Day 25

Friday 26^th November 2010

Another early start – we were awake before the alarm again and it was set for 6am! We hit the local bakery for snacks and coffee to see us through the day and said farewell to Paul, our bumbling tour leader and half of the group.

We were being escorted to La Paz today by Dionel, another Tucan representative. Dionel is a much more competent tour leader and we were relieved to be leaving Paul behind at last!

I’m writing this on the bus. We have just left Peru and crossed the border into Bolivia. Bolivia is just 4 hours behind you guys back home so we’ve also lost an hour of our day.

The bus isn’t as plush as the one from Cusco to Puno but we are sat right up front behind the driver so we have got a fantastic view of where we are going. Unfortunately we can also see 7 large cracks across the windscreen which is slightly worrying and caused us to put on our seatbealts as soon as we boarded!

It is a beautiful sunny day and the scenery is breathtaking. We have the rippling blue waters of Lake Titicaca to out left and snow capped mountains up ahead. We are largely passing through farming communities and small towns so there is variety of livestock on the road to avoid – sheep and donkeys being herded by Andean women in typical dress and numerous dogs who appear completely unperturbed by the approaching coach!

The border police were interseting , you show your passport, get it stamped and then just walk to Bolivia, all a bit strange considering all the palava you go through back home.

We stopped for lunch in a little town called Copacabana – this was a million miles away from Copacabana in Rio but was as close as Bolivia could get. It’s a land locked country with a little beach on the banks of Lake Titicaca, hence the name!

Then we changed buses for the rest of our journey to La Paz – the transport was going downhill at every change – this was a real bone cruncher of a bus and we still had another 4 hours to go!

The highlight of this trip was when we reached the end of a peninsular and were all herded off the bus onto a ‘ferry’. This was a small motor boat that took us across the lake. The bus itself was loaded onto a much more unstable looking craft and drifted across with a bloke out front scooping buckets of water out of the boat!! We feared for our bus and our backpacks which were still aboard but were assured that this was completely normal! The bus made it and soon we were back aboard and on our way.

We finally arrived at the hotel at about 5pm after a long and tiring day of doing not very much.

First impressions of La Paz. Franky thinks it’s an absolute shit hole. He has opted to stay in the hotel, have a beer and catch up with facebook. Now I think this gives the hotel too much credit… imagine the worst B&B in Blackpool, add a bit more chintz and take it back 25 years and you’re somewhere in the right ball park. Our room is pink – dark pink carpet, pink curtains, flowery pink bedding with dusky pink sheets. Add to this a blue bathroom suite circa 1978! Jaqui isn’t well so she is going to bed – to shut out the pink! That left Sheridan, Paschael and I to enjoy the orientation tour with Dionel.

La Paz is completely mental. There is traffic everywhere, hooting, blocking up junctions, shunting forward, trying to out do each other and spewing fumes into the narrow streets. There’s already a lack of oxygen at 3600m and this isn’t helped by the pollution.There’s also 2 million people – milling around everywhere and so many street sellers. You appear to be able to buy anything in thus city from a little woman sat at the side of the road in a big skirt and a bowler hat – underwear, toiletries, padlocks and other hardware, shoes, clothes, souvenirs, bread, hotdogs, whiskey, electronics. You name it – they don’t need a shop for it! The Bolivians love it. The government has built a large 3 storey market to contain all these stalls and clean up the streets – but it is empty!

It’s late when we get back to the hotel so we quickly freshen up and head out for dinner. Sheridan isn’t feeling too great either so our numbers are depleted to just 3. We head off to Sol y Lunar on Dionel’s recommendation. Franky gets his first taste of the streets of La Paz! The restaurant turns out to be a little oasis in the crazy city. As we burst though the door gasping for some unpolluted air the guy behind the bar cheerily says – ‘ello guys’ in a Northern English accent. YES!!!!! The menu is varied from all over the world. Paschael and Franky opt for the pasta and I get steak. It’s tasty and cheap. After we’ve eaten we hit the inevitable wall that comes at 10pm so we make our way back to the hotel for some shut eye – feeling a bit more positive about this city and happy in the knowledge that for once we do not have to be up at 6.30am.