[Above: A view of La Paz, the Bolivian capital city.]

Journal by Neil Dana

La Paz is appropriately named Peace, for it is located at the foot of a staggering mountain range. When you come into the city, it is the most incredible vista for a city you can imagine. You can see the entire city and all the surrounding houses and buildings piled all the way up the surrounding mountainsides. It must have been extremely peaceful back in the day before it grew into the bustling city it is today. Today, La Paz is immense in size. It is interesting as well because many cities around the world, the wealthy have nice homes in the surrounding mountains. In La Paz, it is the opposite. The higher you go up the mountain out of the valley, the poorer the houses become. The upper class towns are down in the valley. It is wild to see, there are thousands of houses built right into the mountainside, as if they are rock formations that have taken shape over the years. Many of them are built on very steep grades and it is a wonder that they are still standing.

While in La Paz, I ended up talking to our hotel receptionist quite a bit and learned a great deal about Bolivia and it's people. Her name was Vicky and she told me a story of what happened in October when the whole country decided to strike in response the former president's efforts to raise taxes. Many Bolivians only make $20 a month and it is very difficult to survive, and when the president wanted to raise taxes even more, the country went ballistic. Our hotel is across the street from a prison, and when the strikes first happened, the police were striking as well, so there were no officials around to police bad behavior. The walls of the prison are at least 30 feet high, and Vicky described her fear when she saw the prisoners trying to escape over the top. A couple actually succeeded due to a rather large tree that is outside the building. The prisoners also started a fire and almost burned down the front door of the prison. Can you imagine the horror of being across the street in a hotel watching this happen and not being able to call for help, and just feel completely helpless? This is how she felt, completely helpless, and it is how she and her people have felt one more than one occasion. In February, there were more strikes, and it was even worse. The people finally calmed down when they ousted the president and the vice president took over. Today, it has been a couple months since any major situations have happened, but she is not confident it won't happen again.

Anyway, I ended up walking to two different ends of La Paz, up the mountain and up to two beautiful serene parks that overlooked the city. One park had a cute little church at the top. I could definitely see many marriages happening there, it is a great location. You can see most of La Paz, yet you are surrounded by trees and you are high enough to avoid hearing the hustle and bustle of the city.

La Paz is a really interesting city and I am grateful to be able to visit Bolivia. I must thank Land Rover for all this. They gave us these vehicles which have enabled us to get all the way down here to Bolivia. If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be here. We have crossed rivers and been through some wild mud bogs too. In fact, the other night, we ended up off road in a marshland, and boy was that fun!! We ended up chasing a point of confluence with our Garmin, GPS systems, and we were going through streams, huge ditches and getting bogged down in deep muddy pits. We were able to get through it all. These vehicles are awesome. They are extremely comfortable, good off-roading, and have passed time and time again whenever we put them to the test. So thank you Land Rover.

Anyway, thanks to our vehicles we have made it to Bolivia and now we are heading to Chile and are almost a third of a way through our journey. It has been amazing so far, and actually is getting better and better every week. We are getting along better, know each other well now and have a really good time together. We work well together and know what our roles are, we are a great team and I am stoked to be a part of Drive Around the World.

And of course I am sooo excited to head to the coast in Chile now!! We are leaving the high altitudes and going back to sea level. And the sea level in Chile is filled with amazing SURF!!!!!!! So hopefully we will be able to surf a spot or two in Chile -- that would be a dream come true. Well, until next time, and hey, next time I will have been in the water and have the biggest grin you can fathom.

Ciao,

Neil
neil@drivearoundtheworld.com

Logbook for January 19th, Day 80
Start: La Paz, Bolivia
N: 16* 30.162'
W: 68* 08.133'
Finish: La Paz, Bolivia
N: 16* 30.162'
W: 68* 08.133'
Mileage: 000
Notes: This was another work/shop day in Bolivia, with an emphasis on the "work." I'm writing an article about our education program for the Royal Geographical Society, Nick is busting out items for our sponsors, Chanda is updating our website, Justin's working on PR materials, the film crew (Neil, Corndog, and Adam) is working on photos, and Todd is doing educational program work. Everybody's busy. The highlight of Chanda's day (OK, and mine, too) was eating a chicken-and-veggie-filled bread-thingy at about noon (cost: about 20 cents). Nick's highlight was his latte macchiato (the first since leaving California and Pete's Coffee). Tomorrow, we depart at about 0600 for Chile. Yick. Early border day. We might be without internet access for up to a week, so bear with us!!! (N.O.)

Help support our cause: The LONGITUDE Expedition is the longest journey ever attempted with a focus on Parkinson's Disease. The Drive Around the World team aims to raise money for Parkinson’s Disease research by driving four certified pre-owned Land Rover Discoverys around the globe following lines of longitude. Readers are encouraged to pledge small amounts of money per expedition-kilometer via a pledge form that can be found on our Parkinson’s page by clicking here. 100% of donations received go directly to Parkinson's research and all who donate $10 or more will be entered into a raffle to win an expedition-equipped Land Rover Discovery.