La Paz

Bolivian Expectations: Hostels

by Ekua on January 18, 2010 · 10 comments in backpacking,Bolivia,d.i.y. travel

As I was preparing for traveling through Bolivia, I noticed that there was very little information on what I might find there. I know that not knowing what to expect and figuring it out upon arrival can be part of the fun of travel. But sometimes a little preparation allows you to make the most of spontaneity. And in a challenging destination like Bolivia, not being prepared for what might come up can potentially leave you S.O.L. in Middle of Nowhere, High Altitude, Bolivia.

I don’t want to discourage anyone from visiting the country as it is an incredibly rewarding place to go to. I just want to present a realistic view of what it’s like to travel there and delve into the practicalities of the impractical act of budget travel in Bolivia. First up: Hostelling.

» Staying Warm

Traveling during Bolivia’s winter (June-August) is often recommended for drier weather (which means better road conditions) and for solo travelers who want to meet other travelers (because it is high season). But the extreme cold can make it a tricky time to be there. Trying to stay warm in order to get a good night’s sleep was a recurring theme of my trip. There was no silver lining of toasty cabins and hot cocoa so I eventually learned a few things about how to fall asleep in a subzero room.

Don’t expect:

central heating or even carpeted floors. If it’s freezing cold outside, it will likely be freezing cold inside your hostel.
to always have a nicer and warmer sleeping option available. Bolivia is a cheap country to travel in and you often get what you pay for.

Expect:

to have to bundle up. Make sure you’re warm as you can be before you try to sleep. Getting out from under your covers in a freezing cold night to put on layers isn’t fun, and neither is having a sleepless and restless numb-toed night.
to bring a sleeping bag and/or extra blankets to stay warm. You can also ask a receptionist if your hostel has extra blankets available.
to be able to buy what you need there. There is an abundance of llama/alpaca gringo gear for sale in the markets so you can stock up on wool socks, gloves, hats, hoodies, and blankets to keep you warm at night. If you don’t want to take your purchases home with you at the end of your trip, you can always leave them behind for another traveler.

» Water and Showering

Another recurring theme of my trip was shower avoidance. After shivering yourself to sleep, the last thing you want to do is wake up and hop into chilly water. So sometimes you won’t shower. And when you do, it will likely be quick. Try not to think about what you smell like, instead give yourself a pat on the back for your environmentally friendly ways (even if they are forced).

Don’t Expect

24 hour hot water. A lot of hostels will have a window of time where hot water is available, usually during daylight hours.
that a hostel that claims to have 24 hour hot really does. In my experience, hostels that explicitly stated that they did, really had 24 hour cold to lukewarm water. So you might be better off with an honest hostel that gives you a hot water time frame.
running water. Water is scarce in Bolivia. There may be times where you’ll have to brush your teeth with bottled water or flush the toilet with a bucket of water.
to have a towel provided. Bring along a quick drying towel.

Expect

that if hot water is available, it might only be a trickle of water. To access the hot water in some hostels, you can only turn on the water a little bit. If you want more pressure, the water will be cold.
to take advantage of having a hot shower when you get a chance.

» Party Hostels

Party hostels can be great places to meet other travelers and let loose. And they often have more amenities (such as hot water and warmer bedding) than smaller, more local hostels. However, they tend to harbor all sorts of losery travelers with questionable motives. If you want to stay in party hostels, use them sparingly, and don’t get sucked into staying for an extended period of time.

Expect:

to choose your hostel wisely. Chat with other travelers who have already visited a city you’re heading to and get the scoop on the hostels there.
to book in well in advance if you want a small dorm or private room in high season
to keep track of your hostel purchases. Some hostels let you charge food, drinks, etc. to your room and it’s important to have a sense of what you’ve bought so you don’t get overcharged when you check out.

Don’t expect:

to sleep

» A lot of this information is specific to traveling in the Andean part of Bolivia. Some of this information can apply to the Andean parts of Peru as well.

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Down and Out in La Paz

by Ekua on November 9, 2009 · 4 comments in Bolivia

August 10, 2009

I had fun plans for my last day in La Paz, but ended up spending the whole day trying to resolve my money issues. My ATM card was gone. Though my trip was winding down, I didn’t have enough cash to complete it. I went from bank to bank trying to figure out if I could get a cash advance with my credit card. It was impossible because the only card I had was American Express. Don’t listen to AmEx’s slogan. Do yourself a favor and leave home without it. Outside of the U.S., it’s useless.

