La Paz

A new country. From Lake Titicaca we travelled to Bolivia, and the capital city of La Paz This was going to be our most challenging destination to date due to the fact that our trusty O2 internet didn`t cover Bolivia. Yikes, No internet, no maps, no google translate, no taxi app, all of which we rely on far more than we should. We caught an early bus, Transalia? (or something similar sounding) at 4am. Such a comfy bus, and the best journey we have had for a long time. a bit like the three bears, not too hot, not too cold, just perfect. After all my research online that the border crossing at Copacabana was by far the best, and that Desguadero, our route, was a little more sketchy, I was a bit apprehensive as we approached the border line after driving along the shores of Lake Titicaca for around 3 hours, wow that lake is so big and very beautiful. Reality? Super easy, no drama llamas, just off the bus with your gear, into the building ( you get a scan code on the bus as you leave, on which you pre enter all your destination and personal details) someone scans it as you wait in line. Queue up, get an exit stamp, put all your backpacks through the scanner being super cautious not to be caught with anything you shouldn`t have like fresh meat, certain fruits, animals, bunnies you know the sort of things...( I had a ham sandwich, oops, to which our bus driver winked at me and said `shove it in your pocket...` ) Once the bags were scanned, it was back on the bus and off we went. Absolutely no issues whatsoever. La Paz, highest capital city in the world, here we come. First challenge. A taxi to our destination. Now, if you are staying at the Hilton, or the Ritz, or other brand name hotel, that isn`t a problem as most taxis would know those places, however our privately owned apartment was unhelpfully named Villa Florita, in one of South Americas biggest cities! Taxi driver number one knew the approximate area, (we had access to the address, but not the map) and took us there. Adamant he had taken us to the correct place he insisted we got out. The nearest building, (on the most ridiculously steepest hill imaginable, in the worlds highest city, was numbered 1038, whereas our building was 1379. We knew we were nowhere near, and asked two lovely elderly ladies for additional directions. Both immediately pointed up the hill, with gestures of up up up.... :-( We could barely manage more than a few steps without gasping for air. Taking a break right next to a taxi office was a sign that our guardian bunny was taking pity on us. Taxi number two, took us to the nearest number he could find, a restaurant called Qaytu. Three relieved bunnies found to a woman standing waiting for us, without we would never have found our accommodation, and our most perfect apartment.

We were so delighted with our little apartment with its views over La Paz city.....oh how we would giggle about this later in the stay!!

Our first venture into La Paz was to find a certain camera shop. Our little bunny has a broken camera, which I shall elaborate a little more about given the appalling customer service received by Sony.

skip this paragraph unless you are curious or affected by Sony and their shocking customer service. Nutshell version, as brief as I can.

1. Purchased new camera August 23, with 2 years extended warranty. A vlogging camera.

2. June 24, South America, camera goes faulty. We get fault diagnosed at a Sony repair centre, emailed Sony for confirmation on how to proceed, who replied ` we cannot help`

3. Numerous emails exchanged with Sony , who insisted the camera should be repaired, not refunded. Sony refusing to acknowledge the logistics of such a repair. Repair timescale btw, 6-8 weeks..  by the way we don`t offer repairs in South America. Eh?

4. Sony refuse point blank to help or offer support. We have no choice but to purchase a new camera and take them to task on our return in 12 months. (Both barrels they are going to get!)

5. Considering Sony`s appalling lack of help or acceptance of the problem, I have no qualms telling the world which camera to avoid.

Sony ZV1, and guess what people, if you buy a vlogging camera expecting to use it abroad on your holidays, Sony will void your warranty!!! Isn`t that just wonderful customer service NOT.  rant over.

