First day in La Paz, walking around...

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  La Paz, Bolivia
Monday, September 15, 2008

So it's about 2.15pm right now, and I'm writing from my pretty nice hotel room that Edgar and I found here, in La Paz.  We arrived a few hours ago, walked around a bit and found this hotel.  It's slightly more expensive than some other ones, but for only 60 Bolivianos a night, we have our own private bathroom with a HOT shower (yayyy), in a beautiful house which I will no doubt take some pictures of later.

I left Copacabana around 7am, and then about an hour later we crossed Lake Titicaca, which was pretty fun; the people were put on a small motor boat, and the bus on a barge.  After a couple of hours ride later, as well as a good 30 or 40 minutes traffic jam as we were entering La Paz, we made it.

A little bit ago I walked around with Edgar so he could do some shopping, since he's going back to Spain in a few weeks, as well as had a nice lunch of "Pollo a la brasa", which is what we calle broiled chicken in Peru.

We've also been looking for good deals on the bike ride that's really popular here, where you go from the peak of the mountains near La Paz and then descend over 3000 meters to a small town named Coroico.  It'supposed to be quite exciting and fun, so we'll probably do that in a couple of days, and tomorrow probably off to see the Tiahuanaco ruins near La Paz tomorrow.

OK, that's it for now, I'll probably write more later, but that should do it for now...

Oh, the bus from Copacabana cost 15 Bolivianos (about 3 USD).

7.30pm
Just came back from a really nice walk around La Paz with Eduardo.  We went up and down hills, since La Paz is in nested among mountains on what seems like all sides.  It reminds me a lot of Lima, perhaps of what it was like 10 years or so ago, with lots of street vendor and markets.  There's also an incredible amount of visible poverty everywhere you walk.

We walked near the Plaza de Armas but couldn't get in because some governors from Santa Cruz, it seems, were coming in to talk with Evo or something like that.  The thing is that we couldn't get in.

We also went up a nice, steep hill to check on bus prices for Potosi, Uyuni, etc. which we'll be checking out soon.  It seems the bus ride to Potosi (where they have the mines) is around 40 to 50 Bolivianos, leaves around 8pm and takes 10 hours.

Tomorrow we're planning on checking out the Tiawanako culture area, then the next day we'll do the crazy downhill bike ride, and then probably on the third day we might check out a tour that takes us to some snowy peaks nearby as well as the "moon valley" area.

We also tried a "choripan" (same name as in Peru) for 5 Bolivianos, which is a type of sausage sandwich.  Then we had some fruit juice for 3 bolivianos each, which wasn't bad. 

I got really excited because walking around we found what I thought was the same as "Beso de Moza" which is one of my favorite Peruvian sweets, but here it's called "Condores" and I was quite dissapointed to find out it was nothing like Beso de Moza, and not tasty at all to me.  Oh well.

So anywho, I'm about to head out to the internet cafe to post this onto my blog, as well as my pictures, and then I'll come back and Eduardo and I will watch one of the cheap movies we've bought walking around and sleep not too late to have another full day tomorrow.

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