Sunday, 4 September 2011

Six months on.....location La Paz

Okay, it's been rather a lean time for blog writing recently.  A mixture of laziness, compacted with a small measure of shame at the pace of my progress.

So, not sure I'm gonna recount the entirety of the last six months - In fact i'm sure i'm not.  I have notes, but given my proclivity for being verbose and long winded, six months worth of blog will run to tens of thousands of words.  I feel that is a trifle much.  Plus, i can't really bear to look at my nigh on illegible scrawl for that long without my eyes going funny.

Anyway, La Paz.  Famous (possibly) for being the highest capital city in the world.  It's 3600m above sea level, and the surrounding rim of the canyon is around 4000m up, which is where the sprawling and poor city of El Alto perches.  It's a spectacular setting, the whole of La Paz is contained in the hills and ridges of the ravine floor.  Everywhere you go in the city you can look up in the gaps between the high rises and see the walls of the valley, sometimes with terraces of houses rising up four hundred metres in an unbroken wall, sometimes sharp vertical ridges of brown and red.

I came here a few days back now.  The day I arrived here had been a long one, I'd started off from a hotel 100kms south filled with road teams - they've been building a dual carriage way to La Paz for three years now - at 8am, in a sadly doomed attempt to avoid the worst of the winds.  Unfortunately for my idea of getting to La Paz early, there was the excitement of a race from Oruro to La Paz occurring, so police were out in force to stand around villages smoking, and seemingly everyone from ten miles around was out to watch.  No-one actually seem to have any good idea when the cars would arrive though, which lead to the road being closed to traffic for hours before the first rally-cars and motorbikes showed up.  Unfortunately, I was on a straight section, so not all that interesting, and no overtaking manoeuvres to be seen - I reclined by a pile of earth and snoozed for a while, resulting later on in the pain of sunburnt lips - some day I will learn.

The first signs of La Paz were not propitious - for starters I was cycling alongside ten kms of backed-up lorries due to the rally, and I'm not too sure if environmental ordinances involving clean air  and emission levels have made too much of an impact in Bolivia.  Then you go through El Alto, which until 1996 was the fastest growing city in South America.  It's reminiscent of a lot of the highway towns I'd passed through, only with 800,000 people rather than a few thousand - there's a frantic food and shampoo market happening, probably constantly, on one side of the road, there's rather a lot of rubbish everywhere, the buildings are either red brick or concrete, and often half finished, and the national mobile phone company seem to have paid to paint their logo on one in ten of the houses.

After a few kms of this, and looking over my shoulder for trufis (the ubiquitous minibuses), I looked through a gap in the buildings, and saw a massive drop away to a valley floor, a lake, and a general alpine scene.  From my vantage point I could see a small crack through into another valley, which was lined with high rises - La Paz proper.

Anyway, it took me about four hours to actually reach my destination from here, but that's not really a particularly interesting or pertinent tale - more just a case of me pushing my bike through the thronging Friday night streets of La Paz for hour on hour - it was bigger than expected, and a hell of a lot hillier.

So, made it to my decided hostel - the Wild Rover, a generally Irish themed hostel (well, a lot of the staff are Irish, and it has the always amusing "Irish doors" poster on the wall).  It's pretty much a  no-holds barred party hostel, with the bar pretty much packed to the rafters by 10pm each night, and the themed nights generally involving a lot of fancy dress, UV paint and people walking on the bar, pouring shots into gleefully accepting throats.


La Paz is starkly different from every other town I've visited in Bolivia.  There are Radisson hotels, supermarkets, quiet, manicured embassy districts, steakhouses catering solely to the Gringo market, and English is widely spoken. Obviously it's not a city inhabited solely by tourists and diplomats, and there is an awesome market area selling every imaginable fruit, fresh fish lying out on tables all day long in sanitary conditions that would make my mother wince, students and schoolkids everywhere.  There is also the famous witches market, which has dried llama foetuses for sale - I believe you are meant to bury one under the foundations of your house to ensure good luck; I've thought about buying one for my new tents first night, but I suspect the smell might by a trifle off-putting.  They also trade in small wax models of houses, cars, diplomas, which you are supposed to get blessed by an Aymara priest, and the real thing will be yours soon.

Next stop is Lake Titicaca and the Isle of the Sun, and then on to Cuzco - after that I think there may be a blessed relief from altitude, as I drop down to lower climes, although I want to see some of the jungle and cloud forest areas around Peru, but I'll see what happens.  I will also write some more about earlier experiences, but for now just wanted to get some words down online, let people know where I am, and dump some photos down for anyone who's interested.  Ah, and one more answer - if anyone with a working knowledge of south american geography is slightly bemused by the sudden emergence of photos with my sister in Columbia, I had arranged to meet her up there, overcome with optimism about my predicted rate of progress, so I flew up there for two weeks, before flying back down!

Anyway, until next time (won't be six months, I promise!), love David.

Some photos from Valparaiso, mostly grafitti and houses.  Oh and guys called Prat.




One of my Chilean ladies.  Quiet, and rather stony faced.


The great Prat - Chile's foremost national hero,


Valparaiso is incredibly hilly, so about a hundred years or so they built about twelve ascensors - basically funiculars, to take you up the hills.  My photos of said cars were shit, so here's a pic of some wires instead.


The road I stayed on.

Salvador Allende, deposed by Pinochet and the army in 1973,


Me with an easter fish in Colombia, thanks Mum and Dad!


Polly (my sister) chanelling the cat in Medellin,


Polly again, attempting to look cool and nonchalant (possibly under my direction),


Old colonial street in Cartagena,


Cartagena again,


Tayrona national park in Colombia, just ya stereotypical tropical paradise,




Me, hiking in Tayrona.  I think I may have been unhinged by the heat,









And.......back in Argentina.  Near Villa Union on ruta 26 / 40,

Carrying a daring wine based raid near Cafayate in Salta province.  And posing.  Always posing.


Spectacular moutnains near Cafayate,





View from the high road to Jujuy,


The Tropic of Capricorn!


Quebrada de Humahuaca, the road to Bolivia, a UNESCO region due to the indigenous culture and archaeology of the area, and also the nightmare fuel qualities of its llama statuery.











 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Round that corner on the right there is a lovely gale force wind just waiting for me,
 

Bolivia!  Okay, I know it's resemblance to northern Argentina is rather uncanny...



It may please you to know that the crossing of international borders was no hinderance to my posing or hat wearing abilities,


























One of the only photos I took on the hardest road IN THE WORLD (possible hyperbole).  It was all between 3000m and about 4600m, and the first half was pretty much constant up and down mountainside action.  Pretty exhausting.




















Bolivian delivery drivers (the trains were in bad shape),

Salt flats of Uyuni,








That's a dead vicuna hung on the post.


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Laguna Colorada, reddy-purple caused by algae.  Also one of the coldest places I've ever been.


Geezers.  There's an awesome thermal pool around these parts which I had a swim in, sadly for admirers of Adonis like figures, only the german girls I was with have photographic evidence,























2 comments:

  1. No shame in this. It seems its evolving into something that it was meant to be. Staying and reflecting is more valuable than some time bound intention. There's more good in reflection because it is timeless. Be well. x

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  2. Nice to read the story David.. I saw a same picture i have made...the lama building. Only from the other side...over here..
    http://femjimfee.blogspot.com/2011/08/12-augustus-tilcara.html

    Greetings Jim & Femke

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