Monday, January 11, 2016

La Paz. Bolivia 7.1.16 - 8.1.16

  • How to get there: Check our last blog on travelling between Arica and La Paz (http://pascoegoestravelling.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/journey-from-arica-to-la-paz-070116.html)
  • Arriving to La Paz: When we arrived there were riots going on at the entrance, otherwise it's just a beautiful view followed by a centre full of history, religion and culture.
  • If you eat street food, be very careful of where you go to, ask locals, they will tell you which places are safe for street food. Otherwise, there are many cheap restaurants that sell Bolivian food in the central area.

La Paz is in a simple word, beautiful. We didn't have long to enjoy the city as we would've liked to and in our minds we have decided we will be back for more. We arrived in the evening between tired and dizzy from the altitude, and decided to get a hotel in the centre to have the good night sleep our bodies had been deserving for standing so strong.

The next morning, we were up from 6 am to get a view from the top of the city as we had seen it the previous day but with the morning mist. The views were absolutely stunning, one of the best views we had ever seen, the mist, the red roofs, the cemetery. The taxi driver that took us there pretty much gave us a full 1 hour tour before we had to go back to the hotel for breakfast. He told us about the religion: the locals even though mainly catholic, believe in their ancestral beliefs still, holding a strong connection to the land, water and fire. He also told us that some of them praise the Devil as a connection between the so-called "Uncle" and the Goddess of Earth. The curve of the devil is where people put their candles and offerings to the Uncle, some are coloured, some are black. The black candles are to ask for revenge and dark things I didn't want to think about: in these type of offerings they use dry animal foetus, although sometimes the police has found human bodies used in the offerings. It all sounds pretty dark right?

La Paz however is not that dark: people are in general friendly and everyone is willing to help you with directions even when they don't know themselves.

We had breakfast and headed to "the cemetery" or a street nearby where you could buy tickets to go to Copacabana. We queued for over half an hour with many other tourists going in that direction.







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