Back to La Paz

Trip Start Jun 12, 2008

Trip End Nov 19, 2008

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Flag of Bolivia La Paz, Bolivia
Friday, August 22, 2008

So back in La Paz for a couple of nights before heading off to the South. We decided on heading down to Sucre but upon arriving at the bus station to buy some tickets we were told that there was a road block to Sucrea dn nothing was getting through. I should point out at this point that Bolivia is undergoing a little political unrest at the moment (it usually is to be fair) and a recent referrendum was held as a vote of confidence on Evo Morales the current and first Indigenous president. He wants to redistribute the weath and land from the rich(er) east to the poorer indigenous west (80% of Bolivia is Indiginous). Obviously this hasn�t gone down well in the rich areas such as Santa Cruz and there have been numerous demonstrations against Evo. They are demanding more autonomy and are pretty pissed of the the Pres. Anyhow, our Spanish is not quite good enough to fully understand what is going on from the news but we think there are counter roadblocks in support of the pres? blocking food supplies to Santa Cruz but we are not really sure

Romantic restaurant

. Just trying to avoid the worst of it.Anyhow, enough of the political briefing, the main thing is the FCO website doesn�t seem overly concerned.

We also encountered our first bit of (attempted) crime in La Paz. I was beggining to wonder if all the books were full of crap and were in fact written by people like me! Anyhow it wnet a little like this. George and I were walking along through the market areas that we had previously walked in the middle of Saturday afternoon. We came to a street with stalls down the middle leading to a quiet cramped pavement to walk along. Suddenly, and fairly well choreographed, I felt that there was more of a squeeze building. Goerge and I wer in single file when all of a sudden a man ahead of us stopped to tie his shoe at the same time as another man walked towards us and a woman walked at us from the side (George also told me that there was a man pushing at her from behind). There was a moment of slightht exicitement as I felt a someone spray me, or spit on me lots of apoligising and mild waving of arms and general panic! Anyhow I had read all about this kind of thing and being slightly larger than the average local I just pushed on through not stopping for anyone (the idea of being the crime being that you stop to get cleaned up and get pickpocketed etc). Anyway it was a little alarming but nothing came of it and really there was little chance of them getting anything from my well zipped up pockets. I felt like a true South American traveller. Just hope that was the worst we experience on the trip!

Apart from that little excitement there is not much else to tell. O except for the musical instrument museum we visited. Quite good fun and lots of instruments to play. Needless to say I showed George how it was done from the drums to the xylophone! She (and her grade 8 clarinet) may dispute this but I think she knows who the percussion king was that day!

As we couldn�t get to Sucre we opted for Potosi. Once the richest and biggest city in South America and the source of most of the silver in Europe for 300 years!