Bolivian Adventure

  La Paz, Bolivia
Monday, June 23, 2008

Copacabana Beach

Entry into Bolivia was easy, couple of stamps in the passport and a random 1 boliviano crossing fee (not too bad as this amounted to less than 7 pence).  Then 30 minutes inside of Bolivia we reached our first of two stops, Copacabana.  Seriously not to be confused with the more famous Brazilian Copacabana because if you arrived here on honeymoon or vacation I´m guessing you´d be slightly disappointed.  Its a small little town, right on the edge of Lake Titicaca with one main touristy street of restaurants, bars, souvenir shops and internet places.  There´s also a main square, a bit of a scraggy beach area and a hill you can climb up for nice views, but apart from that not a great deal to do or see.  Because there wasn´t much to do I took it upon myself to get ill, just briefly though - a fevery cold thing that I managed to sweat out overnight and was right as rain in the morning. 

Copacabana Restaurant

I´d heard from lots of other travelers that Bolivia was really really cheap, but I wasn´t getting that from Copacobana, paid a quid for a drink and a kit kat from a shop, so not too different from back home - I was beginning to think Copacabana was a tourist trap.  Anyway the following morning we were out of there and on a bus to a dodgy boat that crossed Lake Titicaca and then back onto a bus again before arriving in La Paz, officially the highest city in the world and more altitude to acclimatise to.  La Paz translates to ´The Peace´ but that title doesn´t apply to the roads, the traffic is completely mental and it took us over an hour to navigate through the city centre to our hotel.  And the other funny thing that I saw while going through the centre was that the zebra crossings are manned by .... well zebras (dressed up ones not real ones, all chaos would break loose if animals controlled such things and besides animals aren´t due too control the earth until 2030).  And the shoe shiners aren´t the friendly looking shoe shiners I´ve seen in other South American cities.  The shoe shiners of La Paz wear full face balaclavas and look like terrorists, maybe for pollution reasons or maybe just for intimidation, who knows?

Plaza del Estudiante

My first afternoon there consisted of a burger king lunch (first one in ages), a quick look around the centre and then watching the Euro championship games before heading for dinner at a restaurant called Mongos which did the best Enchiladas made with real bits of steak, fantastic place for food if you´re ever in La Paz.  The following day I did a bit more sightseeing including visiting the black market and the witches market and trying unsuccessfully to get into San Pedro prison.  We had a big final night out in La Paz before our tour group started splitting up, and had a nice meal in a very posh restaurant with a piano player, some beers in an Irish bar although not too many as the service was crap, before ending up in a bar/nightclub that was pretty good.  On the subject of service I noticed the service in nearly everywhere we ate or drank in Southern Peru and Bolivia was pretty awful.  Food and drinks would take forever to arrive and even the bill took half an hour to arrive in one place as the staff joked and laughed behind the counter.  Maybe thats the culture here but needless to say the tips I left in these places weren´t too great.

National Stadium

On my last day there I went wandering up to one of the cities main viewpoints which ended up being a kiddies park - I was tempted to go on the crocodile slide but resisted.  I also had a walk around the Bolivian national stadium as it was next to the park (I think I must now have a Guinness record for most national stadiums walked around) and then went to the Sunday markets to see what that was all about.  I also went to a very interesting coca museum which gave a lot of history on the coca leaf and how it was used by the natives and how the cocaine industry has been developed.  Interesting fact, according to one of the boards in there, 50% of the worlds cocaine is consumed by the US which represents 5% of the worlds population. 

La Paz City

And that was it for Bolivia, from what I´ve seen of it, it´s a nice enough place I suppose, but the Bolivian people left me feeling slightly sour about the place.  A number of incidents left me that way, I wont go into the major one here but the final one was when checking out of our hotel when the receptionist added 3 phantom whiskeys to my bar bill which only consisted of 5 drinks in the first place.  It wasn´t so much this but when I refused to pay she asked me ´How much do you earn?´ as part of an insinuation that I should just pay for the whiskeys anyway because I was richer than she was.  My reply to this question was ´Well I´m unemployed luv actually so don't earn a penny´ to which she didn´t have much reply.  Granted the place is a very poor country in comparison but I think its a real shame that people feel the need to rip off tourists in such a way when the tourism industry is playing such a big role in sustaining their economy.  I don't mind at all the practice of tourist pricing as tourists pay cheaper than they pay back home, locals make a little bit more money on the back of the tourists, and everyones a winner, but other attempted rip-offs like the ones I witnessed really aren´t on.  Plus I´ve been to poorer countries than Bolivia where they haven´t acted in such a manner.  Okay rant over, but I´ll just clarify I only saw 2 cities within the country and maybe I just got unlucky with the people I met.

Highest City In The World

Monday morning and I was of to the airport to fly back to Lima and then on to Mexico and technically a new continent.  After 300 days on the road I think I might finally be getting slightly travel fatigued.  I think I may be all churched-out, monasteried-out, templed-out, ruined-out, squared-out, statued-out, mountained-out and even beached-out.  I hope I don´t come across arrogantly when I say this but I´ve seen so much over the last 10 months that it´s now taking a lot to make me to go ´wow!!´.  The Inca trail managed to do it for me and I just hope there´ll be more of that kind of thing in my last 2 months.


Over and out!