The journey to La Paz was different. Our bus travelled alongside Lake Titicaca for an hour or so and then pulled into a largish village/small town. Almost everyone got off the bus. Everyone apart from us and another couple, also tourists. I presumed some of them had reached their destination and that others had spied the public toilet and thought they’d have time to go quickly before we set off again as quite a few people had left their bags on the bus. Before we had time to properly decide if we too should go to the loo or not, the bus started off and headed straight for the lake. At this point, I was slightly concerned that the handbrake had failed and that we were minus a driver and soon to be at the bottom of Lake Titicaca! All was well however as it soon became apparent that the driver had intentionally driven us to the lake shore and whilst we watched slightly bewildered, our bus tried to navigate a couple of wobbly planks onto a boat. I say boat but it was more like an incredibly small ro-ro ferry (for those who remember Geography GCSE!) or a wooden raft with sides. As we set off on our floating raft across the lake, I was really quite concerned about the people we’d left behind thinking that the driver had failed to notice he’d left the majority of his passengers in the loo. Ross at this point had just discovered his packet of ‘Nerds’ and was completely oblivious to the plight of our fellow passengers. His response to my anxiety was “Oh well, at least we’re on the bus, I’m sure they’ll be fine!”
They were. It turned out that we should all have alighted from the bus to get a separate passenger ferry (and paid a small charge for the privilege). Sometimes being a tourist works in your favour! We’d had a bit of excitement, taken a few photos, eaten some Nerds and all for free!
So La Paz…….. On our first night in La Paz we went out for dinner and got food poisoning again for the 3rd time in 6 weeks. We think it was my chilli con carne. Only I would have been ill except it was an enormous portion and Ross helped me finish it. That’ll teach him! The next day we spent not far from the loo but the third day, we managed to venture out to visit the coca museum and have a little walk around the city. La Paz when viewed from the surrounding mountains looks really nice. It’s almost sunk in a perfect basin with buildings all the way up the sides of the mountains. In reality, being the highest capital city in the world, walking around it is pretty hard work as you can’t walk 100 metres down without walking 100 metres back up - all at altitude. While we were walking around, Ross was excited to see buses just like James Bond went on in Quantum of Solace and we also stumbled across Diagon Alley (the witch doctor section) full of llama foetuses and bones for grinding.
Our hostel was positioned on a square directly opposite the San Pedro jail. This jail has been made famous by the fact that there are no guards and the inmates have to work to be able to pay for or rent a cell. Apparently it’s like a small town with nicer areas and rougher ones where fighting and robberies are common place. Family members are free to live with the prisoners and many children end up living inside where there are a couple of crèches. Apparently tourism was a big money maker for the inmates who would show tourists round for a small price. This was until there was a riot very recently (only a couple of months ago) when the tourists who were being shown round at the time took videos and put them on youtube. They’ve consequently stopped people going round. Typical that a few people ruin it for the rest of us! (I’m sure you’ll be relieved Mum, but I wanted to go!)
We also visited the pre-Inca ruins of Tihaunico which we felt we should but weren’t too excited about as we’re just about ruined-out now. When we got there however, we were glad we’d made the effort as these ruins were quite unlike any others we’d seen. No Inca walls made from huge perfectly tessellating blocks here! Unfortunately, the ruins have been quite badly looted and eroded and you had to imagine the huge pyramid temple but the bits you could see were great. We especially liked the faces sticking out of the walls of a subterranean temple. They were thought to represent the leaders of the time but we’re not sure what the skull or the fish had to do with that theory! There were also some similarities with the statues of Easter island which supports one theory that the inhabitants of Easter Island actually came from Peru/Bolivia in reed boats.
Anyway, enough of the history. Other things to say about La Paz are that we found a very nice WIFI café/coffee shop which didn’t give us food poisoning so we ate every meal there just to be on the safe side. Also, I’m astounded that in 2009, in a capital city of the world, it is not possible to buy shower gel! I know, it’s true!!
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