Another early bus ride is bringing us from Puno to the Bolivian border, on the South part of the Iticaca lake, where we reasonably cross the border in about 1h.
We can also quickly see that Bolivians hate Chileans, linked to the history of the Pacific war, which made Bolivia lost its sea access. They for sure sure want to get it again, claiming a corridor access since decades, let's see how history develops here...
At 1 of the border stops / city around the lake, we can see the following monument / statue, where you can see a Bolivian soldier (in red) killing a Chilean soldier (in blue so).
The text says "what was ours one day will be ours again" (Lo que un dia fue nuestro, nuestro otra vez sera)
On the way to La Paz, the landscapes are flatter, it looks like we are driving on a large flat plateau at 3,000m high, of course surrounded by the high Andes peaks.
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| Road view from the border to La Paz |
Arriving to La Paz end afternoon (we adjusted our watches by 1h forward passing the border), we can have a feel of how big the city is, and the traffic jams, and the essy strets around. The hotel is in a busy street, quite centra and we can have a walk around to have a small feel about how the city really looks.
I haven't really visited the city except for those 2 hours in the evening, as chose to go biking the day after... It didn't seem to me a very pretty city to visit, but there are still few things to see from what I heard. Also, atmosphere is said to be quite good, this will be for another visit to discover!
In the morning of the day after, driving to the Death Road, we can have panoramic views of the city, which huge and spread out all over the valley and hills around, packing-up small red-bricks houses & shacks in a very chaotic way.
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| Panoramic view of La Paz - downtown far away in the left-center |
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| Street view of a village on the surrounding steep hills... Of course electric cables in the way, as everywhere |
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| Strange shop front window... dried alpacas being exposed... |
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| Some other strange local products to help...well, not sure which one I'd chose ;) |
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| City center pedestrian street view |
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| Urban art / graph / tag |
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| City center pedestrian street view |
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| City center pedestrian street view |
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| A local bus... looks like it rode several 100,000 Km & decades! |
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| City center view at dawn |
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| Cathedral front |
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| Inside view of the cathedral |
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| The streets of La Paz are completely packed of traffic jams |
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