A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. ~Lao Tzu

Exiting La Paz was as difficult as we had feared. The city’s streets were narrow and unpredictable, often ending in a pile of rubble or a series of potholes. Navigating through them with the dolphin was a sweating, white knuckled affair that ended in the dolphin getting stuck on an extremely steep street. We heard the familiar chugging sound and I pushed the truck as hard as I could, both of us leaning forward in a sympathy plea to make it over the hill. Right at the top, the dolphin’s engine died with a final cough and we began sliding backward, once again. The street was busy and narrow and the risk of a car crash was high. Jonas jumped out to place our stoppers behind the wheels and a woman began screaming at him from across the street. “Who told you you could come up this hill?? Trucks always get stuck here! You can’t come up here!” Cars began honking and drivers yelling, the woman finally shut up when she learned Jonas was Brazilian and we were still stuck on the hill. A fellow driver jumped out; he and I got behind the dolphin and pushed with all our might, the engine screamed and it crested the hill.

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La Paz, the capitol of Bolivia, sits in an enormous pot hole. The dolphin had gone through many holes and bumps throughout the trip, but this was the biggest yet. The city appears to be placed at the bottom of a huge crater, left by some deadly meteor thousands of years ago. In fact, the crater is a canyon through which a small river runs. Why would someone decide to build a city in a huge hole instead of on the never-ending, spacious plains around it, you ask? The answer is simple : The Spanish, in all their glory, found gold at the bottom of the canyon and created a city around the extraction process. La Paz never left its hole. Upon arrival in La Paz from the great plains, one can stand at the edge of the canyon and gaze down the steep cliffs to the sprawling city below. The effect is surreal – it seems that it would require a helicopter to move down into the metropolis. In fact, it almost did require a helicopter to get us and the dolphin back out. We had read about a Swiss resort hotel which had a special lot for campers; we assumed we would never find someplace large enough to house the dolphin in La Paz, so we headed for the southern rim of the hole where the hotel was located, miles below the edge. We picked up the only helpful Bolivian we were to find during our stay, and he guided us through the maze of the upper city. The roads were abysmal, ranging from barely paved to massive dusty potholes, remnants of the rainy season, to torn-up gravel pits to old cobblestone. When we reached the southern tip, we were directed onto a cobblestone street leading toward the rim.

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Yoshi, Jonas and I made one last trip together. Graham was still sick and decided to stay in Ollyantaytambo, so the three of us climbed quietly into the dolphin and Yoshi drove his last miles in the machine we had ... [Continue reading this entry]