South America 2012: Bolivia

Our first order of business in La Paz was to check in to Wild Rovers Hostel. After our quiet week in rural Peru/Bolivia, we were ready for some socializing and some city hustle and bustle, and we more than found it here. Super comfy beds, hot showers (and with good water pressure!), complimentary hair straighteners, an in-house bar, people from all over the world, and a delicious Irish menu. It's definitely a party hostel, but they also had TVs in the bar showing Olympics, so we enjoyed cheering for Canada against all the other nations over a few beers.

La Paz itself is a very busy, albeit beautiful city, as its nestled in a narrow valley that was created when all the water receded back to the ocean, leaving Lake Titicaca. As a result the streets are very San Francisco-ish, being very steep and narrow. The downtown core is in the valley bottom, and everything else is built into the surrounding slopes. This makes for gorgeous night views when all the lights are on and you are surrounded by them on all sides. We decided to head out into the craziness and check out the infamous Witch's Market. This is the place to grab all sorts of souvenirs, as well as a spell or two. Booths are setup with little tables, and each one has several little piles of what looks like herbs, string and a glittery pompom or two for good measure. The tables are all framed by dead, dehydrated baby llamas, some with skin, some just skeletons, and pungent incense that really add that perfect creepy vibe to it all. We didn't buy anything from these booths, so hopefully we didn't walk away with any curses!

We also decided to do a city tour to really see some sights, as it was proving quite diffifcult on our own due to the altitude. La Paz is over 3,600 metres high, so sometimes even rolling over in bed leaves you breathless, let alone walking up and down the super steep streets. We leisurely walked down Ave Arce and hopped on a classic red double decker tour bus, and set off to see what the city was all about. The bus had headphone jacks where you could plug into one of 6 different langauages. The English was good, although didn't always correspond to what we were seeing at the moment!

The first thing we saw/noticed, was how many and how low the powerlines were! Sitting on the top of the open bus, we definitely had to watch our heads. I don't think they ever re-wire anything - if something doesn't work, they'd just add in more wires and leave the old ones. A serious electrical nightmare, all over the entire city.

After driving for a while and hearing all kinds of history about Bolivia as a whole, seeing just how narrow and closely the city follows the valley, we got to the end where the Moon Valley is. This is where the old lake ran off through, and due to all the rain they get, has also created some crazy hoodoo/stalactite structures. We walked around these and took some pictures with the city in the backdrop for about 15 minutes, then back on the bus. After some more headphone talk, more power lines, a drive through the affluent neighborhoods, and about 20 rounds of "punch-buggy no returns" (its insane how many beetles are here!), we were back in our area of town and heading back to the Rover.

The next few days we headed north to Rurrenabaque and the jungle - see other post on this one.

Upon our return, we headed back to the Rover to get caught up on the medal counts, and catch up with a lot of the people we'd met on the jungle tour. As we were soon heading out to the barren Salt Flats in Uyuni on Sunday, and it was a Friday night, we decided to splurge on a night out at the movies and the Hard Rock Cafe. We took a taxi to the MultiCine, and got tickets to the English/Spanish subtitled new Batman - The Dark Knight Rises. It was a very western theatre, with big comfy seats, popcorn, candy and the works. And the movie, albeit almost 3 hours long, was AWESOME. Go see it if you haven't already.

After the movie we took another taxi to the Hard Rock Cafe near the Witch's Market. This area is very, very different at night. Everything is shut down and locked and wrapped up, and there's a much less relaxed vibe. We walked up to the Hard Rock Cafe, and were greeted by 6 bouncers and a $30US each cover charge. As there were about 2 people in the whole place, we said no thanks and went back to our Rover home instead.

Saturday we spent doing laundry, packing, and had one last super fun night in the Rover bar, complete with the infamous dice game and a live DJ. In total we'd spent almost 10 days in La Paz, so this last night was a great send off. Our bus left Sunday evening, so we were even able to watch the Closing Ceremonies and enjoy the Rover's Sunday chicken dinner before we set off.

Our time in La Paz may have been a little more relaxed than a lot of the journey, but we had a great time, met some fun people, and were now prepped to set off on the last half of our journey!

The Witch´s Market