We decided that today was going to be a fairly relaxing day, sleeping in a bit before eating the standard hostel-included breakfast. We wandered around the city most of the day, admiring colonial architecture and peeking in the large doors of buildings to see the courtyards within. We went to the lovely main square for a while, looked into tours in the area and decided that we would just do the dinosaur tour tomorrow, and went to the Museum of Indigenous Art, which was really interesting. We were tempted to buy a piece of the beautiful weavings they had for sale, but decided it was too soon in our trip to be carrying souvenirs around. We ate lunch at a fairly posh restaurant that had balconies overlooking the main plaza. We didn’t realize it was posh until we noticed that it was all rich businessmen and tourists in the restaurant. It still only cost us less than $10 for our lunch! In our wanderings, we also purchased bus tickets to La Paz for the following night at 6pm, for a 14-16 hour bus ride. We splurged on the “cama” bus that also had a toilet. For a bus ride that long, you need a toilet!
We decided to buy some groceries and use the hostel’s kitchen to make our dinner. Since food is so cheap at restaurants here in Bolivia, it’s almost the same price to eat out as it is to cook your own meals. We bought ourselves a small bottle of some nice Bolivian wine to try (was good!), and had some pasta. We had a nice chat with some other guests who were from London, and they gave us some tips on neighbourhoods to live in.
The following morning, we got up early to catch the 9:30 “Dino Truck”, which is a pickup truck with benches built into the back of it that brings you to the nearby concrete factory, which also happens to be where there are hundreds of dinosaur footprints on a huge rock face. The footprints were discovered because of the blasting from the concrete factory, as layers of limestone gradually were eroded from the cliff face. The footprints were created during the mesosoic era, from dinosaurs walking in the mud. When the continental plates collides and the earth was pushed up into mountains, the layers these prints were embedded in were pushed up to become vertical. We had a very good guide who explained everything, and it was neat to see actual dinosaur footprints. Unfortunately, the concrete factory is still in operation and the prints continue to be destroyed by blasting and erosion. More prints are being discovered all the time though, as more layers of limestone become visible. There are efforts being made to preserve the footprints, but due to politics and the ownership of the land by the factory, it is taking a long time.
The dino tour only took a couple of hours, so we were back in the city by lunchtime. In the morning, I had been accosted by a couple of cute young boys who wanted to shine my boots (shoeshine kids are very common in Bolivia!). I obliged, since they were pretty dirty, and we also bought them each a salteno for breakfast (like empanadas, filled with chicken and potatoes). Anyways, they had given us some coupons for 50% off drinks at a café, so we thought we’d check it out and eat lunch there. It turned out to be a great place to eat, with delicious food, and a sunny courtyard as well. When we were almost finished, we met a group of four Irish & English travellers and had a nice chat with them. Turned out two of them were on the same bus we were on for La Paz tonight.
After lunch we wandered around a bit more, found an internet café with a very fast connection so we could upload some pictures, then wandered around the market for a few minutes before heading back to the hostel. We hung out there for about an hour and then gathered our bags to head to the bus station. It was rush hour and traffic was a bit slow so we decided to leave early to make sure we go there on time. We had been instructed by the agency we bought the tickets from to go to the main office at the terminal to pick up our actual tickets (we just had a receipt of payment). The taxi driver who took us to the bus terminal was very friendly and gave us a mini-tour of the city as we went along, and also told us where to go in the terminal to find the bus company. We gave him a nice tip. Eventually the bus arrived, and we were very happy to see that it was indeed a good bus, had a toiled, and the seats were big and reclined nicely. There were even two blankets per seat. I brought my sleeping bag on the bus anyways, and was happy in the end because it turned out to be quite cold on the bus.
We had been told that the bus ride would take 14-16 hours, and that we would arrive in La Paz around 8-10 in the morning. Lincoln & I had made a reservation online earlier in the day at a hostel we had read good reviews on (Arthy’s Guesthouse), and had said we would arrive around 11am. Given the warnings about taxi scams and robberies late at night/early in the morning, we were happy that we were going to be arriving at a reasonable time of day. Or so we thought.