La Paz Bolivia

Currency: Boliviano $1.00 US = $6.97000 Bolivianas
Bus Copacabana to La Paz - $25 B
Boat across Lake Titicaca - $10 B
Taxi Bus Depot to Hostel - $15 B (for 3 of us)
Hostel La Paz - $55 B a night (4 bed dorm) - Wild Rover
Hostel La Paz - $15.00 US a night (private room) - Republica

The bus from Copacabana to La Paz takes about 4 hours. Part way through we had to exit the bus to get across Lake Titicaca. The bus is loaded onto a barge to go across and we are sent over via small boats. It takes about 1/2 an hour for the bus to get across, looks totally hilarious, hard to believe all vehicles go across that way, looks like the barges will sink at any minute. There are stalls that sell drinks and food so it's a great place to grab a snack and watch the fun.

The first view of La Paz that you get coming in via bus is from the road above, it is amazing, a huge bowl crowded with buildings all the way up the side of the mountains. Hard to believe some of them can stay up, not an inch of wasted space. It is an amazing sight.

The bus depot is relatively new and it is huge. It is located pretty close to the center of the city and taxi's are plentiful. I had found the Wild Rover Hostel on line and thought it sounded pretty good. Good location, clean and with a fun bar. Turns out it was also the residence of a former president at one time. The people I shared a cab with were booked at the Loki which it turns out backed onto the back of the hostel I was in. The Wild Rover is located 2 blocks down from the presidential plaza and is within walking distance of pretty much all of the sites. If booking a room at the Rover I recommend asking for a room in the back of the building. There is a weird outside annex part way in the back, gets no noise from the bar. The ones in the front of the building and by the bar are extremely noisy & the bar is open until 2ish. When you check in you get a wrist band, you can choose to pay cash for booze & meals or you can charge it to your room and pay when you check out. I did find that both times I stayed at the Rover there were extra charges on my bill that were not mine so, if in doubt ask to see the tab. On the up side they took them off as soon as I pointed out that they were not mine. There is a travel agency located in the hostel and free computers and wifi. It was a fun place to stay, lots of interesting folks and as it turns out I ran into a guy that I had done the Machu Picchu hike with that I had not seen since Cusco. He was heading to Buenos Aries from La Paz as he was on a short 1 month whirl wind tour of South America.

In Cusco I had met a couple that told me if I had time to take a trip into the Amazon basin via Rurrenabaque. The bus trip takes 20 hours and I was on my last 2 weeks before I had to fly home out of Lima Peru so I chose to fly in and out. I had also been told that the roads are often blocked by protesters so it is very likely that you can be stranded for a few days waiting for the blockades to come down. I booked both the flight and the 3 day pamapas tour via the travel agency in the hostel. The cost was $1500.00 B. There is also a jungle tour, I was told that if you like plants take the jungle tour if you want to see animals take the pampas tour. I booked a couple of days in advance so I could spend a few days exploring La Paz. When I came back from Rurrenabaque I had 3 more days in La Paz before I had to head back to Peru.

La Paz is a crazy city with a lot of history, it sits at 3500 meters above sea level and is the highest capital city in the world. There are street markets everywhere and traffic is horrible, I don't know how people drive there. As an added bonus the city is built in a basin so almost everywhere involves going up steep hills. There are tons of restaurants and shops, the witches market is totally bizarre, lots of lama fetuses, seems they are a good luck charm. When you buy a new home you bury 1 under the front porch for good luck. The Bolivians are a pretty superstitious people, catholic with a bit of witch craft thrown in. They also love a good party, I was lucky enough to be there for their annual Gran Poder parade, the streets are blocked off and unfortunately so is the view. They put up barriers that block the parade view and sell tickets for seats if you want to watch, tickets are pretty cheap, people were offering them to me for $20 B. There are places you can see it for free if you go up the hill by the witches market or from the overpass. The parade starts at 8 am and goes until around 1am. Lots of music and colorful costumes, the dancers go for 5 or 6 kilometers a lot of it up hill. Not sure where they get the energy from. I bought a couple of beers and pulled up a piece of sidewalk with the locals in their lawn chairs and their coolers of beer to watch for a few hours. Totally amazing, if you can time your visit to see it I highly recommend it, no set date it is usually at the end of May beginning of June. I so love that you can by beer on the street and drink it while you walk/sit, takes some getting used to when I get home where that is totally illegal.

