After our horrible night bus from Uyuni, we finally arrived in La Paz. The background is unbelieveable. Small little houses basically on top of each other that looks strikingly similar to Lego at a distance. We hailed a taxi to Wild Rover, the party hostel we wanted to stay at for 3 days or so. As we arrived at 7am we couldn't check in until 2pm so we just relaxed and had some breakfast. We then grabbed a map and headed out to explore. First stop the Mirador Killi Killi, a look out point over the city:
Everyone always goes on about how dangerous the city is but if you stick to the central tourist areas, you're fine. After looking about for a few hours we went back to the hostel to start drinking. This was the gist of the next day too so I won't bother explaining it except we did try a 10 boliviano meal (£0.90p) - burger and chips. "Local" meals don't seem to be massively apparent. We ate a lot in the hostel, mainly because it's convenient but also pretty decent.
7/7/2014
Today after waking up with a bit of a hangover at 11am we went to do the free Red Cap tour of the city. A nice walk of about 2 miles seeing different parts of the city and getting to know the culture and traditional values of the area. Locals seem to be very superstitious and apparently when building new skyscrapers the owners hire a witch doctor to cast away evil spirits by getting homeless people drunk and murdering them by putting them in the cement foundations. Then the builders start work.
Crazy. No one knows if this is 100% true or just a myth. After the tour we had coffee and dinner before another night out.
Dylan and I have just had the most amazing fluent Spanish conversation with some locals at a small kiosk. The local dude, Alejandro, bought us a coke each. Top night.
8/5/2014
This morning I was up early (7am) to do the World's Most Dangerous Road downhill mountain biking with a company called Altitude. Dylan is being wet so he bailed on it. After an hour trip to La Cumbre we reached the start of the mountain bike ride at 4670m. The view is once again amazing. GoPro is on for some of the journey so will add it to the video once I'm back. We travelled roughly 64km in 5 hours. An Italian guy and I were bombing it down, keeping up with the tour guide. A few wirey moments as it gets very narrow at points. Crazy to think this used to be the main route for Bolivians between La Paz and the Amazon. That's probably why over 100 vehicles fell off killing them all every year when it was in commercial use. Since 2005 a new road is in use for traffic. Awesome experience, which went from freezing cold to boiling hot at 1500m. After lunch and a dip in the pool, we spent 3 hours getting back to La Paz for yet another night out.
9/4/2014
It's now 4am and although I set my alarm, Dylan had to ask the security guard to find where I was. After racing about we caught a cab to the airport as today we're off to the Amazon rainforest to start our Pampas Tour in Rurrenbaque. Life is tough.
No comments:
Post a Comment