We arrived in Copacabana from La Paz after a 3 hour bus ride and trudged up the hill to our preferred hotel, without a booking. They were fully booked but advised us to turn up anyway and luckily a non-confirmed booking meant we got the room! It was a great place to hang out and, after our recent escapades elsewhere in Bolivia, the perfect place to relax for a few days. So this post will be short!
Poor old La Paz didn’t really stand much of a chance with us. We wanted to go there… but we really wanted to see everything else we wanted in Bolivia before we got there. Our disappointment at our enforced shortened trip in Bolivia and our weekend arrival didn’t exactly make it easy for us to like.
That said, our first impression of La Paz was incredible. We arrived as the sun was rising over the many terraces of the city. La Paz lies entirely in a valley so makes a for a spectacular view, particularly as the sun rises. Unfortunately once we got off the bus we couldn’t get a room at the hostel we wanted to and the one we ended up staying at was a bit weird. To get to our room we had to walk through one of the dorms and the walls to our room were glass with curtains that didn’t fully cover them. Also, we could hear everything from the dorm. Still…. it was a bed and there was a shower and given the ordeal of the past few days we were relatively happy.
Our 7 hour bus ride to La Quiaca on the Argentine border was reasonably comfortable and we arrived at 7.30am. It was freezing cold but we were treated to a spectacular sunrise. We walked with two other travellers, Antoine (French) and Johanna (German) – who we met at the bus station the night before in Salta – to the border which was about 1km from the bus station. We were pretty short of breath during the walk as we’d climbed about 2km in altitude during the bus journey. After getting our exit stamps from the Argentine immigration office we walked across the bridge into Bolivia. After a small queue and some simple checkpoint formalites we headed into the Bolivian town of Villazón. It was the first time I’d ever crossed a border on foot.
