La Paz and Sorata (6 - 15 May 2008)
We booked a semi-cama bus (semi-reclining seats) in Potosi to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. We were warned by several different people, most of them locals, to be very careful at the bus station and that we had to keep a hawk’s eye on our belongings. Apparently, it is quite common for your bag to get slashed with a knife. So with all senses on guard, we set off to the bus station to take on the 10 hours over night ride.
We were waiting to get onto the bus when I saw that some backpacks were lowered from somewhere above, dropped next to the bus and then lifted by the bus boy into the luggage storage compartment. When Eon went to investigate, he was told that we need to take our luggage upstairs to the ticket office, produce the bus ticket and hand in the bags - only for it to be lowered by a rope down to the bus again…?
The bus was surprisingly good, but for yet another time on this trip we were victims of a freezing bus ride and hence did not sleep too well. We arrived in La Paz at 6:00am. I know that I turn into a little monster (okay, maybe a gigantic monster) when I do not have a proper night’s sleep, but Eon was not his sparkly eyed self as well. We popped into a small bus station restaurant and ordered a coffee - nothing like good old caffeine to pick you up! We caught a taxi into the centre of town, booked into our hostel, Hostal Provenzal, and waited in the reception area for an hour before our room was ready.
At last - a bed! I crawled into the single bed with deliciously fluffy duvet and fell asleep, only to be woken 20 minutes later by a loud THUMP THUMP THUMP. They were building upstairs, perfect! Our room was on the second floor, so I decided to go downstairs and ask for a new room, somewhere away from the thumping. In my best Spanish I explained the dilemma, trying to keep the little monster in his cage. The guy at reception was very understanding and he immediately moved us to a room on the first floor. We slept and slept and slept, until the monsters had disappeared and then ventured out to feed our rumbling stomachs and get a glimpse of this city that is supposedly a dump and a dangerous dump at that.
La Paz…. I liked La Paz. It is not as bad as everyone had made it out to be. Maybe that is why I liked it, because I was expecting something horrific. We did not do or see much in La Paz. We (I) did a lot of shopping. They have the most amazing lama wool products; shawls, table clothes, beanies, gloves, scarves, bags, carpets, hats….you name it, they’ve got it! Eon just laughed when I returned from another shopping occasion and showed him the cool oven mitts with embroided Bolivian women and potatoes on them. Did I check if they were insulated? Whatever - they’re nice enough not to need insulation!
Just around the corner from our hostel was a very English pub/restaurant. We tried to time our visits in between peak hours, so to avoid the loud, strange, young English crowd. But I have to mention this place, Oliver’s Travels, just to praise their breakfast, yummy orange juice and super delicious ‘chicken, bacon and guacamole’ sandwich. And just about 30 meters up the alley from Oliver’s we had the most delicious carne saltenas for R1,50 each.
Another kind of shopping thrill was the Mercado de Hichiceria (Witches’ market). No, this was nothing like it sounds, there were no witches in sight. They call it the witches market due to the unusual products they sell here, mostly inspired by indigenous beliefs. Some of the produce included dried toucan beaks, intended to cure illnesses and protect against bad spirits. Then there were dried lama fetus, believed to inspire good luck when building a new house - apparently you need to bury it underneath the cornerstone. Quite a sight!
On the scarier side…La Paz is the starting point for mountain biking down the world’s most dangerous road. The Road between La Paz and Coroico is officially named “The world’s most dangerous road” due to the number of fatal accidents that occur on it. Can you believe that someone turned this statistic into a marketing gimmick to get tourists (well, maybe some totally insane locals as well) to do a mountain bike downhill on this road? It is a gravel road just 3,2 meters wide, with sheer 600 meter drops, rock overhangs and waterfalls that spill across and erode away the road. Just two weeks ago, an English guy was riding down the road when a SUV came from the other side. He could not stop in time (keep in mind you go downhill all the way) and he slammed into the SUV. The guy was killed instantly and the SUV lost control, went down a 100 meter cliff, killing another eight tourists. We decided to give this activity a miss. I am just so outraged that someone could get away with marketing this to uninformed tourists.
