I didn't have much money for any such trip, a grand total of only U$S 400 to be exact, which doesn't hardly even purchase one a flight from Buenos Aires to La Paz, let along leave much behind for spending upon arrival, so I was condemned to take the bus. This didn't bother me much, however, as I am somewhat accustomed to traveling by bus. Here stories of the summer of '98 can be fondly brought to mind. Besides, our group has always taken the bus for our past excursions so I was fairly used to the routine. In this case, however, the trip from Buenos Aires to La Paz was two and a half days, not exactly a short ride.

In any case, I was determined to go, but couldn't find anyone crazy enough to spend that much time on a bus with me (perhaps it was the time with me, not the bus that scared them away) so I decided to go alone.

I left town on Thursday, October 21 at nine at night in a bus headed straight for the Bolivian border. Immediately I met two Bolivians doing the same trip. Yv�n was my age and Ra�l was somewhere in the range of forty or fifty. Both had been living in Buenos Aires to work but were returning to La Paz to live with their families. I ended up traveling the entire three days with them and they were great company, not to mention fantastic for practicing Spanish and introducing me to Bolivian customs.

On Friday we ate breakfast in Santiago del Estero, lunch in San Migu�l de Tucum�n, and eventually ate dinner in San Salvador de Jujuy, all in Argentina. Friday night we switched into what was essentially a glorified school bus and cruised the remaining Argentine miles to the border. We arrived in the frontier town of La Quiaca in the early morning of Saturday the twenty-third.

Crossing the border was no problem. We got our passports stamped on the Argentine side of a short bridge, wandered across to the Bolivian side and completed the immigration paperwork for the Bolivians. It was process to which I was to become accustomed. On the Bolivian side of the border the town is known as Villaz�n and there we were presented with the option of leaving on a bus that morning or waiting for a train that afternoon. We opted for the train simply because it was more direct and would have cost us the same. We spent most of the day wandering the small town of Villaz�n.

Villaz�n was a pleasant place to spend a day, given that we were all tired from the bus ride and had good company. The town itself was interesting to me in that it was my first glimpse of the Altiplano, the region which dominates western Bolivia. The region is created by the Andes mountains as they divide and form two parallel ranges, the Altiplano referring to the large, high, flat, and dry plain that lies in between those two divisions. When I say high, I do mean high. The night before I had already begun to notice that the trip was taking us on a steady upward incline, and by the time we reached Villaz�n our elevation was already 11,300 feet, over twice Denver's altitude.  When I say dry I also mean dry.  As you can tell by the shot of Villaz�n above, there isn't much in the way of vegitation in the Altiplano.  I think I saw my first ever dust storm in Villaz�n.

The train from Villaz�n was a pleasant journey. It was comfortable, the service was good, and the scenery was excellent. The Altiplano is a world unto itself. In many ways it's a world that time forgot. The people still dress in traditional clothing, they do their best to grow potatoes in the dust, and they live much like the Incas did before the arrival of the Spanish hundreds of years ago. The train stopped on Sunday the twenty-fourth in the town of Oruro. From there we boarded a bus for the last six hours to La Paz.

La Paz, Bolivia's largest city, and the highest capital in the world is located in a beautiful valley on the western side of the country. When we entered the city we came in on Bolivia's only highway. The picture provided here is the view from that highway.

In spite of the fact that La Paz is in a valley it's still found at over 11,900 feet, over two miles above sea level. Many tourists who come to La Paz have trouble with soroche, or altitude sickness, due to the lack of oxygen at that altitude. Although I'm still enjoying the after affects of Bolivian food, which although delicious did give me a case of Mactazuma's Revenge (or perhaps in this case Atahualpa's Revenge) I did not get soroche. I did notice that I would get quickly out of breath when walking, and even sometimes riding in a bus I would suddenly feel out of breath and would need to inhail deeply a few times to feel normal again. Another rare phenomena of the Altiplano I noted was that I would get nose bleeds easily because of the reduced air pressure, the theory being that the most sensitive veins inside my nose burst from a lack of outside pressure. This was a bit of a problem due to the fact that the Altiplano is so dusty and I needed to blow my nose often to clean out the dirt.

All random phenomena aside, La Paz is a wonderfully city. It's good sized by American standards, roughly the size of the District of Columbia, but not so overbearing that one can't enjoy it's atmosphere. I would guess that almost half of the population lives in the heights that surround the center of town making the center of the city very manageable. There is one main avenue that runs along the bottom of the valley and is flat, everything else is up or down. I managed to stay in a place only a few blocks from both the capital building and the main avenue. On the left is a statue of Sim�n Bol�var, the liberator of Bolivia and its namesake, which can be found in the park-like median of La Paz's main avenue and among its more modern buildings.

I didn't really see much in the way of stores. It appeared that most of La Paz's goods are sold in street markets. For blocks and blocks the locals set up stands to sell their goods. Finding what you wanted was mostly a matter of finding the right street, similar to finding the right aisle in the supermarket. One street would be the blanket street, another the fruit street, another the fake Sony radio street, and another the copied American video street. (Like Argentina, contraband is common in Bolivia.) As you can tell by this photo, sometimes the street vendors completely take over the streets and there's no place left for the cars, making it a completely pedestrian area.

As a side note here I would like to add that Bolivia is absolutely cheep. The numbers on all the goods are about the same as in the U.S., but six Bolivianos make one American dollar so when I crossed the border into Bolivia I instantly had six times the buying power. A four course meal cost two American dollars, and a hotel can be found for four.