La Paz and the Journey to La Paz

Getting to La Paz was a very exciting, three hour bus journey. 80% of the bus ride passed normally, however at one point they tell all of the passengers to get off the bus, basically without explanation. Luckily, I had done this before so I was able to assure all the English-speaking passengers that nothing was wrong. What we were doing was taking a ferry across a part of Lago Titicaca. Most countries build bridges for this, but it is a major source of revenue for the towns on both sides to make everyone get off the bus and pay to be ferried across the lake, so I guess they just never got around to building the bridge. Anyway, this translates to a lot of excitement and uncertainty.

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 20^th 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!