Our hotel in Copacabana has only one drawback, the utilities can be intermittent. We lost electrical power for the second time during our stay last night and it has yet to return. The water is out also. I improvise quite wonderfully regarding the water. I heat the water from our hot water bottles in a pan (we have gas) so that Christi can have a strip wash. Then we use that dirty water to flush the toilets. We also boil some of our bottled water so that I can have a cup of tea, while Christi fries our eggs. Just call me MacGyver.
Today we move on to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia and arguably the highest capital in the world. It’s a 4-hour bus ride, which includes a ferry ride across the Tiquina Straits of Lake Titicaca. An odd thing happens once we reach the Straits: the passengers take a small ferry boat across, while the bus is bundled onto a pontoon and taken across separately. Initially, the pontoon appears to be disappearing into the center of Lake Titicaca, but the stevedores successfully bring the bus ashore.
The approach to central La Paz is spectacular. It’s like being aboard a roller coaster ride that is hurtling towards the center of the earth. Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration. For a start nothing hurtles in La Paz; gridlock rules. But there is a steep descent to the valley below. And for once the poor people, who live on the Altiplano above the city and the precipitous sides of the valley, get the best views, while the rich live at the bottom. Needless to say we’ll be clinging to the sheer-walled valley with the vast majority of La Paz’s inhabitants. Our hotel, the Hostal Posada de la Abuela is a refurbished colonial house beautifully located in the heart of markets and cobbled streets at the intersection of Calle Sagárnaga and Calle Linares in the tourist section of town. And some of these cobbled streets are seriously steep – not what you need at 12,000 feet. More amazing still (to me, at least) is the speed and dexterity with which women in stiletto heels negotiate both the cobblestones and the steep gradients – all in the name of fashion.
Blog post by Roderick Phillips, author of Weary Heart – a gut-wrenching tale of love and test tubes.
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