Pushing Pesos: La Paz, the highest capital in the world

We´d been told by friends who had been to La Paz that a departure date had to be booked as it could be a bit of a trap, as in people arrive and never leave! We arrived around 7 in the morning after another overnighter on one of Bolivia´s finest bus fleet, this time round full cama, as in the seats recline to a full bed as they do when you fly first class, not sure any of you have! And who says Bolivia is a third world country. My bed was in the isle, next to me on a plastic chair was a top to bottom authentic Bolivian lady, who obviously went for the 4^th class seat, which happened to be next to me. Well two experiences with this lady through our journey, one time I woke up, dribbling, realizing that I had swung my arm over and had cuddled her whilst she was fast asleep, luckily Jo hadn’t noticed, and nor did the lady. The second encounter with my new sleeping buddy was on our first stop, with the bus having no toilet, I went to find a suitable place to wee, and having spotted an empty shed up the road I decided to go there. As I venture round, zip down and ready to go, who was there perched down mid way through full flow, not wanting to make the situation more awkward I said, Ola, and carried on next to her, she didn’t even flinch. My kinda girl, just a bit old that’s all!!

Anyway, we arrive in La Paz, and it is difficult to describe, set at an altitude of 3,700m, it is the highest capitol in the world, and quite spectacular it is. Set in a valley surrounded by snow peaked mountains, each slope, how ever steep the gradient is lined with housing and buildings, how they managed to build all this here is difficult to comprehend. With the altitude, walking a set of stairs has me gasping for air!

Our chef

Our lunch spot

Electric junction

San Fransisco Cathedral

The bridge including tramp and drunks

Diesel Nacional - a really hip bar we went to

La Paz park

La Paz is huge, busy and quirky like any other city in the world, only with the Bolivian twist where you can buy anything you want, from Lama fetus´ from the witches market, fake DVDs of the latest Hollywood blockbusters to home made cakes!! Apparently the lama foetus is used as a sacrifice when building houses, it is mixed with the foundation of the building as an offering to the gods to ensure good luck. A further rumour we heard that whilst building the huge bridge you can see in the pictures, a lama foetus was not enough of a sacrifice to bring good luck to the bridge, so the witch serenading the bridge opted to use local drunkards from the street a more worthy sacrifice, so legend has it that the concrete contains a couple of unfortunate souls!!

The nightlife here is pretty crazy too, with most of the hostels having decent bars, our hostel, named Bacoo, had a good crowd and most nights we would take over and drink till the early morning whilst playing ping pong (not Bangkok ping pong) and listening to worldly tunes from travellers all over the world. Hangovers a plenty which were nursed in our biggest dorm room yet, 20 people squashed in!!

We spent a week here in total and most of it we just walked around exploring the sites and scenes, from the posh parts to the poorer parts. We even managed to find a Swiss fondue place which was really nice and a bit of a taste of back home. Also we had our first English breakfast since being away, purely to nurse one of our hangovers.

La Paz also has the Star of India curry restaurant, who claim to cook the hottest Vindaloo in South America. Not wanting to miss out, we went down to see what the deal was. Three of us, Alain, Ono and me were the brave ones willing to try, the other´s opting not to go for it and the chance to win a t-shirt on being able to finish the whole dish. Our dishes arrive and we are told it contains 40 hot chilies!! To cut a long story short, the thing was dam hot, and only Ono managed to finish it and get the t-shirt, me close second and Alain a shameful last!