Continuing my acquaintance with La Paz

I've continued to explore in and around La Paz as best I can (while attempting to do some work on my BA research) and I took some time yesterday to see some museums and walk around some more. 

I took a tour so I got to go on top of la Iglesia San Francisco, which had these wonderful tiles. 

This is Calle Jaen, a street which is home to many museums and a lovely array of wall colors. Sadly I was there on a monday when all the museums were closed. Hopefully I'll make it back before I leave

This painting by Marcelo Bascope was on display at the Bolivian Museum of Contemporary Art, which was a private museum housed in the beautiful 18th century mansion. I really like how the artist incorporated the Andean weavings as the foreground of the painting.

If you can't tell the majority of these books are different legal codes and related texts. I've seen a number of these vendors selling thing related to the penal code or other laws. I guess this is just what's considered casual reading in Bolivia?

After my wandering I got motivated and decided I wanted to go on a real adventure so I booked a spot on a mini bus going to the top of Chacaltaya (a mountain) and the Valle de la Luna. So the next morning said minibus showed up at my hostel and I jumped in with a group of other tourists. 

As we began to climb up the mountain I thought to myself "I've been on worse roads." Over time I appended this thought. But eventually after driving far to close to the edge of a cliff for a long time we arrived at the parking lot of a defunct ski lodge that had vanished due to climate change. 

That beast over on the right is what got us up there (we only had to get out of the car so it could make it up a hill once). You can't see much but we're high up in the Andes in the midst of a snow storm so there wasn't much of a panoramic view but it was still interesting to see the mountains, the llamas, and the electric lines that zig zagged up the mountain and connected to every single small concrete shack/dwelling. 

Even though it was snowing in the middle of the Bolivian summer and there was so much static electricity stinging me from what I assume was some sort of lighting cloud nearby, I made it to the top. At 17,685 feet above sea level it's the highest I've ever been  though not especially high for the Andes. My ears were really cold but in the end it was certainly worth it.

Club Andino Boliviano was the highest ski resort in the world until global warming destroyed the glacier it was on. Behind there is the last bit of the mountain we climbed. It didn't seem like much of a distance until you factored in how hard it was to breath, much less hike, at the altitude. 

This trip was yet another time it was a great idea to have brought tupperware along. This ham sandwich was awesome after my long morning. 

After telling the german man behind me on the bus all about Montana, which he was interested in because of the film The Horse Whisperer (which I of course informed him was about Monty Roberts who had been a student of my grandfathers) we continued back down the mountain to the Valle de la Luna. 

The valle de la luna is like the badlands in South Dakote but with crazier spires and holes and things. It was formed by the wind and volcanic sediment and maybe there was an ancient lake involved? I'm still unclear the tour was being conducted in Spanish and I just don't care about geology enough to pay attention. But it looked cool. 

Tomorrow I have an interview with an NGO person about my thesis! Hopefully I get good data so I can stop worrying and go on more adventures.