Bolivia - La Paz - Uphill All Ways

Sitting on a smelly bus from Copacobana to La Paz was not the afternoon I had in mind after leaving Isla del Sol, but the surprises didnt end there. Half way into the ride, the bus stops and the bus jockey kicks everyone off with no explanation.

I hunted him down outside the bus to figure out what was going on, to be told that we had to be ferried across the lake in boats separately from the bus. One trend in Bolivia is that Bolivians will think of a toll for you to pay to do anything. Watching the bus get ferried across was fairly entertaining though.

The outskirts of La Paz were not promising - dusty shacks as far as the eye could see. And distressingly, there were mannequin-scarecrows nailed up on a lot of the telephone and power posts. I dont know why. But they were creepy. And then we turned a corner and BAM! La Paz center nestled into a big fabulous mountain valley. As far as city vistas go, this was pretty sweet. Made me forget all about the creepy stuffed humans on poles.



We only had one day to spend in La Paz, as Mick and I had agreed we would rather spend more time in other places further south, so we took a good wander around town, which mostly took so long because with everything going uphill, its hard to work out which direction youre going or where you came from.

The highlight of this stop was the coca museum. For those of you who know the Australian, you will already be familiar with his general distaste for museums and galleries, so you may be surprised. We spent a good couple of hours there. The museum was comically small - two rooms and an upstairs cafe, but very quality. For the $1 admission, we learned about the entire history of the coca plant in a very balanced narrative that addressed both the profound cultural significance of the plant to Andean culture as well as the dangers and problems of its derivative drug cocaine. I also learned that precolumbian civilizations in South America were able to sail across the Pacific to Tahiti in reed boats. Not really related to the coca plant, but cool trivia nonetheless.



After educating ourselves at the museum, we then wandered around the witches market. Yes, actually. You could buy anything there from potions to amulets to dried llama fetuses, which are buried under new homes to bring good luck.




All that walking was intended to make us tired, as we had a 12 hour overnight bus to Uyuni to catch that night. While my expectations of Bolivian buses and roads were clearly lower than those in Peru, I have to say it was the worst bus ride so far. Not the worst bus ever, but bad enough. Although the seats were semi cama, and thus reclined a very reasonable amount, the design of the chair was such that you slid right out of the seat if you lay reclined. And the windows were sealed shut, yet I had a wall waterfall next to me in the window seat that soaked right through my blanket and created a puddle on the floor (making the sliding all the worse). They did play a movie for us (Death Sentence with Kevin Bacon) in which everyone gets shot. Nice bedtime pick. I opted to watch the massive thunderstorm outside the window (source of wall waterfall), and the lightning striking the altiplano was pretty cool. But the charm wore off by hour five, when I was still awake and not very happy about it.

Now we had been told there would be a stop for dinner. I assumed it would be around 10 since the bus left at 6pm. So I stayed awake. Big mistake. Stop wasnt until 1am, when the bus literally pulled over in a field. Which happened to have a roofed building with food carts inside. Nice. I grumbled my way finally to sleep once back on the bus, thinking Id at least get 5 or 6 hours in before reaching Uyuni. Not so much. The road from Oruro to Uyuni was awful. Not like Costa Ricas roller coaster roads - this felt like the bus was literally driving over boulders right and left. The bus would literally tilt on an angle that raised concern the bus would roll over. Not conducive to sleep at all! And we were headed right onto the salt flats tour of Uyuni that very morning. Which was so very unfortunate for Mick, since all many of you know, Holly who has not slept is not a happy camper at all.