La Paz

Hola from La Paz.

We are back in La Paz now for a couple of hours after some time down in the lowlands. Here are a couple of shots from our time in La Paz - there´s not much to photograph here, unless you like street stalls and busses. Here is a view of the city coming down from the airport -

While we were in La Paz, we went to the ruins of Tihuanaca, which are about 70 kilometers from the city. The most famous piece here is the Puerta del Sol (Sun Bridge), which allowed the Tihuanacans to guage the seasons (it was inside of a temple that let the sun through on the solstices) -


From La Paz we headed for Rurrenabaque (see previous post) . While in Rurrenabaque, there are basically two things that you can do - go on a jungle tour or go on a pampas (basically a big swamp) tour. The pampas tour route led up a river on which much wildlife could be seen, and the animals seemed to be the emphasis (as opposed to plants and insects on the jungle tour), so we chose this one.

After a three hour jeep ride along a very bumpy, very dusty road, along with three Czechs, two South Africans, one Dane, one other American, and us, we reached the river. This area is amazingly rich - as soon as you leave the mud bank (or, as they like to call it, a dock), you start seeing animals -

These are crocodiles. There are also caiman. Caiman are darker.

Birds abound, a lot of them are herons. This one is praying to the heron gods, I guess -

We also saw condors, macaws, kingfishers, cassowaries, hornbills, storks, ibises, . . . I could go on.

One of the big selling points for the tour agencies is swimming with the pink dolphins. We saw several groups of them during the trip - they are buggers to get pictures of, though. Several of our group swam, but with crocodiles mere feet away and piranha abundant in the water, we decided to stay in the boat.

Yes, that´s a dolphin. They´re called pink river dolphins, but they´re more mottled gray and pinkish.

And we saw ginormous overgrown rats, otherwise known as capybaras -

And other giants, these being snails -

And to put the icing on the animal cake, we saw thre species of monkees. Howler, capuchin, and yellow (in order of size).

After another night in Rurrenabaque, we flew back to La Paz, spent the night, then went mountain biking down the World´s Most Dangerous Road. Don´t worry - just about every gringo who comes through La Paz does this, and we went with the expensive ones because they stressed safety -

We made it down fine. And stayed for four nights on a hilltop not unlike the one in the picture above that was run by a European woman with a passion for gardening - a great place to stay and relax.

Chau! Off to Lake Titicaca!