la paz

Next stop: La Paz

I really liked La Paz, but unfortunately, we only had two days there. And even that was cut

short as our bus from Copacabana was road-blocked for a couple hours due to protests by fishermen. There was a local festival with dancing and intricate costumes going on, so we checked that out. And on our bus there was a very funny Peruvian hippie with a crooked didgeridoo who kept the whole bus entertained.

The roadblock left us with one evening and a day in La Paz. We didn’t get to do much, we went out to dinner (I had tempura, yum). The next day we just wandered around a bit and did postcard and bus-supplies shopping. We also bought coca leaves to chew on. Chewing coca is not as exciting as it sounds: tasted like grass and filled my mouth with leaf bits, ugh. And the effect was not very noticeable, like that of drinking too much coffee. But I felt cool anyway. We tried to chew as much as possible before we had to dump our baggy at the Chilean border. (you can’t bring any organic products into Chile - Chile is sort of island-like due to the mountain chain, and super strict about avoiding bacteria and viruses and stuff.)

La Paz is the highest capital city in the world, at almost 4000m, It is located in a valley surrounded by mountains, kind of like a giant bowl. The city has expanded to creep us the sides of the hills, from above it looks insane. I couldn’t get any decent pictures from the bus window so I've posted some I found online. We were going to go to a lookout point, but at the hostel they told us that is too dangerous to go there at 9 in the morning and we should forget it.

I imagine that La Paz is hellish in the summer.

There were tons of shoeshine boys and they all wear masks…no one really knows why, there are various theories;…to protect themselves from the social embarrassment of shining shoes, to protect themselves from the fumes, to protect themselves from being recognized by the cops…In any case, they are also camera-shy, so I only got fotos of them from farther away.

La Paz fotos are here: http://chile.marahtyler.com/#23.1