Sermon from the Mount, kinda...
Greetings loyal Readers,
Today finds us parked up in the highest capital city in the world, La Paz in Bolivia. We're finally more used to the altitude now after spending three days at 3,600m above sea level - almost exactly the height of Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest mountain.
The first thing to start with has to be the flight in from Santiago, quite an experience to say the least. We arrived at Santiago airport at 3:30am for our 6am flight, and after a little aimless wandering sorted out what was to be done and boarded the surprisingly plush LAN Chile flight, to stop at Iquique. This is in the north of Chile, and just a little stopoff to pick up some more passengers before rocking on up to La Paz. Iquique airport is easily one of the most barren otherworldly places I've ever seen, almost an exact replica of Tatooine from Star Wars. After marvelling at how many shades of light tan you could paint a desert with we were off, climbing over deserts and volcanoes up into the hills.
The landing at La Paz is pretty hairy, especially considering you're landing at the altitude most people skydive from. The airport's at 4,000m, and there's not really a lot of air up there, so you come in very fast, and there's no lovely little 'float' before touching down. We slammed into the runway and I was lucky to experience the first symptoms of the altitude... Let's just say that a by-product of digestion is a certain amount of, ahem, 'gas'. At higher altitude where the air's less dense, that 'gas' expands to take up a much larger volume. I think you can guess the rest anyway, enough said...
You immediately are aware of the height, and lifting our packs onto our backs was exhausting. But, we jumped into a cab and made our way down the hill. I should explain here, the airport is actually in El Alto, the plateau above La Paz. It's completely flat, sprawling with low houses ringed with little earth walls. The road from the airport takes you down the rim of the valley that rings La Paz, and the views are amazing. All the houses are the same red shade of brick, and there's a sort of commercial district at the bottom of the valley. The city is overlooked by Mount Illimani, and we were lucky to strike a clear day for our first views.
We made an executive decision to lay low for the first day or two, and just took a gentle amble round the area where we're staying. It's very hilly, full of markets, and crowded streets mean that the innumerable minivans never really get up much speed. This is a blessing, as even a couple of hops across the street leaves you out of breath and with your heart thumping. The Vice Presidential debate provided much entertainment, which I thought was pretty well summed up with this piece of genius from BoingBoing.
Anyhoo, by day three we're much better used to it, and took a day yesterday to head out to the ruins at Tiwanaku, 70kms out of town. This is a huge pre-Incan complex of temples, and is another World Heritage Site to rack up. Sorry Mr. Mason, I've stopped counting now, they're pretty thick on the ground in this part of the world! It's truly 'ruined' as the case would be, but was really good to see the scale of the whole thing, hear how it worked as a giant observatory and solstace calendar, and see the huge monoliths which are pretty fab.
We're on the night bus tonight down to Uyuni, to visit the world's largest salt flats down there, among other things. Expect lots of lagoons, flamingos, the famous rock trees, and a night in the salt hotel. Mr. Smith, true to tradition I will of course ask the question, "what about this, is this made of salt?"
As such, we'll be off the radar for a good few days. We overnight to Uyuni tonight, are touring the area until Tuesday, then get the overnight bus back to La Paz, so might have a chance to check emails on Wednesday. No photos this post sadly, but I'll do my darndest to get some of the salt flats, which most people say is one of the best things to see on the continent.
Big shoutouts to the birthday kids, Jodie Smith (nee Wickes), and the incomparable George Ferrari. Hope you had a good one, and we were thinking of you on your birthdays, timezones excused! OK then, that's all from Rakish Richard, I shall return salty.
A
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