La Paz
(DAY270 : Copacabana - La Paz : 100 miles)
(DAY271 - 285 : La Paz)
The ride to La Paz was exquisite, with exotic sprinkled all over.
On the left: Stybba, 19 years old and with 200.000 miles on the clock.
On the right: Katirga, just turned one, and covered 15.000 miles.
Guess which burns a liter of oil every 500 miles.
Our dinghy, I mean ferry, docking.
Backing out will be a pain. And no, it's not a drive thru.
Kids with Cecilia. Not one came to talk to me :P
Our last look at Lago Titicaca.
Some get an urge to climb those peaks. I wonder if they are like cold beer.
We're not the only ones traveling.
On our approach to La Paz, the road took a strange appearance with rocks and junk all over it. Then we came across a barrier which didn't quite bar us. We continued through the road blocks until we came across the police who waved us over. This is a time the entire world is expecting Bolivia to fall into civil war. Road blocks and strikes are all around.
Where are we coming from? How's the road? Were there any accidents?
Actually, yeah, there was this truck...
What had happened? Was anybody injured?
Um, guys, we are tourists, YOU are the cops!
With all that importance vested on our shoulders, we reported all road news as best as we could. Several times, as they came out of the car one by one to repeat the questions. Then, they told us that it might be dangerous ahead, so they would escort us to safety. Ahem, sure!
We continued behind police escort for quite a short while as they got distracted with whatever, and we just rode on, this time to answer the civilians' similar questions. Ultimately, the protesters didn't really have any beef with us anyway.
Thus we entered La Paz, the world's highest capital, the center of chaos and minivan hell. It was love at first sight!
Welcome to La Paz.
Note dried lama fetuses. As in Peru, they are buried under homes, etc. for prosperity, even though they clearly don't work.
Residencial Sucre's rooms were decent and cost $12, so we rode them in.
Each room at Residential Sucre is equipped with a personal torture chamber(!)
La Paz is not only a city unlike any other, but also has some truly bizzare areas right on its edge. Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) is just that: bizzare.
Valle de la Luna
Days in La Paz went by, in La Paz fashion, fast.
Since the little incident that ended up in a truck ride in Peru, I had been considering getting a GPS, especially with Salar de Uyuni approaching. In Peru, they were asking $1000 for a Garmin 60csx, which would cost $300 in the US over the internet. But here in La Paz' black market, it's yours for $400. So I folded and dished out. Then, it was a chore to figure out how to set the thing up using my Mac. Two years after they promised, Garmin finally does offer Mac compatibility, but you have to "convert" existing maps to Mac format, and need a PC to do that. After using the thing for a while, I concluded that if I want an acceptable product, I have to wait for Apple to make it. Garmin's both hardware and software appear to have been designed by seven year olds, and yet, they own the market! In any case, we now are fully GPS equipped.
While I was in close proximity to such a market, I also decided to buy another portable USB hard drive. The problem was, all they had around here was the Western Digital brand. Due to demands of my work, I need a lot of disk space and have used all kinds of drives from many different brands. But after four WD drives (3 external, 1 internal) crashed on me in less than a month or out the box, I had sworn not to approach another. These were distinctly different models, at different times, but the latest incident was three years ago. In the end, I thought they must have learned a thing or two, and bought one. First it failed and made me pull my hair out, then, led to the demise of my internal hard disk! If someone told me this, I'd tell him he's full of it as there should be no relevance whatsoever, but it's a different story when you see it go down. The rest is a long and painful story, and cost me a lot of time and money.
Operating on the PowerBook after an assassination attempt by a Western Digital hard disk.
(DAY271 - 285 : La Paz)
The ride to La Paz was exquisite, with exotic sprinkled all over.
On the left: Stybba, 19 years old and with 200.000 miles on the clock.
On the right: Katirga, just turned one, and covered 15.000 miles.
Guess which burns a liter of oil every 500 miles.
Our dinghy, I mean ferry, docking.
Backing out will be a pain. And no, it's not a drive thru.
Kids with Cecilia. Not one came to talk to me :P
Our last look at Lago Titicaca.
Some get an urge to climb those peaks. I wonder if they are like cold beer.
We're not the only ones traveling.
On our approach to La Paz, the road took a strange appearance with rocks and junk all over it. Then we came across a barrier which didn't quite bar us. We continued through the road blocks until we came across the police who waved us over. This is a time the entire world is expecting Bolivia to fall into civil war. Road blocks and strikes are all around.
Where are we coming from? How's the road? Were there any accidents?
Actually, yeah, there was this truck...
What had happened? Was anybody injured?
Um, guys, we are tourists, YOU are the cops!
With all that importance vested on our shoulders, we reported all road news as best as we could. Several times, as they came out of the car one by one to repeat the questions. Then, they told us that it might be dangerous ahead, so they would escort us to safety. Ahem, sure!
We continued behind police escort for quite a short while as they got distracted with whatever, and we just rode on, this time to answer the civilians' similar questions. Ultimately, the protesters didn't really have any beef with us anyway.
Thus we entered La Paz, the world's highest capital, the center of chaos and minivan hell. It was love at first sight!
Welcome to La Paz.
Note dried lama fetuses. As in Peru, they are buried under homes, etc. for prosperity, even though they clearly don't work.
Residencial Sucre's rooms were decent and cost $12, so we rode them in.
Each room at Residential Sucre is equipped with a personal torture chamber(!)
La Paz is not only a city unlike any other, but also has some truly bizzare areas right on its edge. Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) is just that: bizzare.
Valle de la Luna
Days in La Paz went by, in La Paz fashion, fast.
Since the little incident that ended up in a truck ride in Peru, I had been considering getting a GPS, especially with Salar de Uyuni approaching. In Peru, they were asking $1000 for a Garmin 60csx, which would cost $300 in the US over the internet. But here in La Paz' black market, it's yours for $400. So I folded and dished out. Then, it was a chore to figure out how to set the thing up using my Mac. Two years after they promised, Garmin finally does offer Mac compatibility, but you have to "convert" existing maps to Mac format, and need a PC to do that. After using the thing for a while, I concluded that if I want an acceptable product, I have to wait for Apple to make it. Garmin's both hardware and software appear to have been designed by seven year olds, and yet, they own the market! In any case, we now are fully GPS equipped.
While I was in close proximity to such a market, I also decided to buy another portable USB hard drive. The problem was, all they had around here was the Western Digital brand. Due to demands of my work, I need a lot of disk space and have used all kinds of drives from many different brands. But after four WD drives (3 external, 1 internal) crashed on me in less than a month or out the box, I had sworn not to approach another. These were distinctly different models, at different times, but the latest incident was three years ago. In the end, I thought they must have learned a thing or two, and bought one. First it failed and made me pull my hair out, then, led to the demise of my internal hard disk! If someone told me this, I'd tell him he's full of it as there should be no relevance whatsoever, but it's a different story when you see it go down. The rest is a long and painful story, and cost me a lot of time and money.
Operating on the PowerBook after an assassination attempt by a Western Digital hard disk.
posted by Serdar at
5:08 PM
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2 Comments:
Hahahahhahhaa........What up with that shower???with the liter of oir bein burn every 500 km and nothing wrong with the 18 year old BMW? And what about your computer surgery?? hahahaaha.............. is the laptop ok? Hope you threw that WD out the motel room.Pedro
Actually they took that junk back after a $40 deduction. It's incredible how dedicated a company can be to manufacturing pieces of shite.
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