Bolivia - land of protest

We were supposed to see the ruins of Tiwanaku on our way from Peru to Bolivia but, because of the change of plans, we headed out from La Paz yesterday. From the motorway we say a big stream of people walking down the street. The bus driver said that it was parents protesting for better equipment in their children´s schools. Sounds far enough to me - I´ve seen some of their schools.

La Paz is actually made up of two cities - La Paz and El Alto. And we needed to go through La Paz to get to the ruins. Unfortunately, the protests were continuing. This meant that the main road was blocked with so we did a little tiki tour (aptly named, you´ll find out why later) throught the back streets (all dirt roads) of the neighbourhood. It added about 30 minutes to our trip but was quite interesting looking into backyards etc.

(Apparently the reason for the protests is that the Ayamara people would like a separate district in the city from the other people (mainly Quechua)).

There was some lovely pastoral scenery again out to the ruins. The houses are still built like they were 100 years ago. Clay bricks, thatch roofs because this provides the best protection from the heat in the summer and cold in the winter. Mind you, they were still harvesting the crop by hand, so it must be a pretty tough life.

The ruins we visited were from the Tiwanaku people who were around from c.1500 BC to c.1250 AD. They were the longest surviving empire after Egypt. They were faily well advanced with their own pyramid at Tiwanaku along with a temple and other ruins. They were the predecessors of the Inca people (Quechua speakers) and I think also the Ayamara people (who were one of the few people who had an alliance with the Incas rather than being conquered by them). There are a number of statues surviving at the ruins, including a sungate and the Kontiki statue from which the reed boat expedition to the Easter Islands and then (failed) to New Zealand took it´s name.

There´s also a museum at the ruins and the guide (Eduardo) took us through it explaing the most important pieces. It made it far more interesting that if we had wandered through ourselves. I made a last minute toilet stop and the bus nearly left without me. Fortunately, a chorus of ´where´s Nina?´ saved the day. It would have been a long walk back.

The guide gave us some interesting pieces of information about Bolivia along the way. For example, health care is free. Education and health care is compulsory for children. Public university is virtually free (c.US$ 30 a year) and c.50% of med students are women. 50% of Engineering students are also women. Perhaps we should send someone over here to find out how they managed it?????

Getting out of La Paz had been a bit of a challenge. Getting back in was a three hour cross country journey. We tried to go throught El Alto but met road block after road block after dead end. The main road was littered with rocks (some of them quite large) and therefore unpassable.

I have to meet with the group on 3 minutes so I´m gonna have to leave you on tenterhooks as to whether we managed to get back into the city yesterday.