More altitude
La Paz is, apparently, the highest capital city in the world, is not actually the captial of Bolivia. Still, it's pretty high up (3636m), although the statistic sounds a bit like one of those over-qualified ones. The highest city in the Southern hemisphere with a "z" in it, for example.
The border crossing to Bolivia went smoothly, the currency change went without fault or scheming from those on either side (admittedly, the notes I got there might have been forgeries, but I've spent them all with incident since, so I don't really give a monkeys anymore).

We had two days to kill in La Paz, and if nothing else, first impressions of the city were that it was completely barking mad. Two days later, the same impressions hold true. It's also one of the most fun cities we've spent time in since we arived on this continent.
It's not a particularly attractive city. Most of the colonial buildings have been destroyed and the new ones are genearlly brick, concrete and glass. Much of it is also incredibly run down, one of our tours took us en route through the Alto slum district, home to the recent riots (and surprisingly brief revolt against the government, the scars of which can be seen in the main plaza, ominous pockmarks on the building walls.) However, the atmosphere of the place is so thick that were you to tip the city upside down it would hang in there stubbonly. The streets are thick with markets selling everything and anything. These might be a Christmas only fixture, but when we were there, they went on all night, you could hear the Bolivian Del Boy's screaming their wares from our hotel room. Minibus sized taxis carreer down the narrow streets, almost all with a kid leaning out of the sliding door yelling destinations, the traffic in general is well up to the creative standards we've already seen in Ecuador and Peru, indicators are never used, but the horn is an all purpose signaling device, "hullo!", "I'm here!" and "get out of my way you dumb gringo" can all be delivered with a heavy parp.

We began our first full day with a guided tour of the city. This was fairly brief, but took in a number of interesting spots, including a spectacular view of the entire city and the white capped mountains surrounding it, eventually ending in the reknowned Witches Market, a narrow cobbled street decked out with stalls selling such delightful artefacts as llama fetuses, stuffed cats, bats and curiously inflated dried frogs covered in glitter. The fetueses are used for various rituals by the local Andean population, and most buildings have one in their foundations as a sort of good luck charm. Most of it is pretty inocuous of course, but the sight of a basket of dried four legged husks proved pretty unusual, if not unsettling.
The tour ended with a visit to an area known as the "Valley of the Moon". A landscape of curiously formed structures in the clay, formed by water errosion. The effect is certainly pretty unworldy, spoilt slightly by the bloke who kept following us round with a set of pan pipes. Disapointingly, the name of the place didn't refer to some lost Inca rituals or gods, but was given to the place by Neal Armstrong who was playing golf nearby and thought the place looked "Kinda familiar".

The rest of the day was spent looking around the other market stalls for secret santa gifts for the others on the bus. Gary was off to play golf the following day and wanted a tanktop, so we dutifully followed him around (I'm making this sound like a chore, it wasn't, honestly) as he eventually settled (and successfully haggled for) and natty beige and brown number with a pair of tartan socks to go with it.
Spent the evening wondering down town to find a cheap eaterie, passing dozens of other market stalls as we did so, selling useless tat, horrible tourist rubbish and dangerous looking cuisine. Not trusting our antibodies, we skipped the roadside barbeques of anonymous meat product and potatoes, and found a cheap but very pleasant pizza resturant instead. Gary was less lucky, opting for some local food at a nearby resturant. I'll let him recout that story though, although you might want to sit down...

The following day, we did what any self respecting tourist would do in the highest capital in the world. We went higher. Mount Chacaltaya is apparently the world's highest ski resort, at a queasy 5221 metres above sea level. However given that we were visiting during the summer months, the snow was a little thin on the ground, revealing some rather painfull looking scree and slate slopes beneath what we were assured would be "at least" one and a half metres of snow come February. Skiing wasn't on the agenda for us though, just a bit of altitude sickness baiting. A bus (not Jock, sadly given that we now pretty much trust Mick, our driver, to navigate the big yellow beast through any road no matter how dodgy it might seem) took us most of the way up the mountain along roads which didn't quite seem to fit the width of the vehicle. We then bundled out and set off up the final two hundred or so metres ourselves. Not much of a walk at sea level, but the altitude really kicks in when you take your first step.
As with the Inca trail, just finding a pace and sticking to it, got us up without much incident at all (well, me and a couple of others anyway, two others settled for half way complaining of stomach pains and spots before the eyes). And it was well worth the effort, as the view was stunning.
The weather wasn't great, a fuggy layer of cloud threatened to spoil the scenery, but it was high enough not to block out the vistas of the Andes on each side of us, and - in the far distance - the glittering form of La Paz itself, basking in the sunshine which we couldn't quite belive existed. Not surprising this, five thousand metres is bloody cold. So cold, in fact, that it started snowing on us as we sat at the top hugging the cairn errected there. Not your rubbish English snow either, this was the propper polystyrene ball type snow which bounced off your shoulders and down your kneck, stuck gently to your jersey and didn't melt until you pushed it away with your gloves. We hurredly made our descent, worrying a little about the performance of our bus in such conditions. Luckily the snow seemed confined to the mountain's peak (obvious really), so we arrived scratch free back in La Paz in time for lunch.

We were dropped, ominously perhaps, outside La Paz's prison, which, only earlier this year, was open for tourists to wonder around, being a curious penal system of a prisoner's city within a city. Now it's closed to visitors since a prisoner left with a tourist and nobody spotted it.
We found lunch at a very nice cafe just off one of the many market streets (all of which seemed to have switched around during the night), which served some of the best coffee I've had on the continent (curious that, most coffees consist of a cup of hot water and a jar of instant) and a stunningly rich chocolate cheesecake.
Then back to the markets where I finally bought some ghastly tat for my secret santa.
- posted by Vince @ 4:26 PM