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La Paz, the city, that touches the sky, is an apt description. Located high above sea level, La Paz sits in a bowl surrounded by the high altiplano. La Paz as it grows climbs the hills resulting in varying elevations from 3000 to 4100 m. Overlooking the city is towering triple-peaked Illimani, always snow covered and majestic.
La Paz is the legislative capital of Bolivia, the largest city. The legal capital, home of the Supreme Court, is in Sucre. Not as often visited as other countries, Bolivia is the most Indian country in South America, and you'll experience the language, primarily Quechua, the culture and customs first hand.
Sunday 14th March 2010
We arrived in La Paz after an 8 hour bus journey from Arica in Chile on arrival we both incredibly sick with the altitude. Once we managed to negioate the bus station it took us a while to figure out how to get out (Were not blonde for nothing!!) we got a taxi to our hostel Wild Rovers which was really nice. Once we had checked in as we both felt awful we got in to bed to read our books until about 8pm when we decided to risk dinner at the hostel which was ok then we went to bed hoping to feel better in the morning.
Monday 15th March 2010
This morning we eventually surfaced at 9.30am feeling slightly better, showered and dressed and then took full advantage of the free breakfast. After we had put washing in we left the hostel at 11.30 in search of the witches market. After lots of hills which didn't make breathing any easier which we were struggling with anyway, getting lost, and then having a coffee in despair we eventually found it and it's dried Lama foetuses which it is famous for. The lama foetuses are accordingly used for good luck they didn't look very lucky to us!! After we had explored the witches market we then found the black market another famous market in La Paz which was massive and full of anything you really need in life.
After the black market we went back to Santa Cruz road to go shoe shop shopping as Suzie had managed to leave her walking boots in New Zealand in a hostel which we never did discover which one. We found some walking shoes fairly easily and I just couldn't resist buying myself a nice pair of pumps. By now we were both very hungry so we went to a place called Bruzzo's for lunch and then as we were way behind on the blog we went to use the internet. As usual this took at lot longer than expected and it was dark by the time we left the internet café. We arrived back at the hostel at 7.45pm had a quick coke in the bar before going out for dinner at The Star of India where I tried Lama curry which was actually quite nice and Suzie had a chicken korma which was not up to Louth Indian standards . After dinner we went back to the hostel and got an earlish night.
Tuesday 16th March 2010
Up, dressed and breakfast by 10am this morning we had to check out by 12pm so the rest of the morning was spent packing and sorting this out. We got checked out and got a taxi to Hotel Rossario where we were meeting our tour. Once we got to the hotel we were informed that Gap tours no longer stayed with them (Nice of someone to inform us) but luckily for us the girl behind reception was very helpful and rang the hotel where she thought they now stay and checked our reservation and then got the porter to help us with our luggage to the new hotel which was only down the road.
Once we checked in we spent the afternoon shopping at the witches market for warm clothes as we figured we might need them for the tour. We had lunch at a really nice pizza restaurant before going back to the internet to finish the blog before getting back to the hotel for a meeting at 7pm with Sandra our tour guide. We were given basic information as most of the group hadn't arrived yet as they'd been on a tour all day so we arranged to meet at 9pm instead to go for dinner and drinks.
We all met in the lobby and we got to meet the rest of the group as we'd only met a few earlier. We then all got a taxi to a salsa club called Mongoes where we had dinner and drinks. I got a taxi back to the hotel at 12.30am as I was really tired and didn't feel great still from the altitude Suzie carried on at got in at around 3am.
Wednesday 17th March 2010
We left La Paz at this morning at 8am for a all day journey to Puno in Peru.
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