We were in a tourist info shop, when a very strange looking man, covered in tattoos and smelling like he crawled out of Satan’s chamber, entered the shop and started talking to us in a very heavy American accent. He was giving us his sad story of being unlawfully thrown into a Bolivian jail 12 years ago, and now he has almost finished his sentence and has the privilege of leaving the jail during the day to get tourist to visit the jail. The Lonely Planet said that this was a popular outing for tourists a couple of years ago, but they have stopped the activity due to illegal drug trafficking. We lied to the man and said we were leaving for Sorata that afternoon. Then he started begging for money for food. When he finally left the shop, the attendant told us that the guy was lying; he used to teach English to the Bolivian tourist staff and then drugs destroyed him. I cannot help but wonder what would have happened to us if we decided to ‘visit the jail’ with him…
Okay, back to a happier story. Can anyone blame me for liking La Paz? The shopping was great and the food was cheap and delicious. The only sad thing was that we had to say goodbye to our Dutch friends, Gerben and Maaike. They were moving on to Copacabana and were heading towards Sorata for some hiking or cycling in the mountains. And so it was a sad “bye-bye shopping haven!”
Sorata turned out to be a small town tucked away between jungle and snow-capped mountains. It’s elevation is a mere 2670m, so coming from La Paz at 3660m, we felt like we could breath again. The plan was to do the popular five-day trip from Sorata to Rurrenabaque, starting with a two-day downhill mountain biking route, followed by a three day rafting trip to the Amazon basin in Rurrenabaque.
We arrived after a four hour murderous minibus ride. We were stuffed into the backseat with an eighty-something year old lady who believed that her enormous bag had the right to be on the seat as well. She refused to budge, so Eon and I ended up sharing a seat. Besides the fact that the old lady was half deaf, she was also a bit senile and kept talking to herself at top volume. The only time she was quite, was when she fell asleep with her piece of bread in hand, and then every time she woke up she seemed so surprised to ‘discover’ the bread in her hand/lap 
We went on a hostel search when we arrived and oh boy, did we find some interesting ones! Eon’s comment on the one room we looked at was: “This looks like a jail cell!” We finally found a nice spot with shared bathroom, but it was clean and the mattress was good. After check-in, we went to book the cycling/rafting trip, but were very disappointed to find out that the trip was fully booked and we would have to wait for more than a week to get a spot on the next trip. We settled for a day of ‘doing nothing’ in Sorata and booked a one-day hike into the mountains to lake Chillata.
On day three in Sorata, we set off with a guide into the mountains. The Lonely Planet highly recommends taking a guide as the route is not marked out and so it is easy to get lost. We had bad luck with the weather; it was raining and very cloudy but our Spanish speaking guide assured us that the rain would subside shortly. So we pulled on our ponchos and started the trek in the rain. My poncho had a small tear in it because Eon manhandled my poncho on a previous rainy occasion. The tiny tear soon turned into a massive one, running from top to bottom, but at least my daypack with camera and snacks was still dry.
The guide was wearing rubber sandals and very little clothes, but this did not seem to slow him down. He was skipping up the mountain like a local lama, while I slugged up the five-hour climb, struggling to breath. We ascended 1500 meters, up to 4200 meters above sea level. An hour passed, then two, then three…no sun, in fact we had absolutely no view at all. As we climbed, the clouds seemed to get thicker and thicker and it was bitterly cold as well. Finally the guide gave in, he had lost all hope of the rain clearing and told us that we are welcome to continue trekking, but the weather was not going to get any better and we will not have ‘the view’ that this trek is known for. I was secretly relieved, as my lungs felt like they were about to explode! So we decided to have a nice long lunch break and then head back to Sorata. This turned out to be a good decision as it rained for the next two days as well.
Eon bought a couple of DVD’s for R5,00 each. So while it was raining outside, we were in bed watching Two and a half Men series and other movies. The hostel was only R20,00 per person per night, so doing nothing in Sorata helped to bring our overspent budget back down to normal. We had a very dodgy lunch at a local eatery - it looked like some part of an animal’s intestines. We normally try all the unknown and scary-looking food and so we did with this as well, but it tasted really bad! I think it is of the same stuff that they use on a Survivor Food Challenge! We felt so bad not eating it, that we left the money and sneaked off.
Click on the images below to view the gallery for La Paz and Sorata: