La Paz
We arrived in La Paz, the highest capital city in the world, after an overnight bus from Uyuni. We booked into Loki Hostel, which is one of the most popular hostels in the city. It is one of the nicest we have stayed in and offers a lot to its guests, it’s easy to see how people get sucked in. Rich and Chris, who we met on our salt flat tour, also stayed at the hostel and the four of us spent every day with one another. We played countless games of pool, watched movies in the movie room, toured the city, and shared many laughs together. La Paz is a beautiful city set in a valley with adobe buildings clinging to the cliffs. A nearby lookout point offered 360 degree panoramic views of the city, which took our breath away… in more ways than one. The city is located at 12,000 ft above sea level and we were completely winded after walking up the steep cobblestone streets to the mirador. We looked down on the football stadium and many plazas while looking across at a snow covered peak and jagged gray mountains. We have visited many markets during our travels and while the Witches Market of La Paz is well known, we felt it was very similar to others around the world. The cobblestone street is lined with shops selling everything from jewelry and clothing to dead/dried/baby llamas (meant to bring good luck if buried under the porch of a newly built home). Tourists are drawn to La Paz for its unique nightlife scene. After a night of pre-gaming in the hostel, a few of us joined the crowds at a nearby dance club before heading to the popular and shocking Route 36. The club has double padded garage doors, which lead into a completely black upholstered club. We sat in a corner and watched as everyone around us did lines of cocaine, which is easily accessible and sold at this particular club. It was interesting, but after watching in awe for a short amount of time we headed home. The four of us went out for a nice dinner and a movie the next night, wanting to enjoy what might have been the last night of our lives!
The World’s Most Dangerous “Death Road”
One of the main tourist draws of La Paz is to cycle down Death Road- 64 km stretch of continuous downhill riding. The road is extremely narrow in places, never wider than a single lane and with 2,000ft dropoffs without guardrails we were both excited and nervous to take on this challenge. We booked with Vertigo, one of the recommended companies and were given top of the line mountain bikes, head to toe protective gear, and experienced guides. They checked our bikes multiple times throughout the day and we felt as safe as we could given the dangerous road we were cycling down. The first section of the road is paved and gave us the chance to admire the scenery as we became comfortable with our bikes. The second part was a rocky dirt road with steep cliffs that have sadly taken many lives over the years. The guides split themselves between our group; one was always at the front setting the pace, one was at the back (with Chelsea), and the other alternated between the front and back while taking pictures and videos of us. We stopped for snacks and lunch along the way and were sad that after 3 ½ hours our adrenaline rush came to an end. We went to a hotel for swimming, dinner, and of course a game of pool before driving the 3 hours back to La Paz. We felt accomplished at the end and would highly recommend this experience to others, despite it’s scary reputation.
Pampas Tour
The road leading to Rurrenbaque was closed due to protests, so we sucked it up and splurged on a flight into the Amazon. Sonja, from Ireland who met the boys earlier in their trip, joined the four of us as we all set off. The tiny plane looked more like a toy as we approached it on the tarmac and we were nervous as the small propellers began to spin and we left the comfort of the ground. There were less than twenty seats running the short length of the plane, one on each side separated by a narrow aisle, and we could see straight into the cockpit. Forty minutes later our plane touched down on the grass runway in the middle of the Amazon. We booked a three day Pampas tour leaving the next day and enjoyed a night in civilization playing pool and eating pizza at Luna Café.
Eight of us were piled into the back of a rundown jeep as we drove three hours down a dusty dirt road to the start of the Yucuma River. We boarded our boat, which was a small canoe with plastic chairs attached to the side and started off down the river. Within ten minutes, we had already seen alligators, caiman, turtles, capybaras (the largest rodents in the world), monkeys, and a variety of large birds. Later in the afternoon, we arrived at our riverside lodge where we spent the next two nights sleeping under serious mosquito nets and sharing our space with hundreds of insects and toads. We set back off down the river to view the sunset over the vast grasslands making up the Pampas. On our way back to the lodge, we used flashlights to illuminate the eyes of the many alligators and caimans lining the riverbank. The generator turned off at 9:00 pm and with nothing else to do, we joined the many insects in our beds, and attempted to fall asleep.
After breakfast on our second day, we put on our long pants and knee high rubber boots and went in search of anacondas in the swampy wetlands. Our feet stuck in the mud with every step and our eyes darted back and forth trying to spot a creature that we were all apprehensive about seeing in the wild. We staggered ourselves and slowly trudged along until Jayme called out, “I found him!” before screaming and pointing at the anaconda wrapped around a branch at her feet. The guides rushed over and unraveled it as a group of us gathered around cameras in hand. We found it admirable that our guide urged us to move along quickly because he didn’t want to scare the snake any more than necessary. However many groups stuck around for far too long shouting, posing, and taking up-close pictures with the mentally stressed animal. After lunch and a two hour siesta (it was too hot and humid to do anything other than lay around) we set back out on the river for an afternoon of fishing… fishing for piranhas. We were given twigs with fishing line attached and baited the rusty hooks with small chunks of beef in hopes of catching some piranhas for dinner. Every time we cast the lines into the river, we could immediately feel fish nibbling away. We didn’t really hook the piranhas, instead we flung them into the boat as their little teeth were still attached to the bait. We caught salmon, sardines, catfish, and piranhas and cooked up a small amount of them for dinner. Our tour group joined a number of the others in a field for football and volleyball games as we all watched the sun set. After dinner the five of us played card games and listened/sang along to classic Disney songs on Rich’s ipod, before going to sleep at 9:00 pm when the generator turned off.
We woke up early on our final morning to watch the sunrise and enjoyed a nice breakfast together. One highlight of the Pampas tours is swimming with the pink river dolphins (males are blue) which was our activity on the final day. Apparently it is safe to swim in the alligator and piranha infested waters as long as there are multiple dolphins present. We aren’t ones to turn down once in a lifetime opportunities, but we were relieved when we only spotted one dolphin and our guide told us it was unsafe to swim. We spent the rest of the morning, stalking alligators in hopes that the circle of life would unfold before our eyes. We came close a few times and booed when the prey felt its predator approaching and escaped. Our group was stranded at the take out waiting for our jeep for nearly two hours, but we found an interesting way to entertain ourselves. Rich and Chris were determined to purchase one of the many chickens wondering the area and after bargaining the price, we all settled and pitched in to buy “Steve.” The locals rounded him up and tied a string to his leg, but in order to successfully transfer him back to La Paz we needed a bag, which they couldn’t provide and we sadly said our goodbyes to what could have been our new travel companion. We have never been so close to buying livestock in our lives and were a bit disappointed that our ingenious plan didn’t work out.
We stayed another night in Rurrenbaque and bid Sonja a farewell as the four of us boarded one of the most dangerous bus rides in South America back to La Paz. The first half of the trip was on a bumpy dirt road, but did offer beautiful views of the rainforest. We stopped for a dinner break where we enjoyed a traditional Bolivian meal for just over $1 US. The bus company sells regular priced tickets for seats as well as discounted tickets for the aisle and stairwell. This resulted in us sharing our leg room and arm rests with locals for the duration of the night. Exhausted and cold, we arrived in La Paz and checked back into the comfortable and familiar Loki Hostel. We spent two more nights in La Paz playing pool (we are getting pretty good thanks to the boys constant tutoring) and enjoying everything that the city has to offer. After having so much fun traveling with the boys the last couple weeks, it was hard to say goodbye as we left them in La Paz and set off for Lake Titicaca.
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