I spent three days in La Paz. For better or worse, this time frame seems to becoming the norm for how much time I spend in a city. The first day I got in at 7AM from a long, bumpy, most likely dangerous bus ride. I checked into a hostel called Adventure Brew mainly because they brewed their own beer and you got one free each night. After check-in, I met a girl named Danny, from Canada, and ate breakfast with her. I had heard from another traveler that La Paz has a pruha mercado (witches market), so I got the lo-down on where it is and Danny joined me. It turns out that there is an entire section of the city that is just one giant market; I´m talking 12 blocks by 7 blocks. It has everything you could possibly be looking for organized into nice little sections - hardware, food, clothing, electronics, etc. Anyway, within the market lies a small street with where the "witches" hangout. It really isn´t as witchy as one would like to think. I guess I have been spoiled by Hollywood. They were normal looking Bolivian women and they sold snake oils and dried up baby llamas and other unrecognizable animals. With the witches market being a bit of a let down we just decided to wander. Eventually, I bought a mango almost literally the size of my head for about 70 cents. I also spent a bit of time in the touristy part looking for gifts (mainly just my mom), but also a certain style of sweater for myself.
I told Danny that if she wanted to do something else, I was all for it. She mentioned something about a coca museum. It happened to be only a block away, so we stopped by. It´s cheap and informative. I learned a bit about it´s history that I didn´t know from a unique perspective. Plus, they have a cafe with coca infused beer and coca cakes and cookies for reasonable prices. Naturally, I had to try the beer. Turned out just to be the coca elixir mixed with one of the local cheap beers. Eh, oh well. After the museum Danny and I split up and I continued looking for gifty type things. It turned out to be impossible to find the sweater I wanted, but I did find a guy who said he´d make it custom. I gave him 10 Bs ($1.50) as a deposit.
Back at the hostel, I ran into 3 British girls that I had met on my first day in Colombia. This seems to be happening with increasing frequency as you´ll see. Anywho, I called it an early night.
The next day I wanted to find out about biking the "Death Road". However, the tour agency in the hostel, Gravity Assisted Tours, was 750 Bs ($120), which is way over priced. Therefore, I decided I´d just use it as a day to do absolutely nothing, which I hadn´t had in a while. However, I did decide to go check on my sweater that was supposed to be done by 3PM. Surprise! It wasn´t done. He told me to come back the next day at anytime before 8PM or if I was busy, Sunday, and it´d be done. At this point I got the feeling that I´d never see this mythical sweater. Anyhow, this trip to see the dude turned into a 900 Bs shopping extravaganza. I found a gift (220 Bs), a pair of Exofficio trekking pants (200 Bs. I needed them, I had a pair of jeans and khakis. I left the khakis when I left La Paz.), and booked a tour for the Death Road (470 Bs).
The Death Road started at 6:30 AM. The road is over 70 years old and only recently "closed" in 2005. I use quotes because there is still local traffic on it. They closed the road because over the years, 1,000s of people have died on it, including about 20 people (one bus) a month in 2005, which was the final straw. It connected La Paz to the Amazona side of Bolivia. So, it starts in the jungle and climbs/winds up the sides of mountains up something like 3,000 meters. The first part of the trip is just after the top of the pass (around 4,700 meters) and is paved. This section has some terrific jagged mountain scenery. They almost seem too steep and huge to be real. After about 30-40 min. you get back in the bus and they take you to the old road, which is no longer paved. Along this section, which is about 3 hours, is a one lane road with hundreds of blind corners, 700 meter cliffs on one side, and waterfalls cascading onto the other side of the road. This section becomes more junglesk quickly. Every now and then you come across crosses left for the dead, although not as many as you´d expect. One particular cross I liked was covered in moss and almost succumbing to death by cliff, leaning dangerously over, itself.
The road by bike isn´t too dangerous. Yes, people can, and have, died biking down it. There is always that chance that something freak happens, but as long as you follow a few common sense rules, you should be fine. One, NEVER use your front brakes. Two, the middle of the road can get slippery and you can slide a good distance if you lock your brakes. So, stay in the tire grooved parts. Three, don´t go to your limits.
After completing the road every agency takes you to a hotel where you are given lunch and can swim and shower. While there, I proceeded to bust my big toe open again. I didn´t even know I was going to cut my toenail, but I guess it was time, as in busting my toe I cracked the nail about halfway through. Then, I twisted my ankle again. The need for some real flip flops is becoming desperate.
Anyway, I recommend the Death Road because it is incredibly beautiful and it is interesting to see the conditions that they used to drive on. Oh yeah, and it was snowing hard at the peak on the way back to La Paz.