Price wise it is a pretty cheap place, I got some happy pants (backpackers will know what they are) loose colorful pants for $35 B and I picked up a necklace and earrings in silver with a reversible stone (1 side blue 1 side purple) for $100 B. If you are doing Peru & Bolivia defiantly do your shopping in Bolivia, way cheaper than Peru, I saw the same necklace/earring set in Lima for double the price. I spent a lot of time in the presidential plaza, there is a park and it is a great place to people watch. Also lots of history, if you take a close look at the walls of the buildings you can see lots of bullet holes from when the police and the army went at each other in 2003. At no time did I feel unsafe in La Paz but keep in mind that there is still a lot of unrest. There is lots of poverty and unemployment, and they are under a lot of pressure from the US in regards to Coca plants. Unlike Colombia they have not allowed the US to dictate or interfere with their harvests so there fore no aide from them. There were protests pretty much every day and on 1 day a big one in the presidential square. I had heard it when I left the hostel to meet a friend for dinner, lots of yelling and chanting. On the way home from dinner I cut through the square and it was eerie. No one but solders there and a haze of tear gas and damaged vendor stalls. When I came into the square the soldiers motioned at me with their machine guns to stay in the middle of the square and away from the buildings. I must be getting jaded, having guns pointed at me doesn't even faze me anymore. It is a different world, it looks scarier than it is but things can change at a minutes notice so it is best to avoid angry crowds of people and protests. The day after the big protest you would never have known anything had happened, the plaza was crowded with happy families going about their business.

Lots of great street eats especially by the San Francisco church, tons of food stalls and if you are facing the church go through the front courtyard to the right and down the stairs, more street food to be had. Other than a couple of nights I pretty much survived on the stuff. Hit 3 or 4 booths and put together a tasty meal for under $2.00 US. No ill effects and a great way to meet the locals, grab a stair and chow down.

When I came back from Rurrenabaque I stayed for 1 night in the Wild Rover (I had stored my big pack there when I went) but I was in a front room and I wanted a little more quite so I moved myself over across the street to Hostel Republica, also a former residence of a past president and still owned by his family. I got a private room with a shared bathroom for $15 US a night. A little pricey but it is locally owned and all of the staff are locals unlike the Rover where all of the bar staff were backpackers. I like supporting locals as much as I can and the room was really nice, people were nice and it also had free wifi so I was okay with the price.

A tour that is not advertised but is well know among the backpackers and used to be in the Lonely Planet guide is the San Pedro Prison Tour. An illegal tour of one of the worlds most bizarre prisons, there are no guards inside, wives and kids live with the inmates, stores and restaurants operate, food must be bought and inmates have to purchase their cells and can upgrade, furnish and modify them. One drug trafficker has built a 2nd story onto his cell so he can see over the wall and have a view of the city. The inmates govern the prison, elected inmates make and enforce the rules, they are much stricter than any guards and the penalties are a lot rougher  You can read all about it in a book called Marching Powder none of the hostels will give out any information on the tours, according to the government they no longer exist. Hypothetically if one were to go they would find it a very strange trip indeed, pretty much what is in the book is what you would see with the exception of the cocaine factory. With no guards you would be relying on 4 inmate guards to protect you so tipping would be a must and hope you tip them enough to save your ass if you need them to. Strangely Coca Cola is a major sponsor, signs and umbrellas with their logos are all over the place, so I have heard. Due to the extreme poverty families live together in the prison, the wives can't support themselves and the kids on the outside without the men. Rather than take the tour if indeed you can figure out how to do it and who to bribe (something I am not going to share, lots of tourist lose their money with nothing in return) I would suggest you read the book then make a donation to help the kids living in prison

