3620m
Up again at 6am for what will hopefully our last long drive trip; Sucre to La Paz. I tried the high mountain coffee, but I think it was a bit old and congealed and on big lump. Needless to say it wasn’t enjoyed.
Dirk arrived just before 8am and we were on our way. Now, bear in mind that it is a Sunday and it is 8am, so why is the traffic so bad in a city of 300,000? Roadworks and numerous diversions cost us time getting out of Sucre, but eventually we were back up to the heights of over 4000m. We spent the morning looking at the various scenery of the valleys, spotting various birds including the caracara (a form of buzzard) and looking for condors or foxes.
This continues for several hours until we pull into a town where Dirk thought we might have lunch. Umm…no. He did walk in to one venue, walked back out and stated that it would be best if we didn’t eat there. On to the next town. This town’s Main Street had been ripped up for word works so after an interesting little detour we found another roadside cafe. This one also didn’t match up to Dirk’s level of hygiene. By now he was getting stressed; his clients hadn’t eaten and it was a long way to La Paz. We finally settled with a local truck selling fruit and cookies and Dirk got us some of his emergency water bottles and on we continued.
About halfway into the journey you enter a city called Oruro, apparently the worst city in the world according to Dirk. It is a mining town on a flat, with constant wind and dust blowing around, temperatures constantly below zero in the winter and at around 4000m altitude. He had to spend 8 months here with his wife when she was studying and that was too much. From Oruro the journey to La Paz stays pretty flat, so we made up some good time. However, it also makes for a fairly boring drive until you reach El Alto; the city on top of the ridge looking down on the city of La Paz in the valley.
We unfortunately arrived here around 6pm; rush hour. Yes, on a Sunday. Now we thought that getting out of Sucre, or Petosi was bad, this was worse on a logarithmic scale. How bad? Well, firstly, El Alto is a city of 1,000,000 people, who obviously like to go out for a drink and entertainment on a Sunday night. Secondly, you block off the main road for about 200m, forcing the driver to navigate through side streets,which are only designed for one car, but now have 2 mini buses and a car competing for the one lane. Keep that image on your mind because thirdly, you then have a group of people who set up a market down the Main Street forcing you to deviate again. Into the same form of side street as before, except this time, one of them has a high energy electrical tower build onto the street. Yup, you now permanently block that street. Dirk weaved and pushed and blocked and inched his way through the disaster that is El Alto until we reached a dual carriageway which took us to our hotel. Definitely not a day on most tourist itineraries!