La Paz, a city of extremes. We arrived late on the airport from the jungle and had to drive into La Paz in the night. About 2 km from the airport we stranded in a huge traffic jam. Not moving an inch for about half an hour we consumed our dinner (a Subway from the airport, because we thought that would be safe t eat) in the car. When a broken van was pushed forward 30 cm we squeezed our 'tank' past multiple Bolivian hotheads in vans and pedestrians carrying everything from their household furniture to the contents of the neighbouring shopping area. Without a scratch we finally reached our lovely B and B on the other side of the city. In La Paz we've seen the most ugly buildings on earth, absolute traffic chaos, completely useless police officers, delicious (but forbidden -> diarrheoa ) food, endless colourful shopping streets (among which this stand with dead lama fetuses), parks (without grass), slumps and also quarters with huge houses for the rich. La Paz has everything. The dead lama fetuses are being buried under a new house, to bring luck. The lama's are not s lucky. B.t.w., if the building is really big, human sacrifices are still in order!?!
You think we've got our wires crossed because we liked it? Think again, everything here is connected. Being a sparky (electrician) here in Bolivia is a challenge. It's like
Henk Elsings story about officer Bakema who found a bomb on the beach; it's very important not to mix up the two wires, one is gray-blue and the other blue-gray. Bakema? Bakema, are you stil there? (sorry Kiwi's, this is in Dutch).
Getting your drivers license in these countries is the same as in New Zealand, you ask the person in the family with the most traffic convictions (or the one who never even had a license) to teach you how to drive. You pretend to have learned something from those persons, hand over the obligatory 5 Snickers wraps to the police officer in charge and voilà, you've got a drivers license. Not that that is strictly necessary because the authorities accept any form that is laminated. Any piece of paper that is laminated (you can do that on any corner) must be official.
The Bolivians do have humour although it's difficult to catch them with a smile on their face. On our first walk trough town we saw this sign (left side of the picture) for the Anonymous Alcoholics. The establishment was nicely squeezed between 3 liquor shops. On the opposite side of the street there was another one. Great to do your shopping after the course.
This is a nice example of the Bolivian police force. Stands like mr. Gumby from Monty Python, hardly moves. Has a whistle in his mouth which he every now and then blows. Of course nobody listens and he doesn't care. Major traffic violations happen right in front of his eyes, but he manages not to see them because siesta is nearby and getting into action might lead to paperwork which is an environmental crime. You see Bolivian police men in museums as doorman or receptionists. They are guarding banks (usually with 2 or 3), or manning road blocks where they do nothing else but looking at forms, pretending to be able to understand anything on the form. They do not check for alcohol, do not look at luggage or the technical state of the car (a recent study showed that > 54% of the cars were not roadworthy, and that was only of the people that accepted the free roadworthy test). Sometimes they open the door of a van to see if there is a nice lady on board, but other than that they long for siesta. As said before, siesta is the time you smuggle whatever can't see the daylight. Haven't seen any environmental officers. Too bad, work enough for them.
Especially because of this firm. Coca cola, 3 liter bottles for 10 Bolivianos. That is NZ$ 2.11 or Euro 1.27, for 3 LITER! South America is doomed, it is already covered in plastic bottles (we drove at a height of 4 km and saw plastic littering the country site everywhere) and diabetes is going to kill most of them as all they do is eat chicken and drink cola.
Typical picture of La Paz, endless market stalls and a traffic jam consisting of 'collectivo's', vans who's front windscreen is covered with banners of streets or areas they may reach (no guarantee). You can stop them anywhere by lifting your arm. Cheap as, but 'dangerous as' as well! The drivers are all suicidal.
There is nothing you can't buy on the markets. This police uniform was for sale in a stand we passed. Any rank you'd wanted. Generals uniforms, no problem. No wonder tourists get robbed by 'police officers'. By the way, this happens in Amsterdam too!
Amazing colourful clothing markets. Need some new shoelaces? We finally managed to buy new clips to replace the broken ones on my back pack. Any size, any colour.
Nienke was so tempted. Would be great on the dinner table, or for pillow, or...... She is starting to think that roof rack on the car might be a good idea after all. Just in case the amount of our souvenir trophies may get out of hand.
Evo Morales may not be the most democratic socialist in the world, but he sure makes things happen. La Paz has about 10 telepheriques, cable cars that cover most of the city. Not put up for tender, but provided by the Swiss. Of course you could ask the Algerians to make an offer, but why not go for the best (goedkoop is duurkoop my mum always says = you get what you pay for).
At first we thought he was not so great for Bolivia, but he has brought electricity and clean water to rural areas, is building a great (my wife was a roading manager) infrastructure throughout Bolivia, improved education and health, etc. Maybe a country like this needs a beneficial dictator for a few years. It's like the Romans, without a good infrastructure you can't have a great economy. Talking about good roading, see the car wedged in between the rocks? He missed a corner. Think about emergency services trying to get him out!
These old carriages reminded me of 'Tintin and the Picaro's (Kuifje en de Picaro's). We had a nice coffee in there, you can see Nienke smiling behind the window. Sure Rutger would love this (the trains I mean).