After getting back, I met a dude from Alaska who was with some Belgium girls. They invited me to go out with them in La Paz. I really wanted to see some La Paz night life and I´m glad I did because we went to an area that I hadn´t seen and that was a bit upscale. The bar we went to was Mongos and was in a converted house. Of course, the guys (some of the tour riders from Gravity joined us too) were cool with staying there for a while, but the girls wanted to go to a dance place. We agreed to come with, but after two failed attempts to get into a club (one cause they didn´t want gringos in it), the guys got fed up and went home. The girls must have got fed up shortly there after, cause they arrived back at the hostel about 30 min later. Not sure why, but there seems to be a fair amount of dislike of gringos in Bolivia. More than I´ve experienced elsewhere in SA.
The next day I caught a collectivo (shared van) to Sorata. One thing to note is that the spot where you catch the collectivos for Sorata doesn´t have banos nearby that are open, or at least when I was there. However, there is a nice little private alley. Oh yeah, and if you get to choose your seat on the collectivo, choose numero 2. This is the passenger seat of a normal vehicle. Also, I realized from this, a hike, and another collectivo, all the roads in Bolivia are Death Roads. The only difference is the volume of traffic. Seriously, they are all crazy dangerous if they go along any hill.
Sorata is a tiny town nestled into a steep hillside of one of the mountains. It´s a charming little town, even though it´s a bit dirty. It has a main square, like all latin american towns, and many small winding passage ways with plants that are growing over the brick and concrete fences. It also has great views of the surrounding mountains and valleys. The hostel that I stayed at is at the very bottom of the hill, across the river. Yes, it is a pain in the ass to go into town, and yes, it costs a bit more than all the other hostels in town - 84 Bs ($12) - but it is worth it. It came highly recommended by a couple I met on the Amazon. The place is like a resort. It is probably on several acres and has everything thing you could want (except maybe a kitchen). There are a few dorms, privates, camping, a BBQ area, a restaurant that is pretty good, a book exchange and small store (kiosk), a tv room, a pool and place to hang a hammock, a bar that is open during the tourist season, macaws, a llama and cow, scorpians, etc. I only saw one scorpian while I was watching tv and asked later if it was dangerous. The owner, whose entire family speaks perfect English, said that it was no more dangerous than a bee. However, I still found it odd that there are scorpians in the mountains. When I showed up the first night, I was the only guest. I had the run of the place till dinner the next night. Each day around dinner, the guests tripled. This would be the perfect place to go with a significant other and spend a week unwinding. Or, a group of friends.
The next day I spent about two hours walking around the town, which is plenty to see every nook and cranny of it. I had lunch at a pizza place in the square. Latin America loves pizza. Where I am now, there are about 3 pizza places per block and that might be an underestimate. Oh yeah, and a lot of the places are family run, which means your server is typically about 12 years old. While I was eating a pizza, a thought occurred to me.
The same people who think that a calorie is just a calorie (which is wrong - see this post for an explaination) avoid lipids like they are the plague. In other words, these people believe that fat calories will kill you, but also believe that to lose weight all calories are created equal. I know that this isn´t a 1 to 1 contradiction, i.e. they can do some fancy explaining to get around it, but it is a contradiction. I´ll walk through it for you.
To lose weight, eat less calories than you expend. The easiest way to do this, if you buy into that logic, is to eat more fat calories. GASP. Let me explain. Time and time again, in studies when diets are compared for weight loss, those who eat more fat lose more weight. It generally irritates those who promote high carbohydrate diets. To explain this, these high carb promoters, find that almost without fail, that those eating higher fat diets are consuming less calories. QED. They solved it - a calorie is a calorie! However, the reason that these people were consuming less calories is because they were full. Lipids are satiating and for a multitude of reasons, satiating long after consumption. I´m going to skip the reasons for brevity, just go with me on this or look it up yourself.
Here is where we start finding contradictions in logic. So, these high lipid diets make people lose more wieght than others (and the people aren´t starving themselves), but the calorie is a calorie people will never promote eating that way to lose weight because they believe that it will give you a heart attack (wrong). They also believe that being fat will give you a heart attack (wrong). Are you starting to see the problem with their logic? If it will make you lose weight faster, which will - according to them - prevent you from having a heart attack, and a calorie is a calorie, than eat more fat and less carbs, but weight don´t eat more fat cause that will kill you. And here we can start going in circles. They recommend cutting fatty foods instead, which generally means consuming more calories, which is against their belief of cutting calories. How confusing and complicated it must be to be one of the high carb diet people.
