Dried llama fœtus

We had agreed that by the time we got to La Paz we would have recovered from our party excesses nearly two months previously in Chile. After the towers of beer in Sucre we weren't so sure, but we had already booked ourselves several nights in what we had heard is one of the most extreme party hostels in South America: The Wild Rover. Yes I know it sounds Irish rather than Bolivian, and that's because, well it is an entire hostel in the style of an Irish bar. I know, it's awful, but these are the sacrifices you have to make if you want to have a good time.

Unlike most hostels, they didn't provide any directions on the website, just an address and how much you should expect to pay the taxi driver. Obviously people who go to party hostels have lots of money. We checked in an headed out again, wary that we should try to get as much done as possible before we found ourselves with crippling hangovers.

Suburbs at the top of town

A traffic zebra

Typical street

Illimani Mountain peeks through the buildings

La Paz is quite high up, so we were a bit worried about altitude sickness, but hoped that our previous high altitude experience was recent enough to protect us. The city reminded me slightly of a very Shimla: blocky houses on steep slopes, though La Paz was missing that everything-on-stilts, Dr Seus element to the architecture that makes Shimla so strange-looking. At one end the streets at one end of town there is a huge mountain. Once in the center, zebras were driecting the traffic. Yes, zebras.

St Francis Church

There was quite a nice church, though undergoing renovation, in one of the main plazas, and Joanne was keen to visit the witches market, which she thought looked good in the guide book. They did have some interesting, even nice, things, but they also had some rather gruesome objects for sale, most notably the dried llama fœtus, which is apparently a standard house-warming present for good luck. Good yuck, more like!

Dried llama fœtus and other stuff at witches' market

Witches market

Joanne has a mojito...

After perusing the fœtuses for a while we booked a cycle trip down the Road of Death for the following morning, then we found a Cuban bar and stepped inside to see what was on offer. Mojitos and a Cohiba: that'll do nicely! Heading back towards the hostel we popped found an Indian restaurant, run by an English guy, so we thought we'd try it for lunch, after all it couldn't be worse than the usual standard of food in Bolivia. In fact the food was excellent. I opted for the vindaloo, which is so hot they give you a t-shirt to finish a full portion, however I was only having a lunch portion; I saw it as a test run for the real thing. It was exceptionally hot, by far the hottest food either of us had eaten on the trip, but I reckoned I'd be able to earn that t-shirt.

... in a Cuban Bar

La Paz

Joanne wearing a bracelet from Tarabuco

Hottest food on the whole trip

Back at the hostel we unpacked and I discovered that my dry bag, containing my thermals, was missing. Someone must have stolen it during the night, from the where our bags were stored on the bus from Sucre. And soon we would probably be needing them again, since we were planning to go trekking in Peru. Thieving scum!! I was really going off Bolivia: first food-poisoning and now theft. Nobody warned us about this, everyone had said Bolivia was the best place in South America and everyone we had spoken to before getting there had loved it. Now that we were there, everyone we spoke to had been robbed and had food-poisoning. A strange difference.

That evening, the bar was very loud and lively, and we had a few drinks and chatted to some people. Most of the people staying there were younger than us and a large percentage were Irish. One Irish guy said that he had recently got his vindaloo t-shirt even though he hates curry, which made me more determined than ever to get one of my own. He had made himself sick after finishing the bowl and thought it was very brave of me to have even a lunch portion the day before our death road cycle. You don't want that in you he advised, helpfully. Later, Ricarda appeared and also seemed keen to go for the vindaloo t-shirt. We all agreed that we would do it on Friday when Lucy and Zdenek arrived in La Paz; I was sure he would want to have a go at it too.

written by

The Happy Couple on October 27, 2009 from La Paz, Bolivia

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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