Top: View down on La Paz Below: Stone statue in Tiwanaku
In our last few days in Sucre we built a wall in the boys orphanage in town. We meet a fellow Irish man who had raised some money and just happened to need a carpenter and some muscle. His plan was to create a play room in the orphanage and it would all start with the building of a partition wall. So with the wall firmly standing we boarded an overnight bus to La Paz. We found a hostel in a nice part of town, near enough to Murillo Square, home to the goverment, so we could hear the regular protests. La Paz is at about 3600m and full of big hills. It is nestled at the base of a bowl and the red brick buildings cover the hill sides. The city is hectic, its only relief is that not a lot of people can afford private cars and so the traffic keeps moving. Police with hand guns, automatic guns, hand cuffs and tear gas stand in groups on corners and practise not smiling. There are many markets around town where one can buy anything from a bag of mystery juice to a llama foetus.
Our first trip out of La Paz was to Tiwanaku, a huge pre-columbian site that was a precursor to the inca empire. There are huge stone structures and open top temples. There is the sun gateway, which gives a calender and many large and wonderful stone statues, all carved out of single pieces of rock. Unfortunately the Bolivians thought it would be great to have one of these statues outside the main football stadium in La Paz. As a result it survived thousands of years only to be hit with bottles by angry football hooligans and damaged. They have just opened a museum in which to put these wonderful artifacts on their original site.
Top: Semi-subterranean temple wall Below: the Sun gate
Our next trip was down hill to Sorata where we overnighted and then walked up to a fine base camp before making it all the way to Laguna Glacial for a pic-nic. We spent a few night on the ridge in the hills, enjoying the amazing vistas whenever the clouds cleared. Luckily when we went to the laguna glacial the clouds lifted and we could see for miles with a wonderful view of lake Titicaca.
Top: The long walk up hill with big bags!! Below: Joe, with fashionable scarf and me!
Top: Base camp in the clouds. Below: Joe enjoys sunset from or base camp
Posts
