Bolivia: La Paz (again!)

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  La Paz, Bolivia
Friday, April 17, 2009

Well here we are again!  We decided to wait for our friend in La Paz so that we could travel to Lake Titicaca together.   The Isla del Sol is in Bolivia so made more sense, however, left us with over a week!!  La Paz is OK but was a bit worried about what we do.  In the end we opted for another week of Spanish, 3 hours a day.  It was held in our teachers house and we both found it really useful.  Not only did we recap some of the stuff we had learnt but got to the bottom of some of the grammatical things that were alluding us.  We also managed to get some past tense so can now bore people with where we have been in Spanish as well as English!!  We stayed at a very cheap hostel although we had to move after the 2nd night (we had payed for 2 in advance and are too tight to lose the money even though it was only about four pounds).  It was freezing cold and very damp.   I wonīt even go into details about the toilet and shower.  One of things that I am really looking forward to about coming home is you know what you are going to get.  As you know toilets are something that are very important to me, I am constantly on the look out for them, or checking if they are on the buses (which is sadly - not often!).  Anyway out here, even in some of the places we have stayed we are  lucky if we have all the following and usually at least 2 of these are missing: toilet paper (not a big deal we carry our own everywhere...), a toilet seat, a flush that works, water (this is no joke - if you are lucky someone will pour a bucket of water down the loo before you go), water of any description to wash your hands and soap (although stupid to mention this as it is considered a luxury!).

We spent many of the evenings with our friend Ricardo (originally met on a bus in Chile).  On our day off from Spanish I climbed Chacaltaya with him.  I say climbed but can only really use this word loosely.  It was a tour taking you to the luna valley - bizarre rock formations formed by wind and rain.  Then the minibus took us to 5,300m on  quite a precarious road - neither of us enjoyed being sat by the window!   We had gone later in the day because there had been snow overnight and the īroadsī were icy.  Having seen what they were like not icy glad we waited... Once we arrived at 5,300m  (also the worlds highest ski resort) we walked through the snow the final bit to a height of 5,440.  Considering the altitude, I felt fine and am keen to Climb El Misti in Peru 5,800 and a bit .  The views were pretty impressive you could see Lake Titicaca and were surrounded by snow capped mountains.  It was absolutely freezing and snowed on us.  Itīs a two day climb but not sure we will have time before the Inca Trail.  Will keep you posted.  On the whole I have enjoyed Bolivia but I think I was hoping it would be more like India (this still remains one of our top countries).  We met Vim (our friend) at the airport early on Sunday  morning and since then crammed quite a bit in - well I havenīt.  Jon and Vim climbed Chacaltaya (Jon hadnīt done it previously as he had a bad foot).  The day before the boys cycled down the worlds most dangerous road - I chickened out.  Having done part of it on the way to the jungle felt it was a bit  unnecessary and given my track record cycling on flat tarmac roads thought it probably wasnīt wise.  The road is loose stone with sharp bends and over 1km drop off.  Tourist have died every year going over the edge...   However the boys really enjoyed it and thought the views were amazing.

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