Late Laundry

Having survived the overnight vibration test we arrived back to La Paz today (22nd August) safe and sound albeit a little tired.

Fortunately it seems La Paz folk also like getting up late as relatively little is open until 10am. I'd therefore booked a room to enable us to get an extra couple of hours sleep before setting out for the day.

After putting our laundry in for cleaning (it's priced per kg and means we don't have as much to do when we get back!) we had a wander around the city again and obviously went back to buy some more of the lovely chocolate! Probably the nicest we've ever tasted!

When we were looking at one of the stalls lining the street I felt someone try to pick pocket me. Unfortunately for them all they got was a soggy tissue! Huh Ha! (The dust plays havoc with your sinuses!)

We're now just relaxing for the rest of the day as we have an early flight tomorrow back to Peru so we're moving hotel to one nearer to the airport, that has heating and hot showers. What a luxury!

At around 4pm we moved to our new hotel. The reviews say that this hotel has the best showers in Bolivia and I think they were probably right! Having mostly repacked our bags for the flight home and feeling contented and refreshed we ventured out for dinner in the new part of town we had yet to explore.

We walked round to the nearest plaza where we were told we could get dinner to find lots of Bolivia's fast food restaurants and nothing else!

Given we only had just over an hour until we needed to leave to pick up our laundry on the other side of town we settled for pizza and were pleasantly surprised. For £6 we got a decent sized and tasty pizza to share, a local beer and a sprite.

As we wanted same day collection for our laundry we had been asked to come at 8pm just as they close. Allowing more than double the time to get across town than it took earlier in the day our taxi arrived (albeit a little later than planned eroding some of buffer tube) we set off.

After around 10 mins we hit the nightly traffic as expected. Unfortunately this wasn't the normal nightly traffic. Tonight there was a massive protest blocking the one and only main road in La Paz and thus all the roads surrounding it!

8pm came and went and we were still sitting stationary in traffic. Stu and I were thinking of various ways we could get our clothes to Peru if we couldn't get them tonight (we were hoping they were working in Bolivian time and 8pm actually meant 9pm).

At one point a police officer told our driver to turn around and go back. He started shouting out the window that he had tourists but the police officer was having none of it. So instead our taxi driver promptly drove straight at the police officer, refusing to turn left as instructed. The police officer quickly moved out the way and instead focused his efforts on making other vehicles turn left.

Unfortunately the road ahead was completely jammed up and everyone ended up turning their engines off. There we sat for more than 30 minutes stationary. The police officer on this street helpfully suggested the cars should move closer together so more could fit on the street even though they were already pretty much bumper to bumper with 3 lanes in a 2 lane street!

Finally a journey that should have taken less than 20 minutes we arrived just before 9pm, having sat in the car for 1.5 hours! We had thought about walking a couple of times but our taxi driver strongly advised against it (distance and safety).

As we pulled up in front of the shop we were extremely relieved to see it was still open. Phew! Clean washing in hand we made the return trip to our hotel. This time the taxi driver took a different route and we got back in around 15 minutes.

Arriving back at our hotel much later than planned given our early flight tomorrow (need to leave at 4am!) We finished packing to find one item of the laundry was missing. Stu's new green Nazca, and now favourite, t-shirt (see photo on 20th August!). Unfortunately it was now far too late to do anything about it :-( so fingers crossed we can find another one in Lima or Paracas!

(Sorry no photos today - my only regret having now left La Paz is that we didn't get time to properly admire the city from above other than from a steamy coach window or speeding taxi in the dark as it looked truly beautiful :-( )