La Paz and Tiahuanaco, Bolivia

Jan 2002

Cruised into La Paz from Copacabana.  What's evident straightaway is how poor Bolivia is - even when compared to Peru.  Spent about 3 days there walking around the city, visiting museums and have having the odd bit of fun before the rest of the group headed back to London, New York and New Zealand.

La Paz

Getting to La Paz from Copacabana by bus involves crossing a river.  There's no bridges ... just dodgy looking boats to take the bus across.  Passengers went separately in taxi launches that were equally dodgy looking and hadn't seen a maritime inspection for centuries I'm sure.

Coming into La Paz - the highest capital city in the world at about 4200m above sea level.  Yes that is snow - not cocaine.

Llama foetuses at the Witches Market.

More llama foetuses.  Apparently you burn them for good luck.

House of parliament or something.

Marieke with fruit juice in market.

Dan and me with our respective juices and glasses.  Juices were fantastic despite concerns over hygiene. Marieke sorted this out by asking them to open a fresh bag of milk.

In the market, there was a kind of shoe shine mafia.  They all wore balaclavas, a paramilitary type uniform and coloured vests indicating what shoe shine mafia group they belonged to.  Weird.

Potosi mine sculpture outside a gallery in downtown La Paz.

Fidel.

Tiahuanaco

Tiahuanaco, near the shores of Lake Titicaca, was the center of a powerful, self-sustaining empire in the southern Central Andes. The roots of the Tiahuanaco capital can be found in the early village underlying the 1.5-square-mile civic-ceremonial core. The city was settled by 400 B. C. on the Tiahuanaco River, which empties into Lake Titicaca 9.3 miles to the north. The small farming village evolved into a regal city of multi-terraced platform pyramids, courts and urban areas, covering a total 2.31 square miles between AD.

Church on the way to Tiahuanaco.

Sunken court with idol in middle and faces of priests and nobles around the outside.

Idol.

Priest or noble's face set into the wall.  Like kinda Indiana Jonesish.

View of the Tiahuanaco Gate from the sunken court.

Entrance.

Idol.

The entrance side of the Portal of the Sun atop the Kalasaya mound. The entire upper panel is intricately carved with a repeating pattern of the images seen in the view above. The monolith has broken and was found partially downfallen in modern times. It has been restored to its original position. The fissure is visible above the right corner of the doorway.

A courtyard.

One funny thing I saw was two backpacking goths dressed in black on a 30 degree plus day.  At one point, the girl goth pulled out a cordless shaver and proceeded to shave all the hair off her goth boyfriends's head.  Wierd.

Going Out In La Paz

The crew at dinner.

Jeremy and I at a club.

Marieke in the cab on the way to one of La Paz's hottest clubs.

Some of the locals.

More locals. 

Had a good time here until some huge fat guy - the size of a planet! - wanted to punch my head in for talking to his girlfriend.  He thought I was trying to pick her up I guess.  Dan and a local guy pulled me to safety before I got flattened (literally).