Outside La Paz

After a day recovering from an all night flight and the altitude I was ready to go.  Thursday morning was cool, bright and partly cloudy.  In La Paz you can not get lost.  When you dont know where you are just walk downhill and you will arrive in center city.  the lower you go the better the buildings and residences. The lower you go the warmer the weather.  The streets were very busy in the morning with demonstations.  There was a two day general strike.

I spent the day wandering around the city and visiting the less than spectacular museums.  the best part of La Paz is the people watching.  Visited a few major churches.  Unremarkable except for the variety and mass of fresh flowers at all the side alters.  I continued to be amazed by the number of street vendors.  For lunch I went to an Indian restuarant.  Excellent food and served by Europeans.  Didnt see any Indians.

On Friday took a tour to one of the most archilogically important sites in the Andean region.  the name of the society and city is Tiwanuku.  A short drive from the city brought us to a great plan surrounded by low lying mountains.  We drove through very depressed areas.  Clearly a third world country. We were a small group and the other tourists we saw were Bolivian school children.  There are two museums to visit and the remains of temples.  The society goes back more than 3k years and it reached its zenith about 1,000AD.  they were the precursers to the Inca empire.  The first museum was pathetic.  The ceilings were falling down and the only relic in the building was a 30foot tall figure carved from sandstone.  It was unremarkable but probably the key treasure remaining. The other museum had the usual pottery, etc.  The outside buildings were bassically reconstructed from stones that had not been taken by the railroad or for other construction.  A few observatonst:  huge blocks of stone (some weighing more than 100 tons) were hauled from miles awy with out the use of the wheel; they did not do human sacrifice; at its height the population exceeded 1mm people; the night skies were very important to their philosophy (building were positioned for the movement of the sun.  they coordinated this with other of their buildings that were miles away), and, their agricultural practices were very sophisticated.  They were able to get production many times more than traditioanl methods and they used techniques that protected the crops from frost and hard freezes. It is their agricultural genius that enabled the society to flourish.

The ride back to La Paz was beautiful.  We could see the great Andean peaks in the distance (20k ft) and upon arriving to La Paz we got vistas of the city that were dramatic.