Bolivia: La Paz

From Uyuni the plan was to take a train in the direction of a place near the capital of Bolivia La Paz. From there we would only need a short bus trip to finally reach La Paz itself, the highest situated capital on earth with its 3600 meters.
That night we had already left our hostel as our train would leave at one o' clock in the night. We spent the night with playing darts at a deserted bar in Uyuni, to kill the time until one o' clock. At the time we arrived at the railway station, just some guy told us the train had a four hour delay at least. After the half an hour we needed to realise this was a different category of train delay than what we were used to in the Netherlands, we tried to find a way to get some sleep or rest in those very 'comfortable' beds there. At five o' clock in the morning still no train and still no sleep, but by that time on the contrary we did already have a frozen and broken bone structure all in one. The combination of sleeping in the open air, an outside temperature of below zero and no blankets was something that was going to sit in your cold clothes (Non-Dutch readers should forget the latter too artificially created expression).

The next day, somehow, we managed to arrive in La Paz. Just as Uyuni, even a big city like La Paz continued to show us this completely different world and culture than we'd ever seen before. For example there were no supermarkets but everything was on sell at one huge open-air market instead, where the whole population was doing its groceries. Or the streets of La Paz, that were very crowded with cars and people 'kris-kras' crossing the streets, and they were messy too with garbage just lying around. Some last funny thing was part of one of the main streets in La Paz spontaneously collapsing and going down after a bus drove on it. All this was simply great to experience!

One of our greatest experiences ever was the mountain bike tour we did there just outside the city: The so-called 'Camino de la muerte' through the Andes. The tour started in a bus, taking us up to a height of some 4600 meters to start. From there on we did everything by bike, with at one side always the beautiful mountains, and at the other side always the view of thousands of meters into the deep ravine! The view was just beautiful, magnificent, amazing, impossible to describe. The same words could be used for the feeling these enormous mountains gave us as being little creatures! 'Breathless' could finally be used for describing the lack of oxigen that hit us when we were doing the nine kilometer climb on the way.

All this, and more, has visually been registrated below:



Night vision over one of the streets of La Paz




The street in which our hostel was situated.
Amazing how hard it was to climb these
streets at such high altitudes and
corresponding lack of oxigen




La Paz is built on and surrounded by mountains
and hills. Here a view from one of the squares
over such a hill




Yep, this is not only seen in the Netherlands...




One of the crowded market streets in La Paz.
Look for tall Europeans in this picture!




Caution! No one at work repairing
collapsed street




Bolivian female dress code (7 [!] dresses)




Public transport in La Paz



Just before the start of our mountain bike
tour over 'El camino de la muerte'




At the start this foggy view into the deep,
to make us feel comfortable




Our right view just after 'take off'




Our left view just after 'take-off'




Here, on asfalt, you could reach a speed
up to not too slow




Wooooow, sooooo nice!




Continuing the tour on some rougher roads




Number 1 and 2 in the race, enough ahead
to take another break




Again, beau-ti-ful! A nice overview of the
region we covered by bike. At the right the
small and narrow path that took us
through these enormous mountains!




At the finish - the winners!




The first and only plane we took in our trip;
a Dutch (!) Fokker F-27, taking us from La
Paz to the border with Brasil.
After asking for it, we were called to take
place/ stand in the cockpit, from start to landing!