to La Paz, Bolivia

From Puno, their is a short (3 hour) bus ride around the edge of Lake Titicaca to the Bolivian city of Copacabana - which is a tourist trap. I spent the lunch hour there before boarding the bus to La Paz. This is the first bus I have taken on my trip that was filled completely with tourists. I should mention that Bolivia is even cheaper than Peru. Unbelievable!

Nice views of Lake Titicaca leaving Copacabana.

Mountains can be seen in the distance in this photo. Huayna Potosi, which I would climb, is one of them. Reminded me a lot of Lake Tahoe in Nevada, USA.

This route to La Paz contains a ferry crossing across a small straight of Lake Titicaca.

All ferry crossings are created differently. Sometimes they keep us on the bus while, in this case, we were taken of the bus and floated across in a separate boat. Here our bus comes.

Waiting in the park of the small pueblo on the other side, I ran across this statue of a guy sitting and pointing. Not quite as awe inspiring as on horseback. The plaque did not explain the pose.

From there it is a straight, flat shot across high plains with the Sierra Real mountain range coming into sharper focus. Reminded me a lot of the Wind River mountain range in Wyoming, USA.

These European style churches also began to crop up.

Finally we arrived at the edge of the bowl that contains La Paz. The bus stopped for photos before we dropped in - and it has got to be a drop of at least 300 meters. My ears popped a couple of times and my water bottle deflated. (my water bottle has taken a beating in Peru and Bolivia)

Looking to the left, that white peak on the far left is Huayna Potosi.

Down in the city.

The joke in Bolivia goes that there is some sort of political demonstration every day in the city and, if there isn´t one, the people hold a demonstration demonstrating against a lack of demonstrations.

The day I chose to wander around town, there was a demonstration backing up traffic baddly. As in Lima, microbusses are the people movers of La Paz and traffic is bad.

This intersection sign was interesting.

Here is the intersection.

That is the national stadium in the background. I would go to a soccer match between Bolivia and El Salvador that night. Funny thing that the scoreboard was not used. Bolivia, unsurprisingly, dismantled ES 5-1.

So how cheap is it here?

room with cable = $5/night
breakfast = $0.30
lunch = $0.50
dinner = $1.00
1 hour of internet = $0.15