After hours of waiting in the longest lines I’ve ever seen in banks, trying to communicate what I wanted, and constantly being told it wasn’t possible, I gave up and went back to the hostel. I tried paying for my hostel bill with dollars. But each time I gave the receptionist bills, she took them to a back room where the manager inspected them and told her to tell me they couldn’t accept them. In Bolivia, you’ll often get completely tattered Bolivianos after completing a transaction. But for some reason, dollars, which are widely accepted, have to be neat and perfect. I was already scared of running out of money and this stressed me out more. If a foreign-run business wasn’t going to take perfectly acceptable money from me, what was going to happen as I continued on with my trip into even less developed places?

I went to talk to the manager and explained the situation I was in. I asked if he could accept my dollars and he completely refused. It was appalling the way he handled everything. He didn’t try to relate to my situation and acted like all that mattered was me paying my bill for my room, food, and drinks. All 34 dollars of it. And with no rips in the bills, even if the tear could only be measured in millimeters. He then had the galls to say that if I wanted to give him my 40 dollars, he would take my money at a low exchange rate and not give me any change back. It may sound like a small amount, but 6 dollars can go far in Bolivia. With my uncertain situation, every little bit mattered.

I was very upset and disgusted and took off to find a place that would take my money. Just two blocks around the corner, I found a money exchange place that took my dollars, gave me a good exchange rate, and only cared about whether or not my bills were real.

I headed back to the hostel where I discussed this with both the manager and hostel owner. I felt like I’d been lied to about how “ripped” money was never accepted in Bolivia and that they cared about nothing more than money. For your information, the hostel I stayed at was called Wild Rover. I absolutely do not recommend it.

I was catching the night bus to Uyuni that night and needed to sign up for a tour to begin the next morning. Two of my hostel roommates from England who were very cool and chill had signed up for a tour with three other people. There was one spot left that I could sign up for. I looked all over for their company but couldn’t find it. I found another one that had been recommended by some other people and haggled for a discount since I really was low on cash.

Back at the hostel, I finally packed my stuff up and hung out in the courtyard with one of my English roommates. I was approached by the hostel’s finance person who was clearly sent to smooth things over so I didn’t leave the hostel with a bad impression. She did seem really nice and understanding, but it didn’t erase how awful the manager and owner were.

By then, I’d gotten a Visa International emergency cash phone number. It was my last hope before asking a family member to wire me money. I called them and finally, there was a breakthrough. After such a frustrating day, I couldn’t believe how accommodating and helpful the Visa people were. They set me up with a claim and said I could pick up the cash at any Western Union within three days. If I couldn’t get to a Western Union within three days, I could call them back on a toll free local number and they would set it up again. I wish I had known earlier that I could do that. It would have saved me from a day of stressing out. But now I know!

I went back out to chat with the English girl. She’d had her phone stolen that day. She was in a crowded area using it to take pictures when someone knocked it out of her hand, grabbed it, and ran. In the past two days, I’d heard many stories of stolen and misplaced goods. There were two other ATM card losses, two purse snatchings, and my French roommates had their things stolen by fake tourists and police. I don’t want to discourage anyone from visiting La Paz, but it’s definitely a place where you have to be careful. It’s too bad my time in La Paz ended like it did, because I really did enjoy the city.

My English roommates were on the same night bus to Uyuni so I caught a cab with them to the station. On the bus, they served us a small dinner. It was unexpected and welcome after running around La Paz all day on one empanada. They also gave us blankets for the journey. It was already cold, so we innocently wrapped ourselves in them. There was a welcome notice for each person which warned us not to drink to much of the complimentary water they gave us because it would be a bumpy ride. It seems like they must have had issues with people wetting their seats in the past. After the Amazon jeep ride, the bumpiness of the road seemed minor. What they really should have warned us about was how incredibly cold our night would be.

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Tainted Times and a Tiahuanaco Tour

by Ekua on November 8, 2009 · 0 comments in Bolivia

August 9, 2009

I’d returned to La Paz on a Saturday and wanted to check out the city’s club scene that night. I went out with a group of people from my hostel and it was fun for awhile. But I quickly noticed that a large chunk of La Paz’s gringo party crowd were not people I wanted to associate with. La Paz, even more than Cusco, attracts a crowd that is there for the sole purpose of partying hard. They’re the kind of people who give 20-something backpackers a bad name.

Two of my of my roommates that night were part of that crowd. They were the most obnoxious ones I’ve ever had in a hostel. One, who had regurgitated her dinner before even having a chance to go out, passed out on a bed that didn’t even belong to her. She woke up in the middle of the night and decided it was a good time to have a long conversation with a random person in the room while the rest of us were trying to sleep. That is just a small glimpse of the night. I love nightlife, but I really don’t understand the need to be that extreme and travel thousand of miles to do nothing other than party. Needless to say, it was a sleepless night.

I’d signed up for a tour to Tiahuanaco on Sunday and could not bring myself down from my bunk that morning. I eventually did and tried to hurry, but I was still the last to get on the mini bus. I was late and I’d held everyone up. It doesn’t feel great to be that person in a group of complete strangers.

