La Paz part 2

Sunday morning I was up and eating breakfast when Derek stumbled down the stairs. Here comes my biggest regret of the trip. He went on and on about how great the jazz club was. A 21 piece band with three singers blah blah blah. He didn't get in until 2:30am, so I was energized and ready for the day but had missed out on some really good live music. Of course, that's what he highlights most to people about the trip too.

Our driver picked us up at about 9:30 and we headed out to Tiawanaku, an hour and a half drive. There were a few blockades on the way out of town but our driver was able to maneuver around them with no incident. Poor Derek was so sleepy that I had the privilege of stumbling through conversation with our driver. Mostly I pretended to be reading in our guidebooks about the ruins.

When we pulled up our driver instructed us to go into the first museum and buy tickets. Ruth had told us about her tour guide that she hired when she got there but we decided against it because they only spoke Spanish and we would have missed most of what they had to say. The tickets were 80 Bs each (about $10) and that covered entrance into two ruins and two museums. The museums were pretty nice, one with English translations and the other without, but really nice artifacts and good organization. Once again, no photography allowed so all I've got is the ruins. They are in the middle of excavation so the great pyramid was actually just a big hill of dirt and grass, but you could see the formations of it on the sides. They said no photography of the excavation but, I was sick of being told not to take pictures and nobody was around. Below is a picture of one of the sides of the pyramid.


The most fascinating part of the ruins was the subterranean temple. It has been completely excavated and the series of pictures that follow are of that temple. There is some ambiguity to what the temple was used for. There were these chiseled heads sticking out of the walls all the way around the temple. One theory from the guidebook is that the faces represent the gods of all the people that they conquered, representing the dominance of their gods over all others. Another theory is that the faces represent different stages of health and that the temple was used as a place of healing. After talking with my dad, yet another theory popped up from a television program he watched, that the faces represent all the different races in the world. All fine, and interesting theories, but I doubt we'll ever know.



Derek, feeling much more energized, wanted his picture taking in front of the head that "looks like Shrek". I guess that must be Donkey right above him.

I just picked a head that had good detail.

The trip was a little bit disillusioning because it looked like they were digging up the original rocks but then putting them back together however they felt like. A good example is La Puerta de Sol. It's current location is the main temple area at Tiawanaku but as you can see there is a crack down the middle. According to the guidebook, it was originally located about half a mile away at a different site but they moved it here and in the process of the move it was broken. So it all seemed a little contrived.

All in all it was a really good first trip out to some ruins. I enjoyed the day trip and it was a lot of fun to get out of city life. On the way back into town, our driver asked if we had a camera and offered to take us to an overlook of La Paz to take pictures. FINALLY!! Someone actually encouraging, instead of forbidding, my overdeveloped shutter finger. Below is a picture of a bit of the city and Mout Illimani. I'm bummed that it was overcast and most of the mountain is hidden. Rogelio, the driver, said that in the winter months (June, July, and August) the sky is completely blue and clear.

We got the night bus back to Cochabamba, and by my calculations I would have a whole hour from stepping off the bus until classes started. About an hour outside the city the bus pulled over and we sat for almost 20 minutes. Everyone was sleeping but I was passed over when they were handing out the ability to sleep on public transportation, so I was staring at the side of a mountain when the driver came up and said that we had to go to a different bus. Our bus was pretty full and, surprise, so were the buses that they had us pile onto. At 5am, I was standing in a dark and sleeping bus pressed up against other tired and angry people. It wasn't the ideal way to conclude the trip but we made it back safe and sound and I even made it through the day of classes.

Next stop? The Jesuit missions in southeast Bolivia at the end of the month.