Given my past adventures with Customs at Lima airport, where carrying two cameras is against the law, I am not looking forward to returning. By the time we arrive from Quito, it is 10:40pm, and the queue to clear immigration is substantial. There seems to be an unwritten rule that all international flights into Lima need to be as late in the evening as possible. Since the check-in attendant’s unilateral decision in Quito to check my bags through to La Paz, all I have to carry is my cameras, laptop, and the clothes I’m standing up in.
Lima runs a Russian Roulette system of random checks, which I’m sure is rigged somehow. You have to press a button after handing over your customs declaration which determines whether your baggage and hand luggage is subject to an x-ray assessment. Proving that I’m not totally unlucky, this time I get the green light rather than the red light, and am waved through to the arrivals hall.
Similar to my spot of hotel economising in Santiago, I have used a hotel where I can get a corporate rate, in this case the Crowne Plaza in Miraflores, which I can’t say enough good things about. I had sent them an email request to arrange a car to meet me at the airport, which is dutifully waiting for me. It is a nice, comfortable car, with a silent driver, who happily doesn’t want to know the ins and outs of my mother’s birthplace, and which can be charged to my hotel room. Perfecto. The reception desk is so organised, or I am the last arrival of the evening (it is 11:30pm by now), that they have my reservation form ready and waiting for me. I offer my American Express card as the method of payment and the receptionist promptly says “Seeing you want to pay with American Express….” I mentally fill in the gap “it will be additional 2.2%.” What she actually says is “we will upgrade you to a business room that includes breakfast.” Wow. That’s a first. The concierge does everything bar carry me to my room, which is a palatial corner suite. Wow. The only downside to all of this love and attention is that the hotel is on a busy road, and near the intersection of an even busier one, so there is quite a lot of traffic noise, despite the double-glazing. The hotel has tried to address this by producing a sleep kit that includes sleep mask, ear plugs, lavender mist and some kind of sleep-inducing CD. The ear plugs and lavender mist are enough for me, and soon enough it is 7am and time to get ready to return to the airport at 8am.
10 hours later, and with a total of 3.5 hours of flying time, I arrive in La Paz and negotiate a fare with the taxi driver to get me into the centre of La Paz. This seems to be an eventful journey, as in the first 10 minutes we enter what appears to be a pedestrian Indian market and have a minor accident caused by the taxi driver taking it in to his head to drive the wrong way down a one way street. By the time he tackles crossing what appears to be a shanty town by playing chicken with on-going traffic, I’m starting to think I’m about to meet the drivers three amigos to be robbed at gunpoint. As I’m considering the bullet-blocking properties of a Canon 5D Mark II and 5 blocks of the finest salted Ecuadorian chocolate (pretty good I think), and the weight and height advantage I have over the driver (he barely reaches my shoulder), we hit the top of a hill, and the city of La Paz unfolds underneath.
I’ve fallen hard twice in the last 4 days now. The first was tall and gorgeous with melting brown eyes, and the second is this first view of the city of La Paz. What a beautiful city, nestled in the valley below, at a mere 3600m above sea level. By the time I reach the hotel, the Radisson Plaza (also an economising corporate rate choice), it is almost 7pm, and I’m leaving again at 9am to head to Uyuni. La Paz and I will have to meet again. By the way, according to Tripadvisor, the Radisson is the worst hotel known to man. The décor is dated and the rooms need a refresh, but its clean, comfortable, the food is good, and the view from the 15th floor restaurant is mesmerising. It is also one of those rare hotels where you can still open the windows, and I spend a considerable amount of time hanging out of the window of my 9th floor room gawking at the view of this surprising city.