Anyway, that occured to me and made me smile while I ate my refined carby pizza, slowly killing myself.
Now back to the goods. I´ve been preaching a bit about how there is an energy or flow about the world and when you are travelling, if you are positive and open to it, you can tap into it. Well, I´m not sure I´ve given you any examples of what I mean. I have a good one from Sorata and it has to do with birds.
Let me first start by saying that I had no idea that there were condors near Sorata. No one told me ahead of time, nor had I read anything that said there are either.
On my last day in Sorata, I wanted to go for a day hike and a fairly simple one since my ankle is still not quite healed yet. The day before, I asked the owner of my hostel if there were any good ones. He suggested that I walk down the road to a town called Gruta San Pedro, where they had a really cool cave. It was about a 5 hour round tripper and the sun sets at about 7:30PM, so the latest I could leave would be 2PM. The day of, I also needed to go to town to get cash and buy a bus ticket to Copacabana. The only bank in town doesn´t have an ATM (you have to get cash advances), and it is only open till about 2:30PM. Going after the hike was out of the question. After breakfast, I walked into town - about 20 min. For cash advances you need a passport. As you can imagine, this didn´t cross my mind. Glancing at my watch, I began considering the timing of walking back. I took a cab, grabbed my passport, and walked back into town. I got my moola and walked over to the ticket place. It was closed and it was about noon now, so I figured maybe they were out to lunch. I decided to grab a bite and wait to see if they returned. My lunch took a lot longer than I thought and I returned to the ticket place at about 1PM. It was still closed. Now, I began to juggle whether I should wait around till they opened. I was really ready to head to the next place so I wanted to make sure I got a ticket and not leave it to chance that they were open at 10AM when the collectivo left. I juggled for about 5 min. Then I said to myself, "fuck it. If I miss the collectivo, I miss it and stay another day. I´ll come tomorrow at 9:45AM". So, I walked back to my hostel, dropped the money and passport off. I hit the road at just shy of 2PM.
I took some coca leaves to help with the hike, which wasn´t strenuous other than the altitude. The hike itself is down a death road, which means that it is basically along a cliff and has sweeping views of the other mountains and the valley where there is a river. I made it to the village in less than two hours and went to the cave (15 Bs). They have certain rules for the cave. One, no swimming in the lagoon. Two, don´t litter. Three, you only get 40 min. Four, only twenty people allowed at a time. Why 40 min, especially during the low season? Don´t know. The cave is cool though. After a five min walk, ducking the ceiling in a couple places, you´ll enter a large cavern where there is a lagoon. You can rent a paddle boat for the lagoon, but that´s super cheesy. I walked to the end of the lit path, - it keeps going without light and is represented on the map with a question mark. I came back to the middle of the lagoon where there were a couple people dipping their toes and joined them. It is super tranquillo. However, an employee came by and yelled at me for the toes thing and told me my time was up. So, I left the cave short of my 40 min. I had a snack outside, walked down to one of the two stores in the village, bought a glass and a half of banana smoothie for 3 BS ($.40), played soccer with the little girl in the store, then left for home.
Ok, now I need to reiterate all the coincedences leading up to this point to illustrate my point. Walk to town for cash and no passport, cab ride back, walk to town, longer lunch, place closed, walk back, hike to village quicker than expected, thrown out of cave early, unexpected stop in village for smoothie. I also need to point out that everyone else that went to the cave went by some sort of vehicle.
After about 45 min walking back, with a couple breaks for pictures, I came to a blind turn overhanging the valley. I stopped for another picture and noticed some condors gliding away near a turn behind me. They made there way using thermals over to my turn and looped around me a few times. I captured a really shitty video, which I posted to FB. In it, you´ll here loud music, so turn down your speakers. The reason for the music is cause I was listening to it via my Droid and was so surprised by the condors that I forgot to turn it off before making a video. Once, I realized it and turned the music off, the condors lost intrest in me and took off (I think they might have been attracked to my music). It truly is an amazing sight to see these massive birds whose wingspan is probably bigger than my wingspan (I heard something like 3 meters), gliding around, esp. when they are within 5 meters of you.
