hotels and food

Price: US$12.5 (with private bathroom), Cleanness: Acceptable, mentioned in Lonely Planet

I arrived La Paz at 7:00am from Miami. The shopkeeper in the airport helped me to book the Hotel Alem (after overcoming some linguistic chaos). Hotel Alem seemed to be the best choice for non expensive mid range hotels. I have met several people later who lived in this hotel.

The famous Frankenstein shower. You press the execution button and hot water will come. It is a luxury in La Paz to have hot water shower (even though the night time temperature was as low as -5C). Don't touch any metal part unless you want to be electrocuted. Hotel Sagarnaga has better Frankenstein shower and Residential Rosario even has gas shower.

Price: US$15, Cleanness: Good, recommended in Lonely Planet

I went to Copacabana from La Paz. Lake Titicaca is 4 km above sea level and La Cupula is located at the upper part of a hill. If you walk up to the hotel like I did, you have to accept whatever price they charge you because they know you can't walk away (it's not funny to walk up the hill with a 20 kg backpack at 4km Altitude on the 2nd day of your trip). The view is good, you can see the beach from your room.

There is a vegetarian restaurant in La Cupula. The view is astonishing.

I have no clue what I have ordered (the menu was in Spanish and the waiter didn't understand English). But it was vegetarian and it was good and it was cheap (US$3).

Price: US$1.5, Cleanness: Acceptable, Electricity: None

The next day I went to Isla del Sol from Copacabana. I landed on the wrong side of the island as mentioned before. I walked from the South to the North (and picked the wrong trail).

This is the best hotel in Northern side of Isla Del Sol (Island of the Sun). There are better hotels on the Southern side but I didn't want to walk 3 hours back to the South. I think this hotel is better than La Cupula (after 8 hours of hiking in 4km altitude, anything with a roof is excellent). There wasn't much travelers in the north, I only met a Japanese girl live in the room across.

The view outside my room was pretty good. At midnight (since I couldn't sleep at the 4 km altitude), I stood outside my room for an hour. Haven't seen so many stars in my life. The night sky was almost as bright as day time (mostly due to the lack of ozone layer and the high altitude, no wonder I got a sun burn at day time after putting on two layers of sun block). The moon light, the milky way, the simple village, something clicked in my mind, like the sound of the camera shutter, I think that meant a picture was taken by my brain without any film or camera.

I went back to La Paz from Copacabana. There was a few Chinese restaurants in La Paz and I went to the one call "Jackie Chan". Met another Chinese there, he said he had never met any real Chinese tourist before. I went there just for curiosity, not for the food. I think the food was pretty good, as long as you don't order any Chinese dishes like I did.

Price: US$ 1.5, Cleanness: not extremely bad, mentioned in Lonely Planet, no private bathroom but pretty nice place for meeting other travelers.

I went to Rurrenabaque (a town in the Amazon area) from La Paz. Met G- in the airport. He suggested the Tuichi hotel which is a pretty nice place. When I came back from the pampa tour I stay in another hotel because it has private bathroom. The people there wasn't as friendly as Tuichi but the room was better. The last day I had to stay in Tuichi again because all other hotels were full.

This is where we slept in the pampa camp. It has a roof and a mosquito net (which is most critical). There is no big animals (e.g. puma) around the camp, but there was some kind of bugs which make noise at the same frequency as my alarm clock. That's why I woke up from time to time at night.

The tour is only US$30 / day, so that's as best as we can get. However, if you are willing to pay US$150 for 3 days in Chalatan, you can stay in a real wooden hut.

I came back to La Paz from Rurrenabaque to join the GAP tour which stayed in Residential Rosario. This is a picture I took from the balcony of my room. The mountain is Illimani (which somehow I thought was Chacaltaya). It's 5 km high. You can take a tour for 65B (US$10), 8:00am to 3:00pm, check details with Diana Tour. You can also ski in there if you dare. It's the highest ski area in South America.