The death road bike ride is a very popular adventure. Sadly I didn't have time when I got back to La Paz to do it but I met lots of people who did. I had done the 50k downhill ride in Peru so I picked the Amazon trip instead. Heads up people, this is not something you go bargain shopping for, pay a little more for a company that has good bikes. It is extremely dangerous, an Israeli girl died (went off the cliff) about a month before I got there. You want to go with a reputable tour company with good bikes, excellent brakes are a priority. Most of the accidents that people survive happen in the last mile of the ride, people get cocky and bite it. A guy I roomed with had road rash down his face, both forearms and both legs, he did it on the last bit of the ride. A pretty good feat considering they put you in a suit and helmet. In the hostel there where 3 or 4 people at any given time who had some kind of injury from the ride. Your travel insurance will not cover these injuries, if you really mess yourself up (as in need to end your trip and fly home).

While in Rurrenabaque I met a Swiss guy who was a hard core backpacker. He was on a year journey doing the camping in the jungle thing when he could. We arranged to meet up in La Paz and hang out for a day, he was doing the couch surfing thing. An awesome way to go, if you have not heard of it, it is a web site where you can hook up with people all over the world and find free places to stay with locals. He had a sweet deal, the apartment was across from the prison, a really nice building and he had a bedroom to himself. His host was not home when I was there but the maid was there, great lady kudos to her for putting up with mi mal espanol. Defiantly worth checking out if you are going to cities/towns, a great way to hang with the locals and learn about the culture and places in town that tourists might not normally go. I think I will give it a go next trip, the only thing is you have to know exactly what days you will be somewhere and have a pretty good idea of your arrival time.

I had a killer bus trip ahead of me, La Paz to Lima, I only had 3 days before my flight home so no stopping in between. There is a sort of direct bus, the cost was $75B and the advertised time of the ride was 26 hours. As it turns out it was more like 36, I thought it would never end. I bought the ticket at a travel agency up the hill from the San Fransisco church.

On my 2nd visit to Bolivia the next year (2011) I made it on the Death Road Ride. Took Gravity Assisted Biking, great company bikes are great, staff was awesome. Video here.  Ends at La Senda Verde Animal Sanctuary I did a 2 week volunteer stint there. Playing with monkeys & birds all day, an incredible experience.

I also took the train to Oruro to Uyuni (3 hour bus ride from La Paz - Oruro cost about $3.00) did the 4 day 4x4  tour, salt flats/mountains (600 Bolivianos), also great then the train from Uyuni to Villazon (boarder to Argentina). Incredible scenery and cheap. Faster than the bus and no potholes.The roads in the south are not the greatest. Don't buy a bus ticket for Argentina on the Bolivian side, people will hit you up at the train station. You will still have to walk across the boarder and take a taxi to the Argentinian bus depot. They will charge you more for the bus ticket in Bolivia and your bus may have already left. There is an hour time change when you cross the boarder, they know you won't be coming back so they will screw you over. Had a few people fall for it that I ran into. Just walk to the boarder, cross and grab a cab (short 10 minute ride) to the Argentinian bus depot & buy your ticket there. Flecha is a good company. Save yourself some headaches.

Otavalo & Quito Ecuador

Currency: US $'s (some of their own coins, .50, & $1 coins)
Bus Popayan to Ipialses $28.000 - 8 hours
Collectivo Ipialses to Rumichacha $1,000.000 (Colombian) - 10 minutes
Collectivo Ecuador border to Tulcan .75 cents - 1/2 an hour
Bus Tulcan to Otavalo $3.00 -3 hours
Taxi Pan Am Highway to Hostel (Otavalo) $1.50
Bus Otavalo to Quito $2.00
Tolley/Trole Bus From Bus Depot to Hostel (Norte - Carcelen to Old Town Quito) .25 cents

