It's been an interesting few days. Probably worthy of a couple of posts. Here goes #1.
The journey from Copacabana to La Paz was largely uneventful, except for the bit where we had to get off the coach and climb into small boats to cross Lake Titicaca. Once we got off, the coach was driven onto a boat and shipped across to the other side. Genius:
If you read the last post, you may remember me mentioning I travelled to La Paz with the three girls I'd spent time with on the Isla del Sol, plus another one - the one who saw me going for a piss at the top of the island.
Her name is Nicola, from Scotland. We arrived at La Paz in the early evening, and said goodbye to the others as they were off to the salt flats in the south of the country.
Nicola and I got a cab to a hostal I found in my guidebook, but they had no rooms. I left her with the bags and took a wheezing journey up and down La Paz's notorious hills looking for a bed for the night.
It's currently the Israeli holidays (Passover), and is the beginning of high season out here. Many places were full, were charging the earth, or just weren't somewhere you'd want to spend more than five minutes in - let alone the night.
Eventually I found a brand new place for 60 bolivianos each (less than 6 quid). We checked in, and on recommendation from the receptionist went and ate at a Cuban place round the corner.
I went to Cuba a few years ago and remember eating rice and black eyed beans over and over and over again. The country is not known for its food.
But this place used proper Havana Club rum in its mojitos and was well renowned, so we gave it a go.
I'm glad we did as the food was fantastic. Pork steaks, yam, avocado and tomato salad, ropa vieja (shredded beef) and the obligatory rice and beans. All on one plate. All yum.
Afterwards we went to a bar called Oliver's Travels - as I hoped to bump into an old friend who works there. He wasn't there, but we got chatting to a guy called Steve who happened to be a mountain bike guide for a company called Gravity.
Ever since I arrived in South America, and mentioned La Paz and Bolivia to people, I've had numerous recommendations to use Gravity for cycling down the infamous World's Most Dangerous Road.
Steve was a great bloke - telling us some tales about the road, and its potted (or should that be pot-holed?) history. We had already decided to do the 'Death Road' on Wednesday, and now we'd made up our minds to go with Gravity.
The following day we decided to check out the local area, and specifically the markets.
La Paz is famous for several things (the highest governmental capital in the world, the highest commercial brewery in the world, the world's most ambitious electrical wiring techniques...)
Its markets are similarly well known, and after a few hours wandering round we could see why.
We found street after street teeming with life. Anything you could possibly wish to buy can be found in the markets of La Paz.
You want a colander? Go to the row of shops that sells nothing else. You want a few pigs' trotters for your Sunday roast? Go to the butchers' quarter:
Mmm, pig feet.
I have to try and relay in type just how disturbing some of the things were in the butchers' quarter. It was like walking through the world's biggest autopsy lab.
You had unidentified animal parts strung up, flies flittering around them. You had stomachs and intestines laid out on unrefrigarated slabs. You had animal heads piled on top of each other. And all the while your nostrils and eyes pleaded with you to leave.
So after a quick photo...
...we left.
Nicola is a chef, and she bought some local spices from a sweet little old woman:
I reckoned she was at least 80, Nic thought more like 60 (and ageing fast). But either way, seeing someone so frail - but still working hard - was indicative of most market stands we visited.
On the subject of women, we seem to have entered a Mary Poppins-esque city where everyone walks around in bowler hats. Although this isn't the male bankers wearing them, it's the women.
We saw hundreds of them with bowler on head, striped shawl over shoulders (as in Peru and elsewhere) and back hunched - normally at work:
I felt a bit intrusive photographing them, so have a selection of back - rather than face - shots. Hey ho.
Senses duly satisfied (apart from taste), we went to find somewhere to eat.
Down near our hotel we found a colonial-era courtyard with a restaurant upstairs. The place was full of antiques and bric-a-brac, including a powerful selection of guns. I had a great veg lasagne - later to find out it was the restaurant's speciality:
Afterwards I popped back to Oliver's Travels to see if my friend Kass was there, and he was.
Kass was the first person I met when I went to Brazil in 2008. I turned up at the hostel in Rio early in the morning after my flight from the UK, and he was just coming in after a night out.
We got on well and spent quite a bit of time together on that trip. I was on holiday, and he was just starting a few months travelling round South America. In the end, he never came home.
He met a Bolivian girl in La Paz, has since had a baby, and is now one of the co-owners of one of La Paz's most popular bar/pubs. This is me holding his little baby Sally - with the proud parents on either side:
Following a couple of drinks (on the house - thanks Kass!) and some Champions League football, we went and booked our Gravity trip for the following day.
In the office we were given the full lowdown on what we were signing up for. The guide went to great lengths to explain how often the bikes were maintained, how much they cost (almost 2,000 pounds each), what equipment we'd be getting, and so on.
We signed up, went for (yet another) great dinner - duck confit for me, steak for her - and tried to prepare ourselves for what was to come...
