuff onto the aeroplane!!!!
They had tons of leather goods, belts, bags etc some of it really great stuff. I now sit here and wish that we had bought more!!!! Typical woman !!!
Ken even found the Mercado Negro area, which had rows and rows of electronics. He was in his element! You could buy anything here....from PC, cameras, rip off DVDs, to adaptor plugs. You name it, they had it!!!
After a full week in La Paz, we picked up our new passports and headed for our next exciting adventure!
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svetlana
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Enjoy guys!
So sorry to hear about your terrible experience with mugging but so glad it didn't ruin your trip that much! Enjoy yourselves! Love, Svetlana, Dan and Mina.