I got up early to leave Popayan, it is recommended that you not take night buses on the Ipialses route due to holdups so I caught the 7am bus out as I wanted to get to Ecuador in 1 day. The bus makes a stop for lunch and I was in Ipialses by 3:15. I had wanted to go to see a really cool church there called Las Laja, however the bus gods were not going to let that happen. There is a luggage check at the bus depot where you can leave your big pack, which I did. The lady there told me the bus for Las Lajas leaves from the bus terminal, my Lonely Planet said the buses run frequently, like every 15 minutes. I figured I could get up to the church and back in 1/2 an hour (it is 7.5kim from town) spend an hour in the church and be on my way. Well I waited for 45 minutes for a bus and no sign of one, I guess as it was towards the end of the day they were probably up there and in most cases they won't leave until they have enough people to cover the costs so hence no buses at the town end. I gave up on that plan as I didn't want to arrive in Otavalo after 10pm and I didn't want to stay in some weird little town in between the border and there so I collected my backpack and caught a collectivo van to the border.

The border crossing was relatively easy once I figured out where the crossing were. The rest of my bus passengers were from Ecuador, I guess they have an agreement with Colombia on not needing to go into immigration so my driver dropped us all of on the Ecuador side, when I asked him where immigration was he pointed at the building across from us. It was Ecuador immigration and I needed Colombian immigration as I needed an exit stamp. Ooops in the country illegally, luckily not a big deal. Colombian immigration is on one side of the bridge, Ecuador immigration on the other so a short walk and I had my exit stamp back over got my entrance stamp and I'm all legal.

The buses in Ecuador are way cheaper than Colombia, I paid .75 cents to get to the bus depot in Tulcan, there was a bus getting ready to leave for Otavalo so paid $3.00 and I was on. The bus did take longer than the advertised 2 1/2 hours due to the many many stops it made and we went through 2 police check points were you have to show your documents/passports and if they feel like it they go through your bags. We lost a couple at one of the check points, a Colombian couple, seems they didn't have their documents. Not sure what happened exactly but there was much excitement on the bus. My bus did not take me into Otavalo, it was going through to Quito so it dropped me on the Pan Am Highway, lots of taxi's waiting there so no problem getting a lift to the hostel.

In Otavalo I stayed at Ricon del viajero hostel, I had my own room with a shared bathroom for $10.00 a night with breakfast included. It is in a great location a few blocks from the bus depot and a few blocks from the main square and markets. Otavalo is know for it's markets, there is the grocery one where you can get any kind of meat, vegetable and fruit you want, including some weird red spiky fruits. There is also an artisan market that is jewelry, hammocks, cloths etc. and a ton of stores that sell them as well. This area is know for it's alpaca clothing however be warned that much of it may not be alpaca but in fact may be synthetic as my amiga V pointed out. I purchased a couple of pull overs at a store and I think I got the real thing, both of them make me itch, synthetics don't usually do that to me, just natural materials so I think I am good, I paid $20.00 for 2 long sleeve pullovers with hoods. So before you go shopping make sure you know what alpaca is suppose to be, I didn't and just lucked out but I should have done some research before venturing out. I also found a used bookstore with English books, it is listed in the Lonely Planet, good thing as I had read the 3 I brought with me and had somehow managed to loose them all so I couldn't do a book exchange @ a hostel I had to buy one.

Unfortunately I did hit this area in the rainy season, there is lots of hiking and things to do in the area however the twice daily downpours (and I mean it really comes down) at noonish and 5ish tend to put a damper on outdoor activities. I didn't stray too far form the hotel when the clouds moved in to ensure I could get back before getting soaked. There was a really cool rainbow the one day, the picture is at the top of this post. It stayed totally bright for over an hour and went over the whole town, sadly I keep meaning to figure out how my panoramic setting works on my camera but to date have not done so. I stayed in Otavalo for 3 nights, it is a nice town and I enjoyed wandering the streets and checking out the shops and markets. I would recommend going during the dry season in order to take advantage of the hiking opportunities in the area. I come from Vancouver so the last thing I want on my travels is rain, I could stay at home for that so off in search of drier pastures for me, on to the capital of Ecuador Quito.

