Feeling at home in La Paz

27 October 2009

Gaudi's cousin Regula lives in La Paz, and offers us to stay in her lovely home. After a few weeks on the road in mostly cold hotel rooms, we can finally relax and recharge.
Our neighbourhood in the south of the city has its own centre with lots of restaurants: We eat twice at the Japanese (we're almost regulars). Regula works at a Swiss development NGO: Swisscontact. We learn a lot from her about current developments in Bolivia. Its a busy week for Regula, as she's organising a three-day event: a food-fair called Nuovo Boliviano: Chefs from all over town serve some of their creative cooking, and local food producers offer samples of their local produce (like Quinoa, a great alternative to wheat). After weeks of mostly dull meals, we enjoy sampling all these delicious dishes - and are reliefed that our tastebuds are still alive. But for Gaudi the highlight is the beer-workshop, which of course includes sampling local beers.
In La Paz, as on the rest of the altiplano, the colours of the landscape seem very intense. Regula's flat offers great panoramic views over the surrounding mountains which is a spectacular sight, especially in the mornings and evenings.

In La Paz, we take strolls through the busy city centre, and visit the interesting Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, housed in a beautiful building designed by Gustav Eiffel. We also visit the 'Valle de la Luna': a canyon a bit outside of La Paz with bizarre rock formations. It's a very peaceful and tranquil place. One visitor feels so inspired, that he takes of all his clothes and performs some paryer or song (or so we think, we keep a large safety distance until he put back on his clothes).

We arrange for a daytrip to the historic site of Tihuanacu through an agency. However, that morning a few things go wrong: first, the taxi we order can't find our address (Natasha suspects this is due to Gaudis Spanish communication skills, but it worked well the day before) - it arrives 15 minutes late. Then traffic on this Friday morning is just horrible: we hardly move and it takes almost an hour to get to town instead of the 10 minutes outside the rush hour. To top it off, our car overheats, and the taxi driver refuses to drive any further with his vehicle: he unloads us 10 blocks away from our destination, and we have to walk...
We miss our tour bus by more than an hour. Luckily, the lady of the agency just moves us to the next day's tour, but not without advising us "not to oversleep" the next morning. Grrrrrrrrrrr.....

When we finally make it to Tihuanacu the next day, the site is spectacular. This used to be a temple of a pre-Inca civilisation. The surrounding landscape of mountains and snowy peaks in the distance is amazing. On the site itself, there are some fascinating carved statues and walls.

Pictures: La Paz, Tihuanacu

Lapalapalapalapalapaaaaaaaazzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

25 October 2009

...is the refrain we heard almost continuously starting at 4am in the morning. This is what the minibus drivers, departing every half hour from Soratá to La Paz, would yell from the top of their lungs to gather passengers. We wondered whether this was really necessary, surely anyone living in the town would know that there is a minibus to La Paz every 30 min and those not from town could easily find out? Anyway these guys are so used to this refrain then when we approached with our backpacks, the driver asked Gaudi: "Van a lapalapalapalapaz?" Gaudi had to laugh.

Sorata is a small town in an area of Bolivia called the Yungas, the area between the Altiplano (3,000 meters and above, dry and cold) and the Amazonian rainforest (low, hot and humid). So the Yungas is known as a very pleasant area for both the people of the Altiplano and those of the Amazon to seek relief from their own extremer wheather conditions. We spent a couple of days only in town. Much like in Copacabana it was very difficult to encounter any good hostals or restaurants. But we did a beautiful hike along one of the vallleys (it was tough though due to the blazing sun).