I shrugged it off because I had bigger problems than lack of sleep and being shunned by my tour group– I’d lost my ATM card. I think it must have happened at the ATM on Saturday afternoon, but I hadn’t noticed the card was missing until night when I was going out. It was late, so there was nothing I could do about it then.

It was a two hour drive to Tiahuanaco. We began our tour in a museum adjacent to the ruins. The tour guide was awful. He rambled on and on about trivial speculation. It was hard to follow him because he would sporadically switch between English and Spanish. After awhile, I got tired of pretending like I was listening to him. I found a chair and had a seat.

I was sympathetically approached by girl I’d noticed earlier. In her multicolored head-to-toe llama gringo gear, she was impossible to miss. She wore a llama wool hat with earflaps, a llama wool sweater, and striped pants that resembled pajamas that were tucked into combat boots with wool llama socks sticking out of the tops. These were all in neon shades blue, pink, green, etc. We chatted and she seemed as crazy as she looked, but it was cool that someone else was not into acting they were understanding what the guide was saying.

Tihuanaco - Stone Face My Amazon tour guide had been great. He let us know what everything was, but didn’t go into much detail. He let us be in the moment. I knew I wouldn’t be able to enjoy Tihaunaco as much with the guide’s incessant talking. So when we reached the ruins, I decided to take off on my own. I reveled in the in the color combination of rust-colored ruins and brilliantly blue sky. I ran my fingers along ancient walls made of multi-sized bricks that created beautiful patterns. I looked into the eyes of stone carved faces that had long lost their detail. I imagined what looked like its inhabited days.

Tihuanco - Hole in the Wall

Tihuanaco - Vanishing Point

Tihuanaco - Statue I eventually rejoined the group and maintained a safe distance from the guide. When everyone felt like they’d had enough of the ruins, we went for lunch at a restaurant nearby. I sat with the neon llama girl from England who’d approached me earlier, her French friend, and a Bolivian American guy. The two girls had met in Peru where they were supposed to volunteer. But Peru got worried about swine flu and closed all of the schools, so many people had to cancel their volunteering assignments. After that, they decided to travel together through Peru and Bolivia. The Bolivian-American was visiting relatives in the city of Cochabamba, and taking the opportunity to travel to other parts of Bolivia.

For lunch, we had a choice of chicken, beef or llama. I wanted to taste the llama but didn’t want to order it. The French girl let me try a piece of hers. It tasted like a cross between lamb and pork. We had a lively conversation over a long meal before heading back to La Paz.

Back in the city, we were dropped off at the Witches Market. I headed straight for an international call center to get in touch with my bank. The good news was that there were no extra charges on my account and I was able to cancel my card. The bad news was that there was no way I’d be able to get a new card before I left Bolivia. It was a Sunday so I’d have to wait until the next day to see if I could use my credit card to get a cash advance at a local bank.

The two girls I’d met on my Tihuanaco tour were staying at the same hostel and I met up with them to go out to dinner. The English girl had lost her ATM card as well, so our goal was to find something cheap to eat. I’d imagine we’d find a great local hole in the wall place, but we ended up on a street full of Bolivian fast food joints. We eventually settled on a place that seemed really crowded and like the place to be. On the menu were things like hot dogs, hamburgers, and popcorn chicken. There was a complicated ordering system that we didn’t understand. The workers saw that we were clueless and took pity on us and took care of us. We sat down to eat our burgers. I can’t say the food was tasty, but it was edible and didn’t give me food poisoning.

Back at the hotel, my obnoxious roommates had moved on and were replaced with two French women I’d seen on my bus from Puno to Copacabana. I slept soundly that night and hoped that I’d be able to resolve my monetary issues in the morning.

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From the Andes to the Amazon

by Ekua on October 18, 2009 · 2 comments in Bolivia

August 4, 2009

Rurrenabaque is situated in the Amazon Basin along the Beni River. It’s a jumping off point for affordable wildlife and jungle tours that are popular with backpackers. There are three ways to get to Rurrenabaque from La Paz, and none of them are good.

One option is a 20 hour journey along the official “World’s Most Dangerous Road.” While many people now bike down the “World’s Most Dangerous Road” for fun, riding down it in a bus still looks terrifying. Another option is to spend several days floating down the river on a cargo boat. I didn’t see this as a valid choice because I didn’t have many extra days to spare. I chose to fly, even though flights from La Paz to Rurrenabaque are notorious for frequently being canceled.

I was scheduled to fly on August 3rd. That morning, the hostel’s travel agent informed me that my flight was canceled because it had rained the previous day. The Rurrenabaque Airport has a dirt landing strip surrounded by grass. So when it rains, it gets flooded and no flights will leave until they determine that the landing strip is dry enough. Considering it’s in the rain forest, flights are canceled often. The agent told me that I would automatically be put on the same flight the next day.

