In 1984, the World’s Fair was held in New Orleans.  Needless to say, the Bohrn Family went to that!  Now, that was a long, long time ago.  What I remember most is that there was a cable car that went across the Mississippi River, across it I say!  The reason I remember this so vividly is that I was positive the cable was going to break, and we would all fall into the Mighty Misissippi.  I was so terrified that I refused to go on it. My mother had to stay with me while my daddy took my sister and cousin Brandee across.  I could NOT convince them NOT to go.  Obviously, they made it back. And they brought back a bunch of Michael Jackson stickers that my daddy let them buy from the quarter machine (he was a pushover).  Why do I mention this?  Well because we spent the whole dang day riding cable cars through La Paz Bolivia today, and  I just kept thinking its a good thing I got over my fear of cable cars plunging into the Mississippi, or today would not have been fun. 

La Paz is surrounded by mountians, so cable cars make a lot of sense.  It makes it much easier to get to the top of the mountains that way.  It’s fun public transportation, and it’s cheap too!  It costs 5 Bolivianos per ride if you combine 2 lines and go all the way to the end.  How much is that in Dollars, you ask?  Well, it’s not even a Dollar!  It’s 73 cents!  For about 45 minutes of cable car riding.  You can’t beat that!  Beautiful views, cheap entertainment, and if you are lucky, a car all to yourself!  Unfortunately, we ended up sharing cars several times.   The locals just use it as transportation. They’ve seen the view a million times, so that’s not their main objective.   It is kind of funny, though.  The cars go through the station, and you will see someone run to get on it, even though there is another about 12 seconds behind it. There is literally no wait for the next one because it is  always RIGHT there. 

So the green line is a “short” walk from our hotel.   The guy at the front desk told us a 10 minute walk, and the hotels.com website said it is a 16 minute walk. So it is probably more of a 20-22 minute walk.   So we took the green line all the way to the yellow line.   The yellow line goes to the top of the mountain, and the cable car map lists points of interest on it.  At the end of the yellow line, it says “mirador”  which means scenic viewpoint.  We walked out of the station and wandered in what we thought seemed like a good  direction.  We saw a little landing that could make a good mirador, but there were lots of power lines obstructing the view of the city below and the mountains on the other side.  So we asked a man at a snack kiosk.  He said that there is no mirador anywhere because there are too many houses in the way to see anything.   He suggested that we just go down the stairs a bit to get under the power lines, and we could see more that way.   So that’s what we did.  

Now, when it was time to go back up the steps to get to the station, we barely made it.  Seriously. La Paz is the highest capital city in the WORLD at 11,975 above sea level. I am just going to round that to 12,000 feet.  At 12,000 feet, it is hard to get your breath sometimes. Real hard.  Especially when you are climbing stairs.  We didn’t even go up that many, but it was rough, I say.  Like maybe 2 flights of stairs, and we were both panting and had to stop for air. It was like we had run up 20 filghts of stairs.   Other than trying to climb the stairs, we seem to have acclimated to the altitude pretty well (thanks to medication). The hotel does have oxygen in the lobby for guests if the altitude gets to them.  So, it’s a real concern up here.  Of course, we were over an hour away from the hotel at the top of the mountain when we had trouble breathing.  But anyways.

So, we decided to take the yellow line back down the mountain to the blue line, but don’t  try to buy a ticket to the azul line.  It is the “celeste” line, which is the light blue line (even though the cars themselves  are royal blue).  The blue line goes near the Iglesia de San Francisco, which looked quite beautiful as our airport taxi was driving past it at 3:30am this morning on the way to the hotel.   It’s about a 13-minute walk (per the Google maps) from the end of the light blue station.  Today is Sunday, so it was closed this afternoon, but it does have quite a beautiful facade.  Lots of people just hang out there on the steps in front of the building with their friends or waiting to meet their friends. There was a homeless man sleeping in one of the doorways There was a group of teenagers playing with a soccer ball right in the middle of everyone, and more often than not, chasing after the ball into the crowds of people.  There are also vendors selling ice cream cones that I am probably not supposed to eat, and others selling fruit juice/fruit water that I am definitely not supposed to drink. So, it was a pretty lively place.  

You may have noticed that I said our taxi drove past it at 3:30 in the morning.  Our flight arrived at 2:15am.   We had to wait in line forever for our visa because the people in front of us were not prepared and didn’t have the needed documents. Needless to say, thetwinsontour were prepared! If only we had gotten in line first!  Photocopy of passport, printed copies of hotel reservations, letter of invitations for tours, and most importantly, proof of a flight out of the country, and a visa application. We also had documents that they didn’t need like copies of our yellow fever vaccinations, proof of financial responsibility (a bank statement), and a couple of  other things that I can’t think of right now.   So, what I am trying to say is that thetwinsontour are worn out and going to bed now.

Good night from Bolivia!

Love,

thetwinsontour

PS, for those of you wondering about the weather. The high today was 68 degrees, ..@and the low will be 42 degrees.  I know 68 sounds amazing right about now, but it was pretty toasty.  The sun is FIERCE at 12,000 feet.