The next day, I got my collectivo out to Copacabana. It´s a nice drive once you get out of the mountains. Copacabana is a town on Lake Titicaca, the Bolivian side. It really isn´t much to write about, although they were having a festival and all the Bolivians, even the old ladies in their traditional garb, were wasted. I walked around a bit to get the lay of the land and anytime I crossed the square, a Bolivian would pull me over and talk to me and pour me drinks of beer. One guy about my age started saying something about Bolivia being third world and US being first. Luckily, he was drunk enough that his attention span didn´t allow him to continue down that train of thought. Oh, and don´t stay at Hostal Wara, it´s a dump and over priced. For dinner, I ran into four Danish girls that I´ve crossed paths with on a number of occasions. I ate with them then went to Numos for some live music. They went to dance, I went to bed. The next day I caught a boat for Isla del Sol; the birthplace of Inca Legend.
Isla del Sol has about 3 villages (no bank, bring money), and the option to be dropped off at the north (a beach village) or south (a ridgeline village) end. I opted for the south. I hiked up the Inca stairs to the top of the ridgeline, which is no easy task with gear and the altitude. If you opt to stay the night in the south end, go to the top and don´t listen to the annoying kids trying to get you to stay other places. Seriously, the kids are really fucking annoying; they don´t take no for an answer. Other kids and adults are trying to sell you shit the whole way too. It´s so repenisulous that I watched a couple little girls pick up small rocks from their fence and try to sell them to me. First off, at least don´t do it right in front of me. Second, what the hell am I going to do with rocks. Third, the island is full of multicolored rocks that I´d be doing the pathways a favor by taking one or two. I thought of my mom though, cause she loves rocks, and they had both bright purple and bright green rocks. Anyway, the view from the top is worth it. Nice sunset too.
Again, I was going to stay at one hostel, but after having a beer with two dudes I walked up with, I decided to just walk another couple of feet to see what else there was. Well, guess what. I ran into a friend, Sam, from Rio. We had exchanged a few emails about where we were cause there was a chance that we´d cross paths, but we hadn´t talked in about a week and neither of us had any idea we were in the same area. Her and Nat gave me a warm welcome and we spent the rest of afternoon catching up on our adventures.
I called it an early night, not that there is any night life, cause I wanted to do a round trip hike of the island the following day. As is common during this time of year, it rained till about 11AM, so I didn´t leave till after that. One other thing that I didn´t like about the island is that you have to pay to go anywhere. I had to stop four times to pay different "tolls". I understand that it goes to helping the communities. The thing is, along with the kids peddling shit, it feels like you are getting knickle and dimed, which is really too bad cause it is a beautiful place. So I visited the north end where the Pierda del Sol (sun rock) is located, though to be honest, I´m not sure which rock this is supposed to be. According to Inca myth, the sun rock is the birthplace of the first Inca who was born from the god of the sun. There are some other neat Inca things around to capture your attention. The last boat leaves at 4PM and I made it back to the hostel about 3:45PM. I had decided about 10 min prior that there wasn´t much reason to go to Copacabana, so I stayed another night and caught the boat in the morning. I had a nice dinner practicing my Spanish with a Swiss girl who has been studying Spanish in Cusco.
One thing about the hostel (Templo del Sol) I stayed at was that the lady who primarily ran it was sooo nice to me. I had a couple strange requests like an empty coffee container for my mate whose bag isn´t handling travelling well, and most importantly, she sowed my day pack (#3) whose seems were coming out. I asked if I could give her some money for it but she refused. I got her good though by leaving a nice tip at breakfast; HAHA! Anyway, she called me joven, which I really enjoy for some reason, and was just pleasant. I didn´t, but I wanted to give her a hug when I left.
The last thing I have to mention was that as I was heading down to jump in the lake after my hike, a little girl (2 years old maybe) called me over, "senior". I figured that she was going to try to sell me air, but instead she held out her hand palm down with an inquisitive look. I felt I was supposed to reciprocate, so I head out my hand too. She put her hand in mine and pushed up so that our fingers pointed up and palms flat. She looked at it and me and moved our hands around a bit. I have no idea what she was thinking, but it was a really neat moment. It was broken by her cute little puppy (who I played with after my freezing cold swim).
The next day I got back to Copacabana and brain farted my bus time. I don´t know why I thought that I was supposed to show up at 1:30PM for my bus that left at that time. I was even told to show up a bit earlier. So I missed it. But that turned out to be a good thing because there had been farmers strikes where they blockaded the road and bus passengers had to walk about an hour. I was able to get my ticket changed for free to the 6PM bus and the farmers stopped their week long strike about 10 min before we got to where they had the road blocked. Now, I´m in Puno, which has been nice, but I am leaving for Machu Pichu tonight.
Jeez, sounds like a great time! Thats a neat moment you had with the little girl. I had a moment like that with a little girl in africa too. I'm so glad your enjoying everything!
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