The views of La Paz as the bus arrives was pretty awesome. La Paz being a large valley and the houses and city taking up the whole of the sides! Pretty impressive. So 1st impressions of La Paz were good.
I'm staying in a hostel called wild rover. to my horror it was full of English people. when i say full i mean FULL. A bit disappointed having left the group i had in Santa Cruz. oh well, new people new places right?
With it being the Easter holidays most of La Paz was closed during the day so i never really got a feel for the hustle and bustle of La Paz until Easter was over. During the evening the streets were filled with people on there way to church, it was very busy and there were people dressed in strange full body and face suits with pointy hoods, like the KKK but with big colourful crosses sewn onto the front, unfortunately i didn't have my camera on me to capture this. On the bright side on Easter Sunday i was exploring the streets and markets and stumbled upon a parade of musicians and people dancing in red and white outfits (photo attached).
As mentioned the hostel was quite British and quite disappointing, however now i have managed to meet a few people, i forgot there names, but the Ozzie i met on the 1st night, Shane i remember saying we should really stop standing next to each other when we introduce ourselves. "hey I'm Sean, I'm Shane" "ooh that'll be easy to remember, Sean and Shane" inevitable names get mixed up with them forgetting which is witch!
Visually La Paz is very nice, a lot of beautiful churches and the sheer fact its built on slopes makes the whole experience very different. Orientations wise its very handy in that whenever i get lost all i have to do is head downhill and I'm soon in the main thoroughfare, which i know directions from. One thing i found quite funny, the local women are small dumpy and wear the most strange little top hats.
I think Santa Cruz and samaipata set very high standards for La Paz food and company wise. sorry to say but La Paz is shockingly westernised, everywhere there are fast food places and you have to really struggle to find a decent local restaurant that isn't rock bottom fast food prices or sky high post eats. and so regrettably Ive been eating at the hostel more and more with it being a pub and a hostel.
The day after Easter it seems like the whole of La Paz came out of hiding. and the city is back to normal, full of markets and people. One of the most notable markets is the witches market, this place is strange. from stuffed frogs to mummified lama baby corpses. apparently bought and berried under the porch of new houses to bring good luck.........Bizarre. Speaking of lamas, Ive purchased myself a nice local jumper made from lama wool, pretty warm and comfy, need to shrink it on a hot wash tho as the only did mediums.
One of the good points about the wild rover hostel is the tour operators that are stationed in the hostel lobby, allowing easy access to the activities around la paz. me and Shane decided to do the "worlds most dangerous road" tour. 400 Bolivianos, like 40 quid for a whole day of mountain biking from 4,000 feet above sea level to 1,500.
It. Was. Epic!
As the name suggests the road was very dangerous, to the left a seer drop of apparently 750 metres and this is on a very uneven, narrow gravel road down the mountain. pritty adrenalin filled. We were in a small group of 4 males and so we were able to really push it and go quite fast. i rode into a ditch once and came pritty close the the edge a few times, my heart was pumping. On the way down there was waterfalls and apparently very beautiful views from the top. I say apparently because it was raining like crazy for the 1st 2 hours, nevertheless we all got soaked. As we decended the views got better and i was able to take some decent pictures. on a side note, the instructore gave us all nicnames, mine was shaggey from scooby doo and his was choie, like chobucka from starwars, good idea with he nicknames as i seem to find it harder to remember latin names then english names, and ime terible at that aswell. To top it all off when we arived at the botom we had a beer, a buffet lunch and a swim after a hot shower. all part of the package. We arived 2 hours before the other groups, just goes to show how fast we were going.
So thats the main blogable parts of la paz so far, tomorow I plan to visit the coca museum, i hear its quite intresting. Ile let you know how it goes.
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