Sunday, April 23, 2006
I was happy to leave Copacabana, but first a quick lesson in vertical integration. If you own a travel agency, bus company, & a hotel you can provide timely, convenient, services, often at a preferable price. This also means that you don't have to stop at the bus station, you can talk up the benefits of your hotel & inform people that the bus's last & only stop will be right in front of the hotel you happen to own even if this pisses off all your passengers who happened to have somewhere else to go. Anyway....
La Paz, capital of Bolivia, population around 1 million, elevation 3,600 meters above sea level, "the world's highest capital." Weather: sunny & cool with a slight chance of kidnapping (it would be funny if it weren't so true).
There have been some unfortunate incidents in La Paz lately, but thankfully, we got through without any problems. La Paz looked HUGE as we came into it, as we descended into the valley we just saw buildings everywhere & at night throughout the hills the street lights seemed to go on forever into the distance...
So our priorities in La Paz were a little different: I wanted to stock up on supplies & Ellie wanted to enjoy the city. We really should talk more.
In the end we bought some cold weather clothes. We both got snow pants, an alpaca hat, some gloves, & a fleece vest for Ellie, while I got a baby alpaca scarf & ear band & some alpaca socks. Alpacas are like wooly deer, we still can't tell the difference between them & llamas, although both are tasty (llamas taste beefy, alpacas taste like mutton, yum!), alpacas make better wool. We have figured out that the difference between vicuñas & guanacos though. Guanacos have grey faces & more wool, also the wool of both animals is finer & more expensive than alpaca or llama wool. I'm still hoping to snag some garments made of guanaco or vicuña wool though, but I doubt it's gonna happen considering their small numbers & the fact that vicuñas are protected/endangered.
Other noteworthy things about La Paz:
Good Lebanese food. Who knew? We liked our lunch so much that we went back & bought out all of their meat empanadas (& 1/2 of their veggie too!) for our bus ride out of town.
The derbys & bonnets the indigineous women here remind me of Wimpy from the Popeye cartoons.
One of the things we wanted to do but didn't was visit El Museo del Coca so we could answer some of our burning questions about coca. We know coca is a mild stimulant like coffee & makes a nice cup of tea that also helps with sarroche/altitude sickness, but now we never know what else it's used for...
Completely unrelated to anything else, but we saw 2 or 3 parades during our time in La Paz & we never figured out what they were about.
Kepfram
La Paz, capital of Bolivia, population around 1 million, elevation 3,600 meters above sea level, "the world's highest capital." Weather: sunny & cool with a slight chance of kidnapping (it would be funny if it weren't so true).
There have been some unfortunate incidents in La Paz lately, but thankfully, we got through without any problems. La Paz looked HUGE as we came into it, as we descended into the valley we just saw buildings everywhere & at night throughout the hills the street lights seemed to go on forever into the distance...
So our priorities in La Paz were a little different: I wanted to stock up on supplies & Ellie wanted to enjoy the city. We really should talk more.
In the end we bought some cold weather clothes. We both got snow pants, an alpaca hat, some gloves, & a fleece vest for Ellie, while I got a baby alpaca scarf & ear band & some alpaca socks. Alpacas are like wooly deer, we still can't tell the difference between them & llamas, although both are tasty (llamas taste beefy, alpacas taste like mutton, yum!), alpacas make better wool. We have figured out that the difference between vicuñas & guanacos though. Guanacos have grey faces & more wool, also the wool of both animals is finer & more expensive than alpaca or llama wool. I'm still hoping to snag some garments made of guanaco or vicuña wool though, but I doubt it's gonna happen considering their small numbers & the fact that vicuñas are protected/endangered.
Other noteworthy things about La Paz:
Good Lebanese food. Who knew? We liked our lunch so much that we went back & bought out all of their meat empanadas (& 1/2 of their veggie too!) for our bus ride out of town.
The derbys & bonnets the indigineous women here remind me of Wimpy from the Popeye cartoons.
One of the things we wanted to do but didn't was visit El Museo del Coca so we could answer some of our burning questions about coca. We know coca is a mild stimulant like coffee & makes a nice cup of tea that also helps with sarroche/altitude sickness, but now we never know what else it's used for...
Completely unrelated to anything else, but we saw 2 or 3 parades during our time in La Paz & we never figured out what they were about.
Kepfram
Kepfram & Ellie, 12:55 AM
