31/08/2019 – Coroico to La Paz, Bolivia

We got up and showered before packing our things up and checking out of our room. We sat outside and had a little breakfast before asking our host to order a taxi. We got a taxi to the bus station where we were ushered into a minivan heading to La Paz. It was another collectivo situation but luckily we only needed another couple of passengers before we were off. Our luggage was strapped to the roof and I am sure we were charged 4 x the locals price of transport (still only £2 each). Then a lady hopped in the van and charged everyone a bus terminal fee (we had not set foot in the bus terminal!) which I found quite amusing! We had pre warned the driver that we wanted to go slowly, after genuinely fearing for our lives on the way to Coroico, and thankfully this driver was much more sensible! The journey was much more pleasant. We got back into La Paz bus terminal a couple of hours later, and Josh decided as we were here he would go and speak to the company who had driven us to Coroico badly and ruined our bags. He had a word and then the big boss came in. Josh said he wanted our driver to be told to slow down in the future, and could we have our money back as our bags are ruined. The boss man rang our driver and I did hear him tell him to not drive so crazy, and to our surprise we did actually feel listened to. After a good 20 minutes of chatting amongst several people we got our money back, shook hands and left. It doesn’t cover the cost of the bags but at least it will get us lunch today! We hailed a taxi, who tried to hugely overcharge us (something we are getting very used to, thankfully we knew the price having got the taxi here a few days ago.) Eventually he agreed to our price when he realised we weren’t that desperate to use his taxi, and we were dropped at our hostel we had stayed at previously in La Paz, Belmont B&B. The taxi man quite nice and asked where we were from and what we thought of Bolivia and La Paz. Americans have to pay to enter Bolivia, and I think because of this maybe there are fewer backpackers. We certainly haven’t come across many tourists here in comparison to other capital cities. We booked into our hostel, dropped our bags and walked to Alexander Coffee – the café we had been to a few days earlier (and recommended in the lonely planet for people with sensitive tummies). We got a bite to eat and enjoyed WiFi that actually worked! Then we walked back to our hostel and chilled for the rest of the evening. There was some sort of festival over the road and we could hear people singing bad covers of Whitney and Celine which was quite amusing!