Political program in La Paz

I am in La Paz now from the second political program and to make the second travel letter. La Paz is an unusuall city. With the city center around 3500meter above sea level it takes some days adjusting. El Alto is anothere city just outside La Paz, its 15min with a bus and its around 4100 meter above sea level and almost 1million people live there. Mostly Aymara people that moved there the last 20 years.

Before La Paz we was the weekend in Coripata, which is a small village in Yungas, a area east of La Paz. It is the heartland to the cocafarmers and we participated on a meeting with the farmers. It is an amazing area. Around 2000 meter above sea level, almost tropical vegetation, deep and steep valleys that makes the area hard to visit. The road there is often closed because of landslides , just room for one car and on one side its 50 - 300 meters straight down, truly amazing and scary at the same time.

On my birthday I got up early, bought a newspaper and ate breakfast in peace reading the paper. After that we had a meeting at the norwegian consulat, before it was champions league, after the football match we had dance lesson in Aymara folkdance, something that was really fun (and hard). Dinner was of all things sushi in La Paz!!! it was good and then we went to a jaz club. All in all a good and unexpected day. And I got the Bolivian football shirt, it is worth mention that Bolivia won 6 - 1 against Argentina a month ago, big moment for the people.

Manchester just won against Arsenal in the first semifinal in Champions League, and I am getting ready for a new meeting. It is will be an interesting one, about the gas war with Chile in 2003(ca), it wasnt a real war, just bad friends. On saturday I go to Peru to renew my visa. So I guess I spend around a week around lake titicaca. Looking at Inca ruins, try to sleep on reed islands and some more, I need to read in the travel book what is to do there. One thing that is really nice is that it is cold in the evening and night, the heat in Santa Cruz is hard, but now I dont have to worry about that for a week and a half more.