The Best of Both Worlds

Well its been a whirlwind of a week, and somehow I ended up in Bolivia with this girl I met on the road from Argentina, Victoria.  I had thought about heading to Bolivia beforehand, but didn’t want to go alone, so after we met at Machu Picchu and hit it off we decided to go together.  The first stop was the city of La Paz.  Its a big, urban city set in a valley so that wherever you are you can see up the sides of the hills all covered with houses.  It has a unique feel about it, and is an interesting enough place to spend a few days.  Traffic here is the most chaotic I have ever seen in the world, and the street are nearly completely covered in market stalls selling everything from woolen alpaca winter hats and bread and candies to dried llama fetuses.  Probably a third of the woman are dressed in traditional clothing, with their tall bowler hats. 

The first day we woke up early and wandered around the old part of town for a bit taking some photos of the colonial architecture, and made our way to the coca museum.  Coca, the plant that is used to make marijuana is a mainstay of Bolivian culture, and in its use here has nothing to do with the drug.  People use it for many different purposes, including medicine, traditional medicine, and to relieve altitude sickness.  The museum went through the history of the plant, and its later exploitation as a drug. 

We just hung out in town the rest of the day, and on wednesday took a three hour bus ride down from the cold mountains of La Paz, to the warm semi jungle of the Yungas.  The only way to get there is to go down the famous “world most dangerous road”.  Its a dirt road that snakes through the mountains, with no guardrail, and sheer drops of some 2000 feet or so.  Apparently a number of buses fall of this road every year, but they mostly occur in the wet season (december-march) so I wasnt too worried.  The closest we came to falling over was when the bus had to back up to let someone else through, and our back left wheel came about a foot from the ledge.  But we made it, so I can say that it was definitely worth the trip. 

We stayed in the town of Coroico, at a little bed and breakfast set up by a couple, with beautiful views out to the mountains from our balcony.  It was warm, and tranquil, and was a good place to relax.  The next morning we walked to some waterfalls, took a swim, and nearly got lost in the jungle on the way back.  Somehow we hacked a trail out of the foliage and managed to get back to the hotel for dinner.  The guy who runs the place was a Buddhist, a vegetarian, and a great cook.  We had two delicious dinners (spaghetti one night and a rosti the other), and with all that and a couple beers, our two night accommodation totaled about 15 dollars a person!  Bolivia is just so cheap. 

So now we are back in La Paz, and I am going down to the town of Potosi with Victoria, where she will head back home, south to Argentina, and I am going to go west to see the salt flats in Uyuni, then cross over in to Chile to make my way up to Peru and head home.  We cant go on traveling together forever, unfortunately, so this must be the end of the road for us, at least for now.