La Paz

The last two days in Santa Cruz were spent researching our route. At first the plan was to head west and then north up peru and then down the amazon into Brazil. For a multitude of reasons this was vetoed. Since then we´ve thought of everything from just heading straight up through the jungles of Bolivia into the Amazon Basin of Brazil, to going south into Argentina and wrapping back to Brazil that way. The only constant to each plan was the need to be in Rio de Janeiro by about February 20th. The more we read about Bolivia, the more we decided there was to do here and subsequently have decided to spent about a month travelling just within its borders. Knowing that the Brazilian visa is a pain in the ass, we embarked on that quest monday morning and soon found out how much of a pain in the ass it is. Went to the brazilian consulate, he then gave us a checklist of things we need to return to him with, they included: photocopies of our yellow fever certificates, credit cards and passports, recent headshots of us, a document describing our route within brazil signed by a notary public and a bank receipt stating that we had sent $40 to this Brazilian account. Took us the better part of Monday to complete all that and when we finally managed to get it done, the Brazilian consulate was closed...why wouldn´t they close at 2pm. Anyhow, last night we caught a super nice bus to La Paz (capital city of Bolivia, and in fact the highest capital city in the world at a staggering 4000+ metres). Some very cool scenary as we climbed the Andes mountains from the lowlands. Upon arriving here we headed to the Brazilian Embassy, which said everything looked fine, but unfortunately the bank receipt is for the Santa Cruz Brazilian consulate account, not the La Paz Brazilian Embassy account. Luckily our plans call on us to return to Santa Cruz in a few weeks so we can take care of things there. We hopped over to the Canadian consulate to check about voting abroad, and were met with more dissapointment as it appears to be a lengthy and frustrating process just to get a ballot here, let alone sending it back. Aside from our diplomatic problems, Bolivia itself is really cool. The people seem extremely friendly and aside from the headaches we all have from the altitude change, everything is ship shape. Plans from here include a ride down ´The World´s most Dangerous Road´ (don´t worry its just a name....), then mayhaps a couple day hike around the area. After which we´d head south to the salt flats and visit the salt mines, then back up to Santa Cruz where we´d catch ´The Deathtrain´ (once again...I think it´s just a name, they sure have some ominous ones around here) to Corumba, Brazil. We´d like to dip south into Paraguay before heading over to Rio, but we may just go through the Pantanal (jungle region of Brazil). Either way, it should prove to be an exciting next few weeks!

Pictures! I wasnt actually able to view the pictures before I posted them, due to the strangeness of this computer, so I threw two random ones up. The first is a shot of a street down La Paz. Note the massive lineup along the wall, that was only about a quarter of the thing, it stretched around the corner and then on into eternity. Also, the strange little hats that the women wear...be interesting to know where this fashion started, but ít seems like all women over the age of 30 are required to buy one.

Next shot is one as we descended from the top of La Paz into the city center, taken from the bus.