Getting to Soratá was a bit of an adventure. We took a bus from Copacabana with direction La Paz. Shortly into the ride, we stop at the edge of a narrow part of the lake, it appears we have to cross the lake (no bridge or ferry in sight). All the locals rush off the bus and disappear towards the lakeside. The foreigners have no clue what to do. We gather that we have to cross the lake on a small motorized canoe, and the bus will follow with our suitcases . . . how exactly . . . well basically on a big floating wooden barge with a small motor to propel it forwards. All goes well. Then we get off at Huarina (in the middle of nowhere) to catch another bus or minibus going to Sorata. We are the only ones to get off and the only ones waiting for transport to Sorata. As if that is not worrying enough it starts raining. After half an hour waiting in the rain watching several packed minibuses race by, we start to wonder whether this was such a good idea . . . A packed minibus stops for us and we dont care anymore run towards it and squeeze in. Gaudi on the back seat between two women, one with a small dog. Natasha on a little side seat that folds out and our luggage on the roof. Needless to say we made it safe and sound to Sorata.

Copa . . . Copacabana . . .

20 October 2009

Not the famous Brazilian beach but a tiny sleepy village on the shore of the amazing lake Titicaca in Bolivia. We enter Bolivia on a pleasant bus from Puno (Peru), a beautiful ride along the lakeshore, and cross the border without any complication. The friendly bus assistant explains very clearly what we have to do at the border crossing. He even stops in front of a hut in a little village near the border and advises to change leftover Peruvian Soles into Bolivianos: however, the rate offered is very bad. Most tourists have no idea what the rate should be and change their money. The money exchange ladies run a profitable little business. After everybody is done, we go to the counter and demand a rate much more in our favour: the lady agrees to our rate. Gaudi is very proud to be the only tourist in the bus not to be ripped off, and to have saved about 2 USD that way.

We are very impressed by the setting of Copacabana right on the lakeshore with amazing views. Quite less impressed by the hotels and the rather unfriendly people of this town. We walk 20 min to the hotel we had reserved to find a half built place and a bunch of barking dogs as the welcome committee. Finally a woman shows up asking what we want. We ask if this could possibly be the Ecolodge. The woman needs to run back to verify what the place is or is called . . . Well needless to say, we started the walk back to town with our backpacks. After visiting numerous "hotels", and after a cold night in on of them, we do find a very pleasant one (not surprisingly German run) place, where we spend 4 nights. The breathtaking lake makes up for the unfriendliness we have to deal with when we do enter town (which we avoided as much as possible).

The hotel has a nice garden with hammocks to relalx in. The garden has colorful flowers and green grass in this area where every thing else is dried out - of course a gardener waters th plants daily. Not only the tourists enjoy the garden, but a local sheepherding lady discovered it too: for her sheep. She leads her flock into the garden and lets the sheep graze on each patch for half an hour - if they nibble on the flowers, she throws a rock at them (but still, there are noticably less flowers after her visit). I ask the hotel staff how official this arrangement is, and they are a bit evasive - maybe because the owner of the hotel is not in town at the moment? Well, at least this way they don't have to mow the grass.

While we are sitting in the garden, slowly surrrounded by about 15 sheep, the hotel dog comes close and stays with us. We realise that this dog is very afraid of the sheep and seeks protection! At one point the dog even jumps our bench and squeezes between us. Never before have I seen a dog so gentle that it is even afraid of sheep!

One of the highlights was a day trip to Isla del Sol, a slow 1.5 hour boat ride from Copacabana. We get dropped off at the north end of the island, and then follow a very nice path leading us to the south of the island, where we catch the boat back. The walk is wonderful with spectacular views of the island and lake. We even come by some trees, a rarity in this deforested region, and we explore a very interesting Inca site with mysterious labyrinths. Hmm we wondered whether the people of this islands would be any more welcoming but no such luck. The only welcome we got was no less then 3 tax posts! Yes the island (the lenght of which we walked in about 3 hours) is divided in 3 communities, each of which charged us an entry fee. Oh well, welcome to Bolivia I guess.

Fotos from Bolivia uploaded

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Potosí

Tiahuanaco

La Paz

Soratá

The spreadsheet

A few weeks into our trip Gaudi started experiencing spreadsheet withdrawal symptoms . . . and so decided to develop a rather sophisticated (with categories, exchange rates, summaries etc) spreadsheet to record and monitor all of our expenses. Every night, we open “the spreadsheet” on the EeePC and enter all our daily expenses. For the first time in our lives, we keep track of our expenses, down to the cent!