I encountered a couple of brothers from Germany traveling from Iquique to La Paz and they invited me to travel with them in their Nissan 4X4. They are Christians and the whole experience was excellent travelling across the Atacama Desert. We saw a lot of vincuña, alpaca and a large Rodent the size of a rabbit, the name of which slips my mind.

La Paz is much poorer of a city than any I encountered in Chile. It is a total cultural change. There are two very remarkable things that I noticed immediately. The first is that the whole city is over run with taxis and busses. People can´t afford to own their own car. The second thing I noticed were the little indian ladies that sell goods on the street. They are all build very short and very wide. You have to see them to believe it. They wear little bowler type felt hats that seem to be only something a lady does. They carry their goods and their babies in a sling of bright cotton cloth on their backs. They wear very nice dresses that hang straight to their ankles from their exceptionally wide hips. Some of them sit on the side walk while others have little booths that they sell at. Most of them knit while they have nothing else to do.

Why would God make such unusually shaped people... of course there is also seen an unusually tall gauky looking man with a skinny neck and long sunburnt forehead wearing coke bottle glasses. He is probably more of an oddity in these parts.