The people are taken on a small boat and the buses get taken on these big barges. Our bus was the big orange one. Our bags were still stored underneath so we were glad it arrived on the other side!
After the
bus was safely ferried across, we again hit the road. Another aspect of the
journey that you don´t expect is that as you pull into La Paz you get a really
cool view of it because it´s situated down in a valley.
This is only a small part, the city is actually enormous
The second thing you
see is a giant statue of Che Guevara crushing an eagle. I guess that is in
keeping with the theme of making Americans feel as unwelcome as possible.
We spent
about three days in La Paz mostly resting from our whirlwind travels through
Peru. My roommate, Isaiah, lived in La Paz for 4 months so he gave us a good
list of things to do. We spent some time in a really neat little plaza that had
cafes all around it. The plaza was extra interesting because it was filled with anti-Chilean posters that were as tall as buildings. (Quick history lesson: around the turn
of the 20th century, Chile and Peru went to war. Bolivia came in on
Peru´s side towards the end and Peru ended up losing. Chile took a good chuck
out of southern Peru and western Bolivia for its spoils, which meant Bolivia no
longer had access to the ocean. Recently, Bolivia has asked Chile for the land
back and Chile said no. I think Bolivia is trying to take Chile to the ICC, so there is a lot of hostility right now.)
"Our demand asks the ICC to rule that Chile has the obligation to negotiate sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean"
There is also a really awesome, pedestrian-only part of the city where the streets are really narrow and it is filled with artisan shops and museums. It´s really neat and colorful.
La Paz was
a very interesting city. It is also the highest capital city in the world,
sitting at over 13,000. However, we didn´t stay long because we were eager to
see what else Bolivia had to offer. At the end of the third day, we hopped on a
bus bound for the southern Bolivian town of Uyuni: the gateway to the largest
salt flats in the world!
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