Here are some more pics:
The journey from Copacabana to La Paz was largely uneventful, except for the bit where we had to get off the coach and climb into small boats to cross Lake Titicaca. Once we got off, the coach was driven onto a boat and shipped across to the other side. Genius:
If you read the last post, you may remember me mentioning I travelled to La Paz with the three girls I'd spent time with on the Isla del Sol, plus another one - the one who saw me going for a piss at the top of the island.
Her name is Nicola, from Scotland. We arrived at La Paz in the early evening, and said goodbye to the others as they were off to the salt flats in the south of the country.
Nicola and I got a cab to a hostal I found in my guidebook, but they had no rooms. I left her with the bags and took a wheezing journey up and down La Paz's notorious hills looking for a bed for the night.
It's currently the Israeli holidays (Passover), and is the beginning of high season out here. Many places were full, were charging the earth, or just weren't somewhere you'd want to spend more than five minutes in - let alone the night.
Eventually I found a brand new place for 60 bolivianos each (less than 6 quid). We checked in, and on recommendation from the receptionist went and ate at a Cuban place round the corner.
I went to Cuba a few years ago and remember eating rice and black eyed beans over and over and over again. The country is not known for its food.
But this place used proper Havana Club rum in its mojitos and was well renowned, so we gave it a go.
I'm glad we did as the food was fantastic. Pork steaks, yam, avocado and tomato salad, ropa vieja (shredded beef) and the obligatory rice and beans. All on one plate. All yum.
Afterwards we went to a bar called Oliver's Travels - as I hoped to bump into an old friend who works there. He wasn't there, but we got chatting to a guy called Steve who happened to be a mountain bike guide for a company called Gravity.
Ever since I arrived in South America, and mentioned La Paz and Bolivia to people, I've had numerous recommendations to use Gravity for cycling down the infamous World's Most Dangerous Road.
Steve was a great bloke - telling us some tales about the road, and its potted (or should that be pot-holed?) history. We had already decided to do the 'Death Road' on Wednesday, and now we'd made up our minds to go with Gravity.
The following day we decided to check out the local area, and specifically the markets.
La Paz is famous for several things (the highest governmental capital in the world, the highest commercial brewery in the world, the world's most ambitious electrical wiring techniques...)
Its markets are similarly well known, and after a few hours wandering round we could see why.
We found street after street teeming with life. Anything you could possibly wish to buy can be found in the markets of La Paz.
You want a colander? Go to the row of shops that sells nothing else. You want a few pigs' trotters for your Sunday roast? Go to the butchers' quarter:
Mmm, pig feet.
I have to try and relay in type just how disturbing some of the things were in the butchers' quarter. It was like walking through the world's biggest autopsy lab.
You had unidentified animal parts strung up, flies flittering around them. You had stomachs and intestines laid out on unrefrigarated slabs. You had animal heads piled on top of each other. And all the while your nostrils and eyes pleaded with you to leave.
So after a quick photo...
...we left.
Nicola is a chef, and she bought some local spices from a sweet little old woman:
I reckoned she was at least 80, Nic thought more like 60 (and ageing fast). But either way, seeing someone so frail - but still working hard - was indicative of most market stands we visited.
On the subject of women, we seem to have entered a Mary Poppins-esque city where everyone walks around in bowler hats. Although this isn't the male bankers wearing them, it's the women.
We saw hundreds of them with bowler on head, striped shawl over shoulders (as in Peru and elsewhere) and back hunched - normally at work:
I felt a bit intrusive photographing them, so have a selection of back - rather than face - shots. Hey ho.
Senses duly satisfied (apart from taste), we went to find somewhere to eat.
Down near our hotel we found a colonial-era courtyard with a restaurant upstairs. The place was full of antiques and bric-a-brac, including a powerful selection of guns. I had a great veg lasagne - later to find out it was the restaurant's speciality:
Afterwards I popped back to Oliver's Travels to see if my friend Kass was there, and he was.
Kass was the first person I met when I went to Brazil in 2008. I turned up at the hostel in Rio early in the morning after my flight from the UK, and he was just coming in after a night out.
We got on well and spent quite a bit of time together on that trip. I was on holiday, and he was just starting a few months travelling round South America. In the end, he never came home.
He met a Bolivian girl in La Paz, has since had a baby, and is now one of the co-owners of one of La Paz's most popular bar/pubs. This is me holding his little baby Sally - with the proud parents on either side:
Following a couple of drinks (on the house - thanks Kass!) and some Champions League football, we went and booked our Gravity trip for the following day.
In the office we were given the full lowdown on what we were signing up for. The guide went to great lengths to explain how often the bikes were maintained, how much they cost (almost 2,000 pounds each), what equipment we'd be getting, and so on.
We signed up, went for (yet another) great dinner - duck confit for me, steak for her - and tried to prepare ourselves for what was to come...
Here are some more pics:
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| Some of your 5-a-day |
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| Oh look! It's a woman in a bowler hat |
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You want zips? We got zips |
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| Dog tries out his new outfit |
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| Llama foetuses for sale in the Witches Market |