Yesterday, we got up obscenely early to be ready to leave the hotel by 5:20. Once again, we were taking a public coach from Puno to La Paz. This was tough on those who had been out drinking and dancing until after midnight. My usually talkative roommate was silent all the way to La Paz and she looked pretty rough.
We boarded the bus at the bus station in Puno and followed the shore of Lake Titicaca towards the border of Bolivia. The sun rose over the lake. We drove past miles of what appeared to be wheat fields with sheaves of wheat neatly stacked. Most of the homes and businesses were built of reinforced concrete posts and beams filled in with red brick. The towns were very monochromatic, especially early on Sunday morning when everything was closed. After a couple of hours, we made a restroom stop and people were able to exchange soles for bolivianos. Since I had spent all but about 50 cents worth of soles, I had nothing to exchange. Like much of our group, I was waiting for an ATM in Bolvia.
Half an hour later, we arrived at the border. There were a couple of buses ahead of us and we waited in the chilly sunshine until we could enter the immigration building. Processing was very efficient. We waited in one line to check out of Peru and then proceeded to another line to check into Bolivia. I had no trouble with my visa. At this point, our trusty guide, Ollie, said goodbye and turned us over to our Bolivian babysitter, Wendy. I say babysitter, rather than guide, because she made no effort to get to know us and barely made an effort to keep us together. We were not impressed.
Unfortunately, customs was not so efficient and we shivered in the shade until they finished with the buses ahead of us and we could enter the customs building. We had all completed our declarations online and received a QR code which the customs agent scanned while we waited in line. Eventually, we entered the customs building where our luggage was scanned and we were finally able to use the restroom. The bus met us on the other side of the customs building, we loaded up, and headed for La Paz.
Bolivia looked pretty much like Peru. We drove through a sprawling suburb that must have been El Alto, creeping along through traffic on surface streets. Finally, we reached the toll road that took us to La Paz. La Paz is built in a bowl and the red brick houses stretched up the hillsides.
Our hotel was downtown. The power was out and our room was on the seventh floor. We had to leave our luggage at reception until the elevator started working. At 12,000’, even climbing the stairs to our room was an aerobic workout. We met back downstairs at 14:30. Because the power was out, the ATM next door was not operating. This made it hard for most of us to do anything. We were tired and hungry and it took some convincing to get Wendy to let us eat lunch before taking our walking tour.
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| Lynn, Janine, Emilie, and Sara in the Witches' Market |
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| Llama Fetuses Are Used in Offerings |
We walked through the witches’ market on the way to lunch and stopped to see the herbal remedies and talismans for sale there. Apparently, business had been brisk since covid. La Paz was very hilly and Wendy led us a merry chase through the artisan market to the restaurant where we had lunch. The other Intrepid group had arrived before us and, hungry as we were, we had to wait over half an hour for a table. We waited a very long time after we ordered. Even getting a soda took over half an hour. They made all the complicated drinks first. We finally had to complain to get our drinks. Getting food was not quick, either, but was very good once we got it. I had a roast beef, carmelized onion, and cheese sandwich on ciabatta bread. Since I can’t find roast beef in Mexico, I was thrilled.
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| The Franciscan Church |
Once we finished eating, it was probably 16:30. We had wanted to take the cable car, but still didn’t have cash and some people just wanted to go to sleep. Most of us walked down the hill,, past the church of San Francisco to the main plaza to see the cathedral, government palace, and congress building. While Sucre is technically the capital of Bolivia, the seat of government is in La Paz. This is the result of an old compromise ending a civil war.
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| The Government Palace |
The Murillo Plaza was not large and was filled with pigeons. The cathedral was relatively new, having only been finished and consecrated in 1993. It looked older. Most of the materials had been imported and, being built on a steep hill, construction was delayed while a platform was constructed to support the church. We were not able to go inside because it was closed.
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| The La Paz Cathedral |
The original colonial buildings that housed the government palace and the congress had both been supplemented by modern skyscrapers, making for a bizarre melange of architecture. The president’s residence was on the top floor of the government tower. The building was protected by uniformed guards and soldiers. We spent ten minutes taking pictures and exploring the plaza. Then we finally found a working ATM and got some cash.
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Monument to the Martyrs of the
Revolution in Murillo Square |
I was tired when we got back to the hotel and just wanted to sleep, but found I could not. Emilie was exhausted from her debauched evening and our early start, but even she couldn’t get to sleep until about 20:00. We turned out the lights, but I remained awake until midnight, stewing over the fact that the WiFi wasn’t working.
The hotel was reasonably comfortable. The afternoon sun had warmed the room and I didn’t get cold until about 4:00. The neighborhood was noisy and I finally put in earplugs at midnight. Somehow, I managed to sleep through Emilie getting up and leaving to catch her ride to the airport at 2:30. I woke up about 4:00, got up and turned on the heater, and went back to bed to use the WiFi while it was working. I never did get back to sleep. Finally, I got up to write. I had really hoped to use my day in La Paz to catch up on blog posts, but could not connect my computer to the feeble WiFi. My phone was not connecting to data, either. I finally gave up and got up about 7:30. I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept more than four hours. The altitude was really messing with my sleep patterns.
