Perú/Bolivia - Part VIII (The Road to La Paz)

The Road to La Paz

After a busy day in Puno, we got back on the bus early the next morning, it was going to be another full day on that damn bus. It was off to La Paz via Copacabana (not that Copacabana).
This all meant a border crossing was in order... it was Bolivia time.

Home to one of the more infamous guerrilla campaigns of Che Guevara.

We had to cross the border by foot, along with everyone else, while we were there for a good 30min, no motor vehicles crossed the border, just the masses of people and their bikes.
Filled out some paperwork, got a new stamp in our passports and put some Bolivianos in our wallets.
Then it was back into the [new] bus and on our way once more.

The boy on the bike at the border crossing brings up another point I wanted to make about South America. I had started noticing trucks and buses with foreign writing on them. Trucks with company logos still affixed to the sides and cab, from countries like Japan and everywhere throughout Europe, even ones with Dutch on the sides. This was due to the lack of laws keeping vehicles off the road. So when a truck or bus didn't pass inspection for whatever reason, it was then sold and shipped to south America, where it could still be used. From now on I kept a good eye on all our buses.


COPACABANA
On our way to La Paz, the unofficial capital of Bolivia, we stopped for lunch in Copacabana. Like the famous area of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, only then not. This was to be our first glimpse into Bolivian life and we were in for a treat. At noon that day outside the church they were going to be having some kind of blessing ceremony.
So, I met up with my Bolivian counterparts (see right) and awaited the show.

Now I had foolishly assumed they were going to be blessing people, but instead the priests came out and started blessing the cars...

What I found more amusing was when the priests were done chucking holy water over the cars, the owners and their entire family lined up in front of their vehicle took a picture, and then proceeded to spray the car with everything from champagne to beer and soda. No joke.

For the rest, Copacabana wasn't anything special. It was filled with dirty hippi's selling handicrafts, and that's about it.
My mom and I had lunch, had a walk around and headed back to the bus... I was beginning to feel unwell, unfortunately for me this was only the beginning. The very beginning.

I'll let you guess what a Bolivian ferry looks like... (hint: see right).


Another couple hours went by, and while we were passing through a town, we noticed some kind of celebration was going on, so we hopped out and joined in the fun...





So even the Lonely Planet guide to Bolivia stated that La Paz is the highest capital in the world. This is if you assume La Paz is the capital... which it is not... sort of. Sucre is the actual capital, it's not unlike the Netherlands, where Amsterdam is the "peoples" capital and everyone assumes this is so, while in actuality the city of The Hague houses all parliamentary buildings.
Either way, it is high up... with an elevation of 3640 m (11,940 ft). And because of this, it is one of the few cities in the world where the poorer neighborhoods are located higher up than the richer ones.
There is even a German area of the city... which is filled with the lucky (but still horribly evil) bastards that were part of the Nazi party, as many fled to South America in fear of repercussions (imagine that!?). It's a sad tale, but if you look at the Nuremberg trials, only 142 were found guilty, now you can't tell me that those 142 people were the ones running entire Nazi Germany. Either way, I doubt life in La Paz is all that glorious... until you see the mansions those bastards live in. It seems blood money is still money.

The sun sets over La Paz with the mountain Nevado Illimani (6,402m) as its backdrop.
We got to our hotel, walked around a little, hit up an internet cafe and passed the hell out.
The next day we had the choice of going hiking, mountain biking, or having a free day to tour the city. As soon as I started reading about some infamous road called "death road," I decided on option #2.
A full-day bike trip down "Death Road - the most dangerous road in the world." Sounded intriguing... so I was definitely in.