Okay it rains in Quito too, pretty much just as much as Otavalo so puts a cramp in going anywhere far away from the home base. My bus dropped me at the Norte bus station, there are 2 bus depots the north for buses coming and going from Northern points and the South terminal (Quitumbe) for buses coming and going from the southern routes. I grabbed a bus to the trolley bus, it runs about every 15 minutes and drops you at the airport where the trolley is. The trolley runs all the way through the city from North to South in a designated lane so traffic really isn't an issue. it costs .25 cents to get from one end of the city to the other. It gets pretty packed and people don't get out of your way if you need to get off so you need to do some pushing and shoving to make it out. My stop was about 15 down the line, found it with no problem and got to the Secret Garden Hostel without getting lost. The cost is $8.50 a night + 12% tax for a dorm room with 6 beds, there is no kitchen but they serve breakfast for $2.80 and diners range from $3.50 to $4.80, the food is really good and there is a lot of it. There is free coffee, tea, water and WiFI and best of all they have hot water in the showers. The hostel has an awesome balcony on the top level with a view of old town and the mountains, it is partially covered so even in the rain you can sit up there and admire the view. Old Quito is very beautiful and with the backdrop of the mountains/volcanoes it is one of the nicer views I have seen on my travels.


A word of warning, there are lockers in the dorms, use them a couple of people had money stolen out of there packs while I was here to the tune of over $200.00, it was not the staff it was some slimy piece of shit backpacker who probably ran out of money and should have gone home months ago. Funny, people on the road think that one of their own would never steal from them and sort of as a show of trust lots of them don't use lockers and leave their cash in their bags. News flash folks not everyone who travels is nice, in a perfect world they would be but in the real world not so much.

Old town Quito is awesome, lots of old buildings and tons of twisty streets, a great place to get lost for an afternoon. There are tons of churches some of which come with nuns. The really devoted kind, they only get to talk and watch TV for an hour a day, ran into a few on the street, I think they are in league with the Colombian nuns in the plot to get me. Despite my paranoia I did go visit a few churches and the convent, the art work and craftsman ship in these things amazes me. On Sundays in a lot of the city they close the roads down to cars and everyone is encouraged to ride bicycles. In old town due to the hills there were not many takers but in Mariscal tons of locals were peddling down what are normally very busy roads. I found they do this in a lot of Latin American cities, including Mexico City, perhaps us North Americans should give it a go. We talk a good game when it comes to the environment and health time to show it folks.

A lot of the hostels in Quito are in the new area of town Mariscal but I really prefer staying in the old sections of towns if I can do it and this hostel was in old town. Great location, I could pretty much walk to everything including Mariscal. Due to the rain I stuck pretty close to the hostel, I did explore old town and Mariscal but I did not venture out of the city to the surrounding areas nor did I choose to do any hikes. There are a ton of churches in old town, a market and some really old buildings. I did take a walk to new town on Sunday and there was a market in the park and an artisano market a little up the street. There seemed to be more restaurants & bars geared to backpackers but the buildings were not as nice and the whole feel of the place was a little ghetto like.

To be honest I have had more than enough rain, I signed up for 10 hours of Spanish courses otherwise I would have booked it out of here after day 2. On the upside the Spanish course is going pretty well, I seem to be getting better at it so perhaps the rain factor is making me study more. The class is 1 on 1 for 2 hours a day, I set it up through the hostel and the cost was 10 hours for $70.00, the teacher comes to the hostel and lessons are on the top terrace Tomorrow is my last class and we have a field trip, we are going to go to the market so I am looking forward to it. I am going to get bus food as right after the lesson I am heading out of Quito to a town called Banos. It is located right below an active volcano and they have hot springs.. Warm at last and if not I just won't get out of the hot springs until it is time to head to the Pacific coast of Peru.

I did meet lots of nice folks at the hostel and I got some great travel tips on Peru, my Spanish has improved marginally and I enjoyed my time in Quito. On my way out of town I again caught the trolebus for .25 cents, the C4 going South which dropped me off right at the Quitumbe bus station which is it's last stop. Love the transit in this city.