Like I mentioned in the last post, I arrived in La Paz early on Thursday morning. My plan was to spend the day there and head to Cuzco, Peru that night in an overnight bus. After I got my bag from the airport, I got into this little bus that took me to the bus terminal where I could leave my bag and get a bus ticket. These buses are tiny. There were no buses like those you would see in most big cities. These buses are like minivans, and when they come up to a stop at an intersection, someone in the front seat yells where the bus is going and, from what I can remember, the price. They had the same thing in Bogota, Colombia and other cities. I think the main reason here is that the streets, for the most part, aren't wide enough for normal-sized buses.
The guy put my stuff on the top of the bus, which kind of worried me a little, and we headed into the downtown area. The airport is located above the city, and so you descend on a highway into the city. The view was amazing. The city is at 12,000 feet and in something of a valley, and there are houses packed on the hills on all sides. There are mountains on all sides, obviously, and it was a clear morning. It was one of the coolest scenes I have ever scene. Did you catch that intentional misspelling of "seen"? Not bad, if you ask me.
I arrived at the bus terminal and started looking for a bus ticket. Unfortunately, all of the tickets to Cuzco left in the morning or the afternoon. I wanted an evening ticket, but it was impossible. So I bought a 2 pm departure or something like that. La Paz to Cuzco is about a fifteen-hour bus ride over the Andes, or so they told me. More on that below. Once I had my ticket, I was able to drop off my bag and visit the city. It's incredible to see cities like this, built in the mountains. The streets are narrow and everything is on an incline--or a decline, I guess, depending on how you look at it. This gives it a small-town feeling, even though the city is a big city.
La Paz doesn't have as much history as some cities in Latin America because it did not exist before the Spaniards colonized the area. Well, I can't say that for sure; there may have been something, but definitely not an important city. Places like Cuzco and Mexico City were important capitals for the pre-colonialism civilizations, and so there is where you can really see the ancient mixing with the modern. But La Paz is still really great, mostly because of the scenery. I walked around the city and checked out a lot of the streets and the markets. While the architecture doesn't show the meeting of old and new like in other cities, La Paz still presents an interest contrast of new and old traditions and customs that you can see in how people dress, their professions, their appearance in general, and their language.
One thing I noticed while in the taxi in Santa Cruz the night before was that there were a ton of chicken places. It seemed like everything on the main drag was a chicken place. I decided to try some here in La Paz, and needed to eat anyway before going on the bus. What I got was a big greasy plate of fries and chicken, and I was scared that it was going to make me sick. If I remember right, I think I had a few pepto-bismol pills that I took right after I ate. I call that my "preemptive strike." You gotta hit the enemy before it hits you. Luckily I didn't have any problems.
I went back to the bus station to get ready for the long bus ride. I found out that I would have to change buses at some point and also started to develop a headache at some point during the day. I was not sure if it was altitude sickness or what. I never have felt it before, and so I didn't have anything to compare it with. Being in Bogota never caused me any problems, but this is more than 3,000 feet higher. I didn't have any medicine and just figured that it would go away.
The bus came late and the people who were waiting piled in. I was expecting a nice bus like the ones you usually have on long distance trips. This one was a poor man's fifteen seat van. And I mean poor man's....the seats were hard and close together, the luggage went on top, and there was definitely no air coming in unless it was through the window. This was only supposed to be for three or four hours, at which point I would change to something else. The adventure continues in the next post.
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