Beyond The Maple Tree

We decided to spend a week in La Paz and do nothing, so that we could re-energize before setting off to explore the rest of Bolivia. This also gave us the time to get our Brazil visa (which is a lot faster than from Canada….it only took 2 business days).

That being said, we still took some time to explore the city

and play with pigeons

Final note to all future explorers…. there are a lot of things that can be done out of La Paz: trekking (Choro), mountain climbing (Huayna Potosi), downhill biking (the death road), and more. But with Dom's recent hand injury, we decided to leave these for another trip :)

Ofri and Niv (an Israeli couple that we met in Colombia) recommended the steak at a restaurant in La Paz called "El Arriero Currasqueria (Casa Argentina)"…. in particular, the 1.2kg steak.

For only 25USD, we couldn't say no… and to our surprise, we actually managed to finish it all!! Chris Miserva and Delphi would be so proud of us! :) AND, we even decided to go back to the same restaurant a second time!!

1.2kg of Steak (including bread, salad buffet, and fries) = 175 Bvs (~25USD)
Bottle of red wine = 80 Bvs (~12USD)

It seems La Paz loves their pizzerias, so we also indulged ourselves a bit there :)
Family size pizza = 79 Bvs (~12USD)
Bottle of red wine = 45 Bvs (~7USD))

We also enjoyed several other cuisines… food is relatively inexpensive in Bolivia :).

Every Sunday night in El Alto (a city very close to La Paz), you can be part of this not-so-typical tradition: Cholitas Wrestling. It's like Nacho Libre meets the Quechuan indigenous woman. There are both men and traditional indigenous women fighting in this spectacle of lucha libre. It was a bit cheesy but we were still entertained (especially when one of the Cholitas got annoyed with the spectators and started throwing water and other things into the crowd)

We arrived in La Paz during "la fiesta del Gran Poder". This festival started as a candle light procession, but over the years became a folkloric festival with up to 25000 dancers. When Dom's bus arrived in La Paz, he wasn't able to get a taxi to the hotel because the parade blocked so many of the main roads. The parade started sometime around 9am and ran continuously until about 10pm!

There are also hundreds of street venders selling food, treats, souvenirs and alcohol.

The last part of our Geckos tour brought us by bus from Puno to La Paz. The bus required a rather interesting ferry ride across the lake. All of the passengers disembarked the bus to take the small passenger ferry across, while the bus drove onto another "ferry" to cross.

We arrived fairly late in La Paz but managed to do some sight seeing the next morning before Dom arrived at met us at the hotel and we went to check out the Gran Poder parade. The next morning we went for Bolivia's famous Madidi Coffee (at Alexander Coffee) before seeing Sean and Flo off on their return trip home :(.