Pretty short but very sweet!

Day 86 - Sunday 6 April 2008

Earlier on this lazy Sunday in La Paz (the pace is notably different from the weekdays here and shops are shut!) I did a Pete Harris and double checked my bus ticket into Chile for Tuesday

Well Pete - I won't ever have a bad word to say against you in the future 'cos I'm very glad I did! The ticket in my sweaty hand that they issued just a few days ago since became invalid and the bus no longer runs on Tuesdays - welcome to South America!

So I'm off into Chile a day earlier than expected and will set foot in Arica on northern Chile's coast tomorrow afternoon - to be honest I'm looking forward to it - not 'cos I don't like La Paz (it's crazy and great) but 'cos my body feels like it's been on the receiving end of a couple of my own hockey tackles - I've been living at altitude for more than 2 weeks now and my body's craving air with more than a minimum amount of O2 in it! The bus ride down from the Andean highlands promises to be spectacular as well - fingers crossed - I'm guessing a bit though how can the scenery not be great!

But Bolivia's been a top experience - you need to be on your guard and I was overly hassled today by a young dude determined to POLISH my Nike Air running shoes (he got very short, yet polite, shrift!)

There's loads to do here around La Paz and I'd be staying longer if I hadn't just done tons of it in Peru - and because of that Bolivia seems to be full of 'proper' young travellers - you may have seen the sort - dreadlocked/manky hair, stripey tracky bottom type pants, backpacks carried on their front, beards (on the less attractive girls!) and all kidding themselves - there's plenty of hot showers and hair products here in La Paz!

But I'm leaving contented that I've visited and will be carrying on my journey overland (still no planes apart from hopping continents) - and yesterday was great!

Tiahuanaco is cool - even if (and why do they always get it right) as Lonely Planet suggest it's a bit disappointing if you've just done Peru - the ruins are still being excavated, the museum is still being finished off, the monoliths are surrounded by barbed wire and the setting isn't as spectacular as it once was!

The Tiahuanaco culture (more often spelt Tiwanaku but I'll persist with the more Spanishy version) lived right on Lake Titikaka and spanned 1000 BC to 1200 AD (remember the Inka's were only around for a couple of hundred years)

But what with ancient global warming (?!) Titikaka has now receded by 20km leaving the site sitting not next to a beautiful lake but a quiet and distinctly average, modern Tiahuanaco

It was all very worthwhile just to see the ancient monoliths that the Tiahuanacans (a guess that sounds right?) placed at the centre of their temples, aligned (along with the rest of their city) to the sun and, of course, worshipped

This one's in the museum and has to be 4m tall! You can get a sense of it's size from the steps that are your bog standard size (a weird reference for you but oh well!)

They were carved out of a solid piece of either granite or sandstone (more geology Growbag) and were inscribed with calendars, their god-figure Wiracocha, and some people even believed they were the people who initiated their culture turned to stone ... I don't















You don't have to be Stephen Hawking to work out that this next shot was taken outside (in the largest temple) and has quickly become one of my fave shots of this whole trip ... the clouds, the mountains and a high shot to miss the afore-mentioned barbed wire!

The day was really capped off when the genius of a bus driver took us to a look out point on the way back to La Paz and I saw another superlative exceeding view - I quickly learned that if you want the most spectacular panorama of the Andes it's in Bolivia not Peru - remember that if you head this way! Click on the shot to do it justice and see it in big size - just pick out peak after peak of the Cordillera Real and start saving for your visit ... and you'll see the weather's not bad here either!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordillera_Real_(Bolivia)

So today's been jigged round and I'm back into being on the move mode (no There Will Be Blood as I hoped Rich but at least I'm saving a goodie up!)

I did spend this morning at the Museo Nacional de Arte where the collection was OK and I found a couple of cool Bolivian artists (I think that's right 'cos everything was in Spanish of course)

And before indulging in a very western style 2 hours kicking back in Alexander's Coffee (the Bolivian chain of 7 chic, non-take over the world, style stores) I happened upon a very patriotic Bolivian display in La Paz's Plaza de Armas

It had all that you'd expect - brass band, soldiers, traditional dress, flags, blue sky, pigeons and a Presidential palace with quite a few bullet holes in the walls from Bolivia's past

But then I'm out of here tomorrow ... see you from country number 4!