Day 14 - July 31,2017 La Paz, Bolivia

Our second hotel in La Paz costs the same as our last one before we headed out to Lake Titicaca. But it is significantly inferior both in facilities and service attitude. The room is dark and small, not the 5* it advertised. I couldn't see how the review rating can be so high. The only good thing was that breakfast was included.

We booked a guided tour to Tiwanaku today. It included pick up from hotel and lunch. Instead of the assigned time, the guide showed up 30 mins early. Fortunately, we were prepared to leave early. After driving around the city for almost an hour to pick up the rest of the group (we thought of this as a free city tour and a demonstration of the super driving skill of the bus driver in the chaotic morning traffics), the tour finally started. Tiwanaku is 2h drive west of La Paz on the road to Peru border and is the site of one of the most important civilizations in South America. The Tiwanaku lived from 200BC to 1200AD on the southern shore of Lake Titicaca. They built temples and pyramids that were so advanced that archeologists today still haven't figured out their techniques. For example, they could make multiple 90 deg cuts in hard stones so precise that baffle experts. The stone slabs used to build their pyramids were so massive (100 tons) that we wonder how they were able to move it hundreds of km from far away mountains to this location. The most intriguing objects are the H blocks that function like our Lego blocks for building. We have watched this on History channel that suggested there was UFO technology. The H  blocks have precisely cut slots that are less than 90 deg resembling an inverted V. This technique made the interlocking blocks very secure. It is said that the Tiwanaku inspired the Inca civilization that followed.

Unfortunately, our guide didn't seem to know too much to answer our questions. All he did was just to regurgitate a bunch of numbers and facts in heavily accented "English". We learned more from reading the description on the signs.

The tour took most of the day till 4p. We were just dropped off near the main square. Fortunately Commander Wu knew his way back to the hotel through a maze of steep shopping streets and we rested till dinner time.

Yi started to have problems walking to restaurant in the evening. She seemed to have pinched nerves likely from the steep climb on the Sun Island yesterday. We could only hope that she could recover quickly after tonight's rest.