La Paz, Bolivia

"Bolivia has the lowest GDP per capita figures in South America. The country is rich in natural resources, and has been called a "donkey sitting on a gold-mine" because of this." ~Wikipedia

Tuesday, November 4th 2008

The morning bus took me to the Bolivian border early in the morning. The border crossing to Bolivia is probably the easiest in the world, just get off the bus,wait 1 minute to sign off you passport in Peru and another one to sign in to Bolivia - you don't even need to take your bags from the bus! So just like that in two minutes I left Peru (which I enjoyed very much) and found myself in a new country famous for it's fast pickpockets, bad buses and Salmonella inducing food. I don't know about the other two, but the Bolivian bus I boarded in Copacabana (the Bolivian side of lake Titicaca) lived up to it's reputation. Luckily, he bus ride to La Paz took only 3 hours although along the way I had to disembark the bus and cross the lake on a small ferry boat while the bus crossed on a bigger one. The first look I got of the city was intimidating - the city is made of red brick houses tightly clustered together in a canyon created by the Choqueyapu River. The impression didn't got any better as the bus stopped in the center of town somewhere and I found myself standing in the craziest traffic I ever seen. If in Peru the drivers don't stop when you try to cross the street, here it looks as they try to run you over on purpose.. The fact that the center of town is in constant traffic jam does not help either... It was a good thing that I was already accustomed to South America - La Paz is not a place for beginners. After the initial shock subsided a little, I started to notice that the street I stand on "feature" signs in Hebrew. Usually I don't like this kind of stuff but I knew that those signs means that I'm in the "Israeli quarter" of the city and that I should look around for familiar faces. It only took 2 minutes to spot one of the guys I went ice climbing with in Hauraz and 5 minutes more to get all the information about where to sleep, where to eat and what to do. I checked into the Sagarnaga hotel which was the best accommodation I had in my trip so far with nice rooms and an excellent shower. I only got to see very small part of the city in the next couple of days but in those I found all that I needed: I bought some presents for the folks back home, rested and organized the rest of my Bolivian tour. While big cities are not "my thing", and La Paz is certainly big and crowded, I kind of like the time I spent there because of the good hotel, the shopping and the extremely low prices... but as I said, I would not recommend this place as an entry point to the continent..