La Paz and overnight bus to Sucre 22 July

SATURDAY 22nd La Paz & overnight bus to Sucre

Valle de Luna

Five of us went with our guide by public bus to "Moon Valley".

It is a place that has limestone stalagmites due to erosion. It covers many hectares.

It turned out to be a bit ho hum but the main attraction was that I got to do an Earth Cache.  We saw a couple of Vaspachas which are a cross between a large rabbit and a squirrel.

Valle de la Luna 

Amy and Paul with us.

They joined the trip in La Paz.

Amy is from Dublin and Paul is from Sydney.

The main entertainment for me are the bus rides. For Bob 2.5 (NZ50c) you can go for miles. Most of the buses are Toyota Hiace vans but there are a few a big old Dodge buses.

We returned to La Paz central and went to the market.  The Bolivians (and Peruvians) seem to have their main meal at lunchtime.  We had fried chicken (always dry) with rice and a mixture of potato and carrot followed by a really nice soup all for Bob14, less than 3 kiwi.

We walked the streets for a bit and returned to the hotel.

We had checked out before our morning trip and now retrieved our bags and set up camp in the hotel lobby while we waited for our transfer to the bus station.

Our overnight bus (12 hours) departed at 7pm for Sucre. 

Another double decker bus with three seats across. These were the best yet. Fully reclinable into a flat bed without disturbing the people seated behind.

Unfortunately we had been warned that the bus may not have a toilet and Lindsey was very worried about how she would survive overnight.  It turned out that the bus did have a toilet but it was kept locked.  So apart from some offical toilet stops if we needed extra, which Lindsey did, she had to let the driver know.  He would stop and she had to squat beside the buses rear wheel.  Not very satisfactory.  Lindsey had a sleepless night, of course, worrying about how long she could hold things together before the next organised stop.  So our first Bolivian bus experience was different! We have two more shorter trips ahead of us in Bolivia before two long ones in Argentina.  Hopefully the Argentinian buses are better.

We arrived in Sucre around 7am and caught a bus transfer to our hotel.