Our flight to La Paz left in the afternoon and I was still feeling rather weak. But there was no choice, I needed to be ready for this flight and the following day’s lengthy travelling to Machu Picchu. We flew Aerosul this time and again was impressed with their efficiency and getting the flight out on time. It actually looked like we wouldn’t be leaving on time when all of a sudden, we boarded the flight 15 minutes before scheduled departure time and were in the air on time. The flight to La Paz actually connected through Santa Cruz de la Sierra where we would first have to clear immigration. Our connection time was rather short so we booked it off the flight into a rather slow, long moving immigration line. Our next flight was already boarding while we were still in line, but we made it, despite my slight panicking, and were on our way to El Alto airport, which sits at about 4,000 metres above sea level. The air is quite thin up there and quite quickly we both found ourselves experiencing headaches. The worst thing to do in this situation is take headache remedy medication. So I had to battle through this one and I don't do well with headaches.
We arrived at night and took a taxi to the hotel, which was about a 30 minute drive; it cost us $10USD. Despite this being just an overnight stop over, I would have to say this is probably the most impoverished country during this trip. La Paz city is built in amongst the Andes mountains, is very spread out and very hilly. We saw a lot of people out and about; it was a Saturday night.
The air is very thin up here and I found myself short of breath quite often. We only had the evening, so we thought we’d take a taxi to the main square to get a glimpse. There was a market going on as well and we wandered through for a bit before heading back. One of the natural remedies in fighting mountain sickness is drinking Tea de Coca, or even eating just the coca leaves. We downed a couple glasses of tea before calling it a night. I felt much better the next morning, while Z was still battling a headache. Early morning flight to Cusco meant we didn’t have time to explore the city at all and I really think we missed out here. The drive back to the airport in daylight revealed a very beautiful site.
Our pit stop in La Paz originated because we (and by that I meant Z) found that it was cheaper to buy a round-trip ticket from Buenos Aires to La Paz and then buying a one-way ticket from La Paz to Cusco, rather than flying to Lima and backtracking to Cusco. Exploring Bolivia was also our back up option in case Machu Picchu wasn’t open yet after the devastating rains and mudslide that happened in January/February.
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