WEATHER: Beautiful and 20C – the sun is out in La Paz
HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Getting another parcel sent home
BUYS OF THE DAY: My new pair of sneakers for 95USD
WORD OF THE DAY: Sleep in!!!!!!!!
Free day today in La Paz and we got to SLEEP IN. We set the alarm for 9am, but those pesky little internal body clocks just don’t know when to turn off and we were awake at 8.30am. Still 8.30am is a great sleep-in for us at the moment. We headed downstairs for breakfast with the intentions of heading out early, but we were able to get Kate a masseuse to come to the hotel at 11am, so I decided to spend the morning uploading my photos to Facebook, I had a few albums to catch up on and Google Chrome hasn’t let me down since I have started using it. We also put in some more washing this morning. I don’t think I have had so much washing done on my trip so constantly. It was good to get yesterday’s bike clothe washed and a bunch I had forgotten I had from Lake Titicaca.
11am came and so did the masseuse for Kate, so we made plans to meet at 12.45 at Oliver’s for lunch and I was going to do some running around to get some chores done. I have figured out that my Bolivian texts are getting out but I am not receiving any texts back and here I was thinking that nobody loved me. So I have put in my UK sim and this seems to be working okay, so if you want to get in touch I am back on my UK number for the next week.
My first stop was the bike shop. Getting the pictures on disk was going to be no good for me, as I don’t have a disk drive. So I went in with my USB stick and they loaded them right then and there for me, which was great of them, so I will be able to load Death Road this afternoon and be completely up to date with my pictures. I wish it could be that easy with the blog. I am still 3 days behind with that, so I really need to pull my finger out to get them done in the next few days.
My next stop was the post office. I had a massive bag to post home and wanted to get rid of it. I went through it all this morning and I still had Galapagos gifts and souvenirs in there. Yes it was time to send it home. I always have gifts for the god-daughters in each and every package and this one was no different. This one was a good one for them as I had turtle purses from the Galapagos, little pink purses from Peru and dolls that I bought in Bolivia. It is a stash for a 6 and 4 year old!! I need to make sure that they don’t forget who their favorite God-mother is, even if I am halfway around the world.
There was an information counter at the entrance to the post office, so I went up and asked about sending a package to Australia. She spoke no English, but I was getting the gist of it all I think, but there was a lady at the counter waiting and she translated for me. If my box weighted more than 3kg I had to go downstairs and if it was less than that I had to stay upstairs. To send a parcel you also need 2 photocopies of your passport, and a smart Bolivian has a copy machine right near the counter, so it was easier enough for me to get the copies and I ventured downstairs. There were 2 rooms and I could clearly see that one was a packing room! Awesome, so the first thing they do is weigh your bag to make sure that it was over 3kg, which mine was. They then need to pack all the stuff for you in the box, and it all needs to be checked and then they sealed the box and stitched it in a blue canvas with a copy of my passport. There was a form I had to fill in, which I did and there were signs in English around the place for each step, so I knew what I needed to do. After that was all done, I took my box and all the paperwork to window number 9 where I paid for their service, which was 5AUD, and then I also paid for the postage which cost me 69AUD and seemed pretty average for a 3.6kg box. So that makes it box number 16 I think. It really will be like Christmas when I finally get home and look at what I have actually sent home over the last 12 months.
My next stop was Western Union. I have only just discovered this marvelous service to send money as needed to anywhere in the world with no fuss. It truly is an amazing way to pay back people ie: credit on my UK number for example. Once this was done it was time to meet Kate for lunch. What a productive morning I had.
After lunch we walked Witches Lane, which basically a bunch of souvenir shops for a few hours. I bought a few small gifts, some stickers for my computer and my diary, a great chess set, which I don’t play much and I’m not very good at, but it was pretty cool hand made chess pieces of local people and Llama’s it was too cute to resist. We have found that the La Pazian’s aren’t that keen on bargaining and if they do they only reduce their price by a dollar. They really aren’t interested and if you play the ‘walk away’ trick, they just let you go. They don’t budge. On the way home I stopped into a travel wear shop and bought a new pair of sneakers. After wearing my old sneakers yesterday on Death Road I could smell a nasty little smell emanating from them and they were still on my feet! They have seen better days with the soles unsticking, some holes I the toes and the terrible smell. It was time to hang them up and get new ones. So I found a pair straight up, so after 10 minutes I was walking out of the shop with a nice shiny new pair of sneakers.
Dinner was at a place called The Star of India. It is a British Indian curry house and is renowned for the hottest curry in the world. I am not a curry person, but I was able to find a korma on the menu that I could eat. But there is a challenge that the restaurant has and if you can eat the hottest curry they have you get a free t-shirt for your efforts. You can’t have anyone help you, not even taste the curry otherwise you are disqualified. So there were only 2 people up for the challenge and it was Paul and Malar. Once Paul started to eat, he had to take off his Santa hat as he was getting hot and then the beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and then he started to turn a shade of red, but he ate it all and he got the shirt. Malar struggled more with hers and after giving it a good shot she wasn’t able to finish it, so the bowl went around the table for everyone to try and to see all their faces after they had a little taste, I think Malar needed more credit for eating what she actually did. I didn’t try it and I am glad I didn’t as Nic and O struggled after their taste. Yeah no thanks. So well done to Paul and Malar, you guys did awesome.
So it was our last night in the highest capital city in the world. Tomorrow we head to Potosi, which is apparently the highest city of its size in the world. I will need to Google that to check the facts on it, but we have a travel day tomorrow and then a visit to a silver mine the day after.
No comments:
Post a Comment