Oct 10-24, 2016: Bolivia

Oct. 13, 2016.  Ananay Hostal, La Paz, Bolivia.

• A bit of a cough is still with me beginning yesterday - I sure hope it goes away.  This is the first lung-related medical problem I have encountered on this trip.  And you know me with lung-related problems...

• Breakfast of coffee and an egg & tomato sandwich at a stall on the town square, then noticed my bus was already there, so I hopped aboard around 8 AM.  Lucky I did, for it left about 15 minutes later, despite the advertised 9AM departure time.  So much for my theory that buses in this part of the world always leave on the dot.

• The first part of the ride was lovely, with views of Lake Tititcaca, sometimes from both sides as the bus a followed a ridge south.  Unfortunately, the last half of the 5 hour trip was dreadful: first just plain boring, flat, uninteresting scenery; then, even worse, the road became awful as the main road was under construction.  Bumpity bump at about ten miles an hour.  

• But arriving at the lip of the depression that La Paz is in, and seeing it below as we descended down the rim into the city, was a gas.  The bus left us off only about a kilometer from this hostel, which I had picked from good old Lonely Planet, so a short walk and I was home.

• Very cool hostel, three stories high, with common areas on each floor, rooftop city views, and a beanbag-chair lounge with TV.  Its name, Ananay, means "how nice" in Quechua.

• Took a shower, ate just up the street at a Chinese restaurant serving exclusively chicken dishes, visited the not-very-interesting Calle Jaen Museums (conveniently located just up the street from the hostel), and then back to the hostel by 4.  Thinking of laying low, certainly this evening, and maybe part or all of tomorrow, to see if I can shake this cough before I do any more tourist stuff.  Anyway, this is a nice, quiet, hostel to recover in.  And so far I haven't even detected another guest.  Break my heart.

• Bed by 5, read Moby Dick for a few hours, then a full sleeping pill, and another when I woke up at 3 (which is often the case).  First time I've taken two, but it did the trick.