July 8, 2025
Hotel Samay Wasi
Uyuni, Bolivia
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| View of Painted Houses from the Red Line |
Janine, Sylvan, Cecilia, and I had agreed to meet in the morning and go ride the gondolas. First, however, Janine wanted to go to a bookstore. We got almost all the way to the main plaza when we realized we were never going to make it to the red station by 9:30 when we had agreed to meet Amanda and Raad. We dashed back up the hill, getting slightly lost in the process. None of us had a signal in La Paz, so we had to make do with a rather vague paper map. We finally arrived at the station at 9:40. There was no sign of Amanda and Raad. We waited until 10:00 and never saw them. Finally, we decided they had left without us.
We took the red line up the side of the bowl to the rim, passing over an immense cemetery with row after row of mausoleums and urn niches. The top of the bowl was nearly vertical. Nearly all the houses in La Paz were built of brick. Only a few were plastered and painted in bright colors. A number of apartment blocks had penthouses built on the roofs that looked like single family homes.
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| The Silver Line Runs Along the Rim of El Alto |
Once at the top of the line we wanted to take some photos but there was cloudy glass obscuring the view. We got on the silver line and rode it along the edge of the rim until we reached the yellow line. From there, we were able to walk around behind the station and get some photographs, although we were almost eaten by a most unfriendly dog. We finished our circuit of the station in the city known as El Alto and then took the yellow line back down over La Paz to the river that ran along the bottom of the valley. From there, we took the blue line which followed the river to the station nearest the center.
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| The View from El Alto |
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| Houses in El Alto |
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| View From the Yellow Line |
At this point, we walked back to the main square to go to the book store. Each errand involved walking up and down steep hills. When we arrived at the square, we found the street we wanted blocked off by riot police. We decided to circle around and approach from the other side. We found a couple of other book stores but none of them had books in English. The last one gave us directions to the book store that had originally been recommended but, when we got close, we realized it was on the block guarded on both ends by the riot police. People were passing through the line and so, we slipped through and made our way to the bookstore/cafe through the group of Bolivians in traditional dress who were protesting the lack of advanced medical facilities in their region. It was a very peaceful protest and we couldn’t understand the police response.
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| Protestors in La Paz |
The recommended bookstore didn’t have books in English, either. We stopped in the cafe and had coffees and mint lemonades. Then Janine and Sylvan went to the bus station to retrieve the phone Janine had left on the previous day’s bus and Cecilia and I went to the cathedral. The cathedral had been built in the 20th century and was rather plain, although it did have beautiful stained glass. A lay woman was leading some kind of service, so we couldn’t take any photos of the central nave.
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| Stained Glass in the Cathedral Transept |
Our next destination was the Franciscan church. The monastery had been converted into a museum. For our 40 bolivianos, we were given an English speaking guide named Jhon. He was a very knowledgeable young man and told us a lot about the art in the galleries. We needed to meet Lynn at 15:00 and tried to hurry him along, but he insisted on imparting his admittedly interesting information about the Cusqueño, Potosí, and La Paz schools of art. We eventually worked our way to the choir overlooking the church and then climbed out onto the roof to ascend the bell tower. After snapping a few shots of La Paz, we finally descended into the impressively gold leafed interior of the church and finished up with a visit to the crypt of the heroes where the remains of presidents and revolutionary figures rest in ornate vessels. Amidst all the remains of famous people, sits a skull of some anonymous person that was left in the church. Since it was human, they couldn’t throw it away, so it sits on a ledge in the crypt.
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| Roof of the Franciscan Church |
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| St. Francis of Assisi |
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| Main Altar in the Franciscan Church |
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| Cloister of the Franciscan Church |
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| The Market Street in La Paz |
By the time our tour was finally complete, Cecilia and I had to dash back up the very steep hill to the hotel to meet Lynn, Janine and Sylvan. We arrived just at 15:00. We then climbed back down the hill to the Steakhouse. The Steakhouse was clearly not expecting customers at 15:00. Many of the dishes we wanted to order were not available and it took forever to get our drinks and even longer to get our food. The food was very good when it came, although there was nothing for vegetarian Janine to order except fries.
Back at the hotel, we said a sad farewell to Lynn who was flying out that night. We went to our orientation meeting for the Bolivian section of our tour and then I went to my room to finally sleep.
I had a single room with a heater and was able to get comfortable enough that I slept from 20:00 until 5:00 the next morning. Then I got up, washed and braided my hair, worked on my blog, and still had time to eat and be ready to leave by 8:00.
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| Metal Roofs Were the Most Colorful Things |
We had a very long bus ride from La Paz to Uyuni. It took about an hour just to get out of La Paz. We stopped to buy snacks and use the restroom after a couple of hours and then stopped again in Uros, a very large town grown up around several mines. Uros was located at a crossroads and from there we took a very boring road to Challapata where we stopped to eat sandwiches in a restaurant that seemed to be primarily a wedding reception venue. We drove across more dry plains covered in bunch grass and started to see a bit of salt collecting in low spots. About sunset, we arrived in Uyuni and checked into our hotel. I was thrilled to discover than my room was heated. There was even a radiator in the bathroom.
We promptly gathered for dinner at Tika, a very nice restaurant down the road. Then we returned to the hotel to enjoy the rest of our evening.
Bolivia looked pretty much like Peru. We drove through a sprawling suburb that must have been El Alto, creeping along through traffic on surface streets. Finally, we reached the toll road that took us to La Paz. La Paz is built in a bowl and the red brick houses stretched up the hillsides. 
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