29 Jan 2024
Well, so had a big entry mostly finished and the computer crashed so lets try again. Also, having trouble uploading photos so I`ll have to put them in later. So, we ended up not staying the night on Isla del Sol. We did the hike from the north end to the south and decided we`d had enough so went back to Copacabana that same night. We went to La Paz the next day after dealing with a big hullaballoo trying to get on a bus. We purchased our tickets from the hotel and none of the buses wanted to take it, but we finally got on one. It was a funny bus ride too because we all had to get off and get on a power boat while our bus went on a small not so stable looking barge across a portion of the lake. We spent Friday walking around La Paz and booking a mountain bike ride for Saturday. We also went to the Coca Museum where we learned (among other things) that Coca-Cola still uses coca leaves for flavoring. Saturday was our bike ride… it was down the so-called `World`s Most Dangerous Road.` The road is narrow and prone to washouts, but since there`s a new road now it is much safer to bike down it than it was before since most of the traffic is now on the new road, and we made it down safe and sound. It was a fun ride – 64 kilometers and 3600 meters change in elevation from start to finish. There were quite a few issues due to it being the rainy season. The bus couldn`t get to the normal endpoint for the company we went with so we had to get back on our bikes after lunch and bike for another 20 minutes then there was a big team effort to get all the bikes across a newly formed canyon in the road (its really too bad I cant get photos up right now.) Sunday we took it easy in the morning then went with a group from our hostel to Cholitas wrestling. That ended up being pretty insane with lots of crowd interaction (the crowd threw popcorn, soda bottles, beer cans, etc.) Also, Dan and I ended up with wrestlers in our laps twice and would have been three times had we not moved. Yesterday we took the bus from La Paz to Oruro. Oruro doesnt have much going on, but will next week as it is the place to be for Carnaval. Unfortunately, we have to move on… we leave for Uyuni this afternoon and will hopefully start a Salar de Uyuni (salt flat) tour in the morning which will take us into Chile.
posted Tuesday January 2024