La Paz

Onwards through the Andes. We took a night bus from Cusco to La Paz which went via Lake Titicaca and over the border to Bolivia, which involved an incredibly long wait for the guards to open customs, before getting into La Paz. We did get some sleep and didn't have too much of a shock to the altitude of La Paz, which is after all the highest capital city in the world at 3,650m (4,150m if you include Él Alto, but they are insistent that they are different cities, even though that's clearly not true).

We had a nice comfy apartment and a fairly slow start to La Paz, a bit of wandering around, some trips to go bowling and to the cinema which was bizarrely normal, and then Elli got really ill, which was a real kick in the teeth after a few days of bad digestion issues followed by an incapacitating cold. It's likely that the altitude didn't help and the fact that any time we went outside we had to climb the hill.

After eventually recovering we actually got to do a bit of exploring. La Paz is actually a completely insane city: La Paz is in a valley, but which is at such high altitude that craggy rocks just emerge here and there. There's a huge canyon running down the middle, and then the city grows up the cliffside until you finally get to the precipitous cliff edge and then Él Alto at the top on the plateau. We took the teleferico, which is probably one the best public transport systems we've ever seen (incredibly cheap, clean, efficient, not overcrowded and extra points for both uniqueness and incredible views) all the way round the city. You can do a huge loop which gives amazing views of the city.

The city centre itself is sort of charming in a few places - plenty of backpacker tat but some excellent fabrics and prints, lots of cholitas wandering around everywhere you go, and places where you can buy dead dried llamas to give as an offering. According to someone we met it's bad luck to build a new building in La Paz without killing someone first, so we were glad of the warning not to go to any parties in Él Alto, where there's a not insignificant chance you might get killed by someone who wants to get on and finish their house.

We decided you couldn't go up to La Paz without properly climbing a mountain, so on one particularly chaotic day we found a taxi driver who would drive us along the plateau to Chacaltaya, which is the former ski resort that was until 2009 the highest ski resort in the world (and then the glacier melted). It was quite late by the time we set off but our driver gamely set off, and all was looking well until a huge cloud rolled in. We finally made it to the top and the abandoned ski resort only to be stuck in a snowstorm. We sat it out for half an hour, questioning our life choices, until miraculously the clouds parted and the sun came out with the most incredible view back over La Paz. We hiked the rest of the 200m up to 5,421m; now officially the highest we've ever been, and a definite high point for both of us.Читать далее