La Paz - blimey it's high

Wednesday, October 19, 2016
La Paz, Bolivia
After the nightmare drive from Lake Titicaca I had hoped for a decent hotel. I was wrong - soooooo wrong. I reckon it was built in the early 80's and hadn't been touched since then, including renewing the bed linen and towels. Everything that used be white was grey or rusty. Nasty. 

Anyway after a horrible night it was a tour if La Paz . The main things you need to know are that it's high - over 4000 meters above sea level in some parts. Also, the streets are steep which makes walking around difficult in the altitude. One of the couples on the tour has a son who had been to La Paz and he described it as Coventry with altitude. That just about sums it up. Except in La Paz the traffic is horrible all the time and there are regular protests. There is a fantastic cable car though. I enjoyed the ride on that.

The half day tour started at 9am and finished at 5.45pm. In anyone's book that's a bloody long half day, add to that the long day we had had the day before, the fact we had to get up at 3am the next day to travel to Buenos Aires and the altitude I think it's fair to say I was completely shattered. So another night was spent in the skanky hotel.

Being that high does funny things. Rolling over in bed can set your heart pounding. Walking along a normal street can be exhausting and stairs or uphill can be really hard. The run way at the airport is 5km which is over 1km longer than Heathrow because of the extra time it takes to get up to speed because of the reduced oxygen. You can only get relatively small planes out of there for this reason.

We had some lovely Bolivian wine, a nice steak and I got some nice silver earrings but I was not sorry to be leaving. I was fed up with getting out of breath just by cleaning my teeth!
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