El Alto welcomed us with all underbellies, a suburb of a large city can have. The streets have been in a catastrophal condition, the houses all were only half completed, but already in ruinous condition, and a street-cleaning didn't appear to exist. Here we drunk the worst soda pop of our life. Compared to that even tepid Inkacola tasted like champagne! (mi)

Downtown La Paz looked quiet modern. In the last 15 years sky scrapers sprung up like mushrooms. Sometimes they are so dense, that you hardly can see the beautiful mountains around. We had the good luck to stay with Ute and Antonio (see also at "Who we met") in one of this buildings for some days.
Markus has been very happy to be able to buy in the supermarkets his beloved granola. (mi)

The city of La Paz has many faces and is full of contradictions. Especially the contrast between poor and rich engrained strongly.
Some impressions (f.t.t.b.):
Main place downtown with the palace of the government, a street corner in the Indigena-neighborhood at Friday, park and wall painting in a better neighbourhood, shoeshine boy in front of the main post office downtown. We couldn't find out why all shoeshine boys were hooded like criminals we .Probably cause of the smog?
The little pcture shows an indigena mother with her children begging. (mi/ma)

With the bus from La Paz, we made a day trip to the ruins of Tiwanaku. Archeologists are already crazy about the name "Tiuanacu", which is the original name of this Pre-Inka-culture. On this painting in the museum you can recognize most of the site, as it probably looked like at the time of the Tiuanacu-culture. (mi)

In the Templo Subterreneo, the subterranean temple, where many rock-heads (the Cabesas Clavas) were installed into the wall. It is a strange feeling to stand on the half-sunk place and to be stared at by hundreds of eye pairs! (mi)

The walls of the entire temple area have been removed since the conquest of the Spaniards. The bricks unfortunately were mostly used in the construction of innumerable houses and churches up to the area of La Paz. What one can see today, are mainly reconstructions. The enthusiasm therefore was gigantic as recently one found new temple foundations during the newest excavations. The small picture right shows an excerpt from the sun gate. (mi)

The gigantic flagstones, of which the temple of Puma Puntu was made, were very impressive. They lie on the terrain today, as if a giant had thrown them around. Some weigh more than 200 tons! For us it was much fun, to walk around the ruins for hours and to discover again and again new details. (mi)

We didn't stay long in La Paz, because the salt sea called! In December, normally the rainy season already had begun in the Altiplano. But we had good luck and still bicycled some days with sunshine. Only the wind became icy in the afternoon. Then, we always crawled quite fast into the tent in the evening. (ma)

The farmers lamented that the rain more and more started later since some years. We were very sorry about them as we saw their dust-dry fields. For us that was good, because therefore the chances to cross the Salt Lake of Uyuni still under dry conditions were quiet good (see the after next report). Nevertheless, we always looked anxiously at the thunderclouds at the horizon in the evening, which gave us sometimes small night showers. (mi)

And finally, there was something to celebrate again: after almost precisely 19 months of our trip, we reached the 9.000 km (5,592 mi). If that is no reason for joyful leaps! "The 10.000 (6,214 mi) are already quite near!", Mila was happy and stepped into the pedals like hell. (ma)