A truly South American capital city

Trip Start Dec 06, 2005
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Trip End Jun 17, 2006


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Saturday, January 14, 2006

Bus to La Paz was fun for one reason - a totally unexpected river crossing. The bus stopped and we were all told to get off to pay a few cents for a "crossing" - so we were thinking it was some kind of bridge toll or something. Anyway turns out the few cents was to cross this massive river (at least a hundred metres wide, and deep) in a little motorboat. Meanwhile our bus is sitting with all our possessions at a jetty type thing, waiting for a BARGE to take it over the river. What the. Wondering how often they maintained these barges, we stood there in the freezing cold praying our bus would make it over the river and not sink. Luckily it made it and we were in La Paz soon enough.

Got to La Paz at around 10pm not having the slightest clue in the world where we were or where hostels world, but the friendly locals helped us out and we splurged on a mini-apartment inside a hotel Al, Charlie, Julia, and I
Al, Charlie, Julia, and I
 . When I say splurged i mean payed 65 Bolivianos each (around A$9) for a safe night's sleep and our own living room :)

Al had had enough and hit the sack, but Julia, Charlie and I hit the town. First stop was an old-man bar, where they only served one type of beer in longneck bottles, had a DJ playing local bolivian tunes and an old guy with a microphone saying random stuff over the top. Left that pretty quickly. Passed around a hundred cops, they were absolutely everywhere - but I still felt the least safe that I have the whole trip. Second stop was a 'disco show' where 70% of the crowd were dancing to this bolivian music, it was really cool actually - we were possibly the only non-locals, and guys and girls of our age had all the moves for these folk tunes. Third stop was a place called 'Fantasy', where there was a reasonable live band. Unfortunately no good photos from La Paz, other than a group shot as we farewelled Julia.
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