Long time since Valparaiso, but finally street art again,
In the front you can see the old presidential palace. One of the many grievances a lot of Bolivians have against mr. Morales. He build a new presedential palace behind the old one, ugly and not necessary according to a lot of people. Must say, the 50 million dollar museum for himself in his hometown sounds quite extravagant indeed. His face everywhere is also overdone. Let's hope he will leave peacefully after the next elections.
Not sure what you think of this, but the architect of this renovation should be imprisoned for life. Talking about imprisonment, right in the middle of La Paz is an big pink building. It's a prison. This prison is special as you won't just find prisoners here but also their family and friends, who can go in and out as they wish. Apparently it's a kind of privilege to be locked up here. You can bribe a judge to be sent there. It's also known for the production of cocaine. Everybody knows it and they do not do anything about it. At night the prisoners lift the roof iron sheets and throw diapers filled with cocaine on the street where their compadres collect the stuff. So if you are ever in La Paz and feel the need to check out a diaper (??) on the streets around the prison, your life is in danger!
For us Europeans christmas in New Zealand was always kind of odd. We're used to a white christmas. Snow, cold, hot chocolate, etc. Since South America is on the same hemisphere as NZ it's not surprising to see a christmas market at the end of november. This market was only the start of a hectare big christmas market, filled with container loads of Chinese christmas rubble.
On our last day in La Paz we had to cross town again, this time during daylight. Besides that, we had to climb from the centre of town (3650 m. high) to the Alti Plano (3800 m. high), over a not for whimps road, tail in the mud, nose in the air and up we go.
Shops in Bolivia are concentrated per brand. You need a new battery for the car? There is a street with only shops that sell car batteries. Go to the hair dresser?A street full of hair dressers. The shops are often quite tiny and the owners do not seem to worry much about competition. Prices seem to be the same as well.
After La Paz we visited the Inca ruins of Tiwanaku. Enormous complex of ruins. Unfortunately the locals and especially the catholic church had removed quite some stones for their houses and the church. Barbarians.
Still we had a great day. Couldn't get anything to eat in the village (or we did not dare to touch it) so we asked the hotel if they could provide some food for us. We were told to come at 8 as other guests (2) had dinner at 7. Besides the cook, a 1.2 m. old lady had to watch her sitcom on the big TV sitting on the bar in the restaurant. They switched 1 lamp on in the otherwise dark restaurant so we could see what we were eating. No need to leave a review on the internet as the front of the hotel looked like it is about to collaps. Not exactly Inca design. Hasn't been maintained since it was built.
So, time to leave for Copacabana. Yes, Copacabana. Party time. Unfortunately not Copacabana in Rio, but the one on Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. We had to take a ferry to get onto the peninsula. Nienke took all the valuables out of the car just in case (I mean, it all looks very safe doesn't it).
At our ECO-lodge Nienke tried to relax and read her book. The kids of the family who ran the lodge wouldn't have any of it and asked Nienke a thousand questions.
Driving, eating and drinking makes you fat, so we decided to take a stroll. Taxi (any car with the word 'taxi' on it somewhere) drivers did not understand us very well. Every time one of them passed us they asked if we needed a ride or they honked loudly indicating that there was a better solution than to walk up a mountain. Found this nice picnic spot on an old Inca footpath leading to the Isla del Sol.
Never managed to walk the full 17 km as Hilario, a 60 year old farmer, had spotted us walking while he was working on his land. After yelling some pleasantries to each other he quickly made his move and caught up with us just before we passed his house. We had to come onto his boat (which turned out to be seaworthy after removing about 20 bucket loads of water) to visit the .. ruins. It turned out to be a small beach of which he could not explain what the use of the Inca's was for. There was a twentieth (!!) century Inca wall painting on the rocks and a huge ceramic map of an undiscovered Inca city. I'm pretty sure it was a natural phenomenon but climbing at 4000 m. in the sun takes the energy (as Nienke shows here) for an archaeological discussion away.
Let's just say that Hilario found a great way to empty tourists wallets. It was fun anyway.
We convinced him to drop us of at the Isla del Sol. Price? What we think it was worth. That turned out to be much more than we thought. We paid him a fair price, but when we climbed onto the island a Babylonian language mix up during a chaotic encounter with a few local women resulted in us being brought back to Copacabana before we wanted to and on a ferry all to ourselves. Needless to say we had to pay for the whole ferry. I did tell Nienke that I was going to buy the tickets for our trip to Antarctica!
Luckily we could not take any food with us to Peru as the many stalls on the market in Copacabana came nowhere near minimal hygienic Western standards. Our lunches during the walks consisted of Snickers and bags of Doritos, this to avoid dysentery.
On the last day in Bolivia I treated the car to a clean up with buckets of Lake Titicaca water. Not many cars can claim this luxury. We read on the Panamerican blogs that some people were told to return and clean their car first when they tried to cross the border.
Although not the great beach in Rio de Janeiro, we had fun in Copacabana and in Bolivia in general. Just don't mind the littering and make sure you carry enough loperamide (anti-diarrhoea tablets).
Last sunset. Next blog will be from Peru. Cheers.
On our last day in La Paz we had to cross town again, this time during daylight. Besides that, we had to climb from the centre of town (3650 m. high) to the Alti Plano (3800 m. high), over a not for whimps road, tail in the mud, nose in the air and up we go.
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