Thursday, November 17, 2005
South America Trip - Day 31 - Puno to La Paz
Following the previous bus trip our guide decided to book with a different company for the trip to La Paz. After an early start and arriving at the bus depot at 6.30 we waited till 8 for the bus to arrive from Lima. When we boarded the bus we found that all our seats had been double booked so following a standoff with a difficult English guy we moved to other seats. When we reached the border we had to get our passports stamped on the Peruvian side then walk across a bridge to get it stamped again in Bolivia. It was like a handover of a prisoner in a movie. We just got going when were stoppped again by some bored police who stamped our passports again.
Entering La Paz is an experience. You enter through a poor suburb then travel down the steep river valley to the city. Buildings sprawl up either side of the steep valley like the Favelas in Rio de Janeiro. South Americans have a strange way of building their houses. They will build the ground floor in brick and leave the reinforcing rods sticking out the top. Then they will gradually, as they can afford it, build the next storey. So the whole city looks like it is the process of being built. Because it is so dry parts of the cities look like a city from the Middle east like Baghdad or Tel Aviv. Many of the houses in the country are built of adobe brick which is made from mixing mud with straw and drying it in the sun. Then they have either tin or straw roofs.
La Paz is a bustling city and because Bolivia is one of the poorest in S.A. you feel less safe here. There are police everywhere, some with trudgeons and pepper spray and some with pistols. In the central square you can see the bullet holes in the Presidential Palace from an uprising in 2003.
Entering La Paz is an experience. You enter through a poor suburb then travel down the steep river valley to the city. Buildings sprawl up either side of the steep valley like the Favelas in Rio de Janeiro. South Americans have a strange way of building their houses. They will build the ground floor in brick and leave the reinforcing rods sticking out the top. Then they will gradually, as they can afford it, build the next storey. So the whole city looks like it is the process of being built. Because it is so dry parts of the cities look like a city from the Middle east like Baghdad or Tel Aviv. Many of the houses in the country are built of adobe brick which is made from mixing mud with straw and drying it in the sun. Then they have either tin or straw roofs.
La Paz is a bustling city and because Bolivia is one of the poorest in S.A. you feel less safe here. There are police everywhere, some with trudgeons and pepper spray and some with pistols. In the central square you can see the bullet holes in the Presidential Palace from an uprising in 2003.
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