La Paz. They have one camera shop. One. or at least we could only find one shop listed. After a 20 minute somewhat hair raising downhill taxi ride into the city centre, why would said shop be open, when every single other shop to our destination, without exception, was?!! Grrrrsss. Finding a few touristic streets nearby we wandered around before heading off to find the weird stalls of the Witches Market. I really wish I knew what earth people do with dried out llama foetus, hmmmm. We didn`t find La Pax particularly appealing. Maybe it does have nice parts, but we certainly didn`t feel inspired to go hunting for said areas. We did slog our way up to the `oldest street in La Paz, adorned with restaurants and artisan shops`... but found them all shut. Last chance to salvage the day, we opted to ride the Teleferico (cable cars) across the city. By chance we had come across a couple of backpackers who told us the Blue and Red cable cars would take us over the city and up to the market of El Alto. This nervous bunny tried hard to drag her bunny feet and dawdle in the hope that said Cable Car would also be shut, but alas, it wasn`t. We purchased a round trip ride taking in the Orange line, the Red Line, then the Blue line, and back. What started off as a hair raising bunny toes tingling ride, turned out to be quite fun and wonderful. Remember I said we had `views of the city, and that we would giggle later?`...this is when we started giggling. To give La Paz and its size some context, If La Paz was a dart board, from our apartment window what we could see was merely the bulls eye. wow that city is ridiculously big.

The Teleferico. Orange line over the city, jumping stations to the Red Line that proceeded to climb steeply up the mountain, my poor bunny nerves sorely tested, we arrived at the landing point for the Aimara Market. Our sights were set on the cable car ride, not shopping, so, and very thankfully, we boarded the Blue Line. As we boarded the cable car and rose up high, we each said, look there is the market. What we didn`t realise is that we would still be saying `look there is the market` for another 10 or so minutes of travelling overhead! I cannot begin to describe how big that market is. It stretched across what appeared to the main road road through the town/area of El Alto. Around 8-10 stalls wide, as far as the eye could see, in both directions, and down every side street as well!   the only side streets that didn`t appear to have market stalls, were filled with taxis and vans. Given that this 5 square kilometre market runs twice a week they must have this jigsaw puzzle off to a fine art. Seriously impressive. For any travel bunnies thinking this could be a must visit, take heed, it is not for the faint hearted, it is there purely for the essentials of local people, and us bunny tourists, we would stick out like ears on a rabbit. The ride over the city was fun, it would appear that the city architect was a Marvel fan, so many of the buildings that sided the Teleferico resembled the distinctly Marvel type facias, one even had a giant Iron Man head, which alas I saw too late to take a photo. Our time in La Paz was brief, we have had enough of cities and chose accommodation to reflect the same, allowing us peace and space. We spent one of our few days re jigging our trip, Mr bunny had a rather large hissy fit, deciding that if we left for Patagonia on the 26th of the month we wouldn`t have enough time to enjoy the area. He huffed and puffed, decided to hire a us a car (collection El Calafate) , so now we are leaving for Patagonia on the 26th but now we have more time.....(go figure) Prior to leaving La Paz we opted to try the restaurant that quite literally backed onto our apartment, Qaytu. it had some rather good reviews and decided to try for ourselves. Now, much as Mr Bunny loves cooking and inventing rather good meals in very small and challenging kitchens, why did we wait until we were leaving to sample the wares of this particular restaurant? Greeted like old friends by the owner, he then lovingly described every meal on his menu, using terms such as ` a beautiful experience` `palate teasing`, `flavoursome and aromatic` Was he wrong? Nope!! We had 3 dishes of the most exquisite tasting food, two desserts, four drinks, (mr bunny always seems to require the urge to sample a second beer) and our bill was a staggering £33. If any travelling bunnies fancy sampling the delights of this culinary establishment, with its lovely staff, fabulous food and spectacular vistas, head off to the Mirador Killi Killi, ( ask any taxi , its worth it) then follow your bunny noses around 5 minutes in a downhill direction to this wonderful restaurant. Even this bunny with an aversion to all things food, enjoyed the meal. My choice if you care to know was the* non vegetarian meat/no meat burger. *was designed for tourists, but the restaurant owner says that he gets more locals than tourists, hence the veggie meat, no meat description