128daysoff: La Paz & more

Chickos,

I finally arrived to La Paz on Saturday and as Marco, a friend I met in Bogota, told me about the bike tour which he was to do the day after, I immediately called the agency and booked it as well. We did it! Was awesome!!! We started 4700m above the sea level - it was cloudy, rainy and...very fast!We were going down with the speed of 80km/h, wow it´s impressive when you overtake small busses, minivans etc.:) then the normal, hard road changed for a narrow (2-4m) path on the mountain.

More downhill, more humidity and warm. Sometimes I had an impression, that going on such road 50 km/h might be a little bit dangerous, as I saw there was like 65m (or more?) straight down, so, one mistake and...and nothing, after 4 hours of great fun we (I was there with Marco and an American girl) arrived in a small village - altitude of 1185m. Swimming pool, dinner, and back home to La Paz. Crazy:)

We also visited Tiwanaku, which is called the best archeologic site of Bolivia. It isn´t as big as Machupicchu and there are still ongoing works. It was a place for 60 000 inhabitants more than 2500 years ago...Very nice!

Before the trip we also did some small night trip on La Paz - I must say it´s a very interesting city, people are nice, it´s cheaper than elsewhere in South America (some people call this country "dirty cheap"). Lately there was a presidential election here - Evo Morales, supported by indigenous people has been reelected. He is also a friend of Hugo Chavez. Anyway, I´ve heard an interesting discussion of the German people how Bolivia has lost its chance for better future. And immediately a question appeared in my head: "what does better future mean?" More money? More development? More cars, bigger houses, branded staff everywhere? What else? Well. I have seen many writings on walls in La Paz, El Alto etc. supporting their president (maybe they are all fake??)! Looking for the answer I have spoken to some Bolivian people. And they told me that obviously there are good sides and bad sides of his politics, but to sum up they all love it, because he maintain the unity of their society, because they see the difference, because USA don´t rule their country (btw. citizens of USA need to pay 135$ for entering Bolivia). Maybe this we can easily call democracy, maybe they simply have another priorities than "the rich part of the world"? (I hope, I will get to know it soon, as visiting the mountains of Bolivia - 65% of citizens are indigens there).

Funny, strange and interesting thing of the week: I saw an indigenous lady, oryginally dressed, like 60 years old, buying chicken and coca-cola in the Bolivian version of KFC.