Woke up around
730, got ready, looked out our window at the beautiful city view and
went up to the 8th floor for “breakfast”. Just bread,
jam, cookies, yogurt and juice. Not the best breakfast we've had
here, but not the worst either. It was enough. I should eat lighter
anyway. The view from the top floor was incredible though. We didn't
have much planned for La Paz at all, so we decided to walk around the
streets near our hotel and look for a travel agency to talk to about
the Salt Flats at Uyuni and our other options for day trips as well.
The one right by the hotel was closed on Sunday. We started worrying.
Not knowing the schedules of the city we hoped this wouldn't be the
case everywhere.
We found 2 more
after a bit of walking through a crazy awesome market that had
everything ever. It seemed like every street had a different theme.
We walked down fresh produce street, pastry street, hardware street,
clothing street, shoe street and so on. It went forever. It seemed
the traditionally dressed women don't like their picture taken,
pretty sure I got cussed out. Oh well. And the picture was blurry
anyway. We finally found a few travel places and compared prices.
Salt Flats were out of the question. :( Que lastima! We had an option
for a hike, but both of us are a bit hiked out at this point, we
decided to get a private tour of La Paz for 3 hours, for Bs 300
($42).
Before the end,
we hit up the witches market and I bought a llama fetus. Supposed to
be good luck. Don't ask why, it was there and I thought it was cool.
Our guide,
Albert, met us at our hotel. He was a Bolivian who lived in the Alto
City (outer La Paz) and was about 25 years old. He spoke pretty good
English, not perfect, but my Spanish helped with some confusion a
couple of times, and his English was definitely better than my
Spanish, so no complaints here. We got along swimmingly. First, he
took us on a drive out of the city a bit to the Valley of the Moon.
It is named this because it looks like the surface of the moon. It's
terrain consists of stalagmite type formations from erosion and
water. It was desert-y and supposedly there are rabbits that come out
in the morning and jump around the treacherous terrain. We didn't see
any, it was a bout noon. The formations were very beautiful though
and the shadows they cast were intoxicating. He told us some
background and a bit about the area. We took a few breaks and got to
know him a bit, talking about wages and government and travel, etc.
He was cool. We moved on and took a driving tour of neighborhoods for
awhile. Very cool city, never seen anything like it, how steep it is
built into the mountains, and almost all the mountain houses are red
brick and blend in seamlessly with the landscape. We got to an
overlook and got out for pictures. It was a 360 degree view of the
city from the center, pretty neat. We made another stop after
chilling there for awhile at a very colorful street preserved for
historical purposes and a very popular tourist area. It had some
museums. After that, we rode back to the hotel, just in time to walk
down to Oliver's English puband see the championship soccer match
between Spain and Italy. I was semi-interested, but mostly got some
internet time in on my phone and ate lunch. I had roasted chicken
with stuffing, peas and carrots, mashed potatoes and onion gravy. For
dessert, I had a deep fried Mars bar with vanilla ice cream. The
match was pretty much all Spain and it was 2-0 when I left to go book
the Death Road mountain bike trip I had been waffling on.
They wouldn't
take cards, so I went to an ATM, and had some trouble again, it
wouldn't give me cash, so I went back and told them if they didn't
take cards, I wouldn't book with them. Low and behold, they accepted
cards (with a 5% charge). Oh well. I booked it. Excited. Little
scared. Mark didn't have any interest, so tomorrow I'll be on my own
for the day. From my research, there are barely any cars on the road
anymore, but about 20 bikers have died since 1998, and about every 2
weeks someone gets seriously injured. But I'm more excited. And I
have the option to zip line at the end as well. Anyway, walked back
down to the pub to meet back up with Mark and Spain won 4-0. We also
watched the end of a golf tournament where Tiger Woods won and with
that win, went ahead of Jack Nicklaus for all-time wins, taking over
second place behind Sam Snead. After the golf tournament and 2 beers,
we grabbed some water and a bottle of wine and went back to the hotel
for an early night. After pushing in the cork with the little guy
design pen (work trip), we realized we had bought port. A fortified
dessert wine. Whatever. I decided to write early tonight because I
don't want to wait until after the port and our last j and have it
sound stupid. We finished both and looked at each other's pictures
from the trip and had a great conversation. I'm pretty impressed with
Mark's eye for photos, was not not expecting it.
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