On August 4th, I excitedly went to check in with travel agent. It didn’t look good– even though it hadn’t rained again, no flights had left yet that day. Since my flight was in the late afternoon, mine would probably be canceled because of the earlier delays. Dejectedly, I went back up to my room. But a few minutes later, the travel agent came running up to my room to tell me that flights had begun to take off and there was one space left on a flight that was leaving in two hours. I rushed to get everything together and headed out.

There were daily parades on my hostel’s street in the days leading up to Bolivian Independence Day. I walked several blocks before I was able to catch a cab that wasn’t stuck in traffic. We had to take a haphazard route to airport to avoid getting caught up in other parades around the city and I nervously hoped I’d make it in time. At the airport I checked in, went through security, and made it to the gate with fifteen minutes to spare.

Rurrenabaque - Plane The Amaszonas plane was the tiniest one I’d ever been on. I’m short, and even I couldn’t stand straight up on the plane without hitting my head. There are two columns of seats, so everyone has an aisle and window seat and a view of the cockpit. There are no overhead bins and definitely no flight attendants with complimentary drinks.

Even through dirty and scratched windows, the views on 40 minute flight are spectacular. First, you get a phenomenal view of La Paz and fly incredibly close to the snowy Mt. Illimani. As you leave the mountains behind, the landscape changes quickly and drastically to thick green blankets of trees with winding brown rivers between.

Reaching the Amazon Basin has been a dream of mine since I was in high school. I felt like a giddy kid as I stepped off the plane into the tropical greenery and humidity. I was so thrilled to be there. I caught a ride on the Amaszonas shuttle which takes you from the airport to the airline’s office in the center of town. Unless you arrange to be picked up by your tour company, this is the only way to get to town.

I found the Indigena Tours office where I checked in and got info for my tour and then went in search of a hostel. The Hostal Turistico Santa Ana drew me in with its brightly painted exterior, plentiful potted plants, and gorgeous mosaic walkways. The room they had available wasn’t ready, so laid in a hammock while they finished cleaning. My room was tiny, very pink, and perfect.

I walked up and down the streets of Rurrenabaque. There is nothing to see there, but it is a very pretty and calming town. It was so nice to be at a lower altitude where I could breathe normally and see and abundance of pretty flowers and vegetation. I had an early dinner and reveled in my last night of solitude before joining a three day tour.

My hostel room didn’t have a bathroom so I used the communal bathrooms and outdoor sinks. I got ready for bed while little beings rustled in nearby plants. Mundane tasks like teeth brushing and face washing are much more enjoyable when done outside in the light of the moon under a sky that’s incredibly full of stars. I was in love with Amazon and couldn’t wait for my adventure to begin the next day.

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The Fighting Cholitas

by Ekua on October 15, 2009 · 0 comments in Bolivia

August 2, 2009

At breakfast, I was joined by a guy who was my dorm mate one night in Cusco, on my bus the previous day, and now at the same hostel as me in La Paz. Oh, the gringo trail. He told me that a few days before, he was hassled while using the Peru-Bolivia border crossing that’s known for being shady. By the time he got past the border officials, his bus had left him and his luggage was still on it. He got into a taxi and asked the driver to go as quickly as possible until they caught up with the bus and flagged it down!

Llama fetuses at the Witches' Market Llama Fetuses at the Witches’ Market

I spent much of the day wandering the streets of La Paz. I found the Witches’ Market which is not really a market. It’s a few stalls at the end of street of tourist shops. But there definitely are folk remedies and figurines and llama fetuses for sale there. Llama fetuses are naturally aborted and some Bolivians bury them under new homes to bring good luck.

Witches' Market Witches Market

At lunchtime I sat at a cafe facing the window and looked out at the strange and wonderful city of La Paz. It’s a place where the past and the present collide to form a vibrant character. It seems like a city that is not trying to be anything other than its own unique self, as full of contradictions as it may be. A microcosm of Bolivia and a great introduction to the country.

It was a Sunday, which meant there would be a Cholita wrestling match that night. Cholitas in Bolivia are indigenous women who typically wear two long braids, full skirts, and bowler hats. After reading about the sport in National Geographic and then seeing it on Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods, I was determined to go. I’m not at all interested in wrestling, but I liked the symbolism of it– oppressed women fighting back without exchanging their skirts and petticoats for pants.

The view of La Paz from El Alto

If you’re looking for full-on wrestling, you won’t find it at a Cholita wrestling match. You will find lots of laughs as long as you go into it with a good sense of humor. The event went on for a little too long and there wasn’t as much Cholita matches as I expected. But it was so bad that it was good. A highly enjoyable, only in Bolivia experience.

The English/Irish group from the previous day modeling their new wrestling gear