When we first arrived in La Paz we weren't too sure where to leave the van. In the end we decided to park it round the corner from the hostel we were using as a base but for extra security to sleep in it at night instead of using the hostel bed. In fact after a couple of days we realised we didn't even need to be checked into the hostel and could just use the facilities for free and stay in the van, nobody seemed to mind!
This worked for us over the weekend but we weren't sure what would happen about parking during the week. Monday was our Death Road trip, so we were up early and back late. I was quite relieved to see the van had not been towed although there was a typed piece of paper under the wiper with some message about a traffic violation and a request to pay 50Bs (approx £4.50) into a certain bank account. It all looked very dodgy though, hand ripped from a larger sheet and with no official looking logo, we just assumed it was some sort of scam.
We had a shock the next morning, when we returned from our breakfast and shower run to the hostel...
OK, so maybe that note was the real deal but we were a little surprised we hadn't spotted the clamp either the night before or when we first got up. The fine wasn't much but we weren't exactly sure how to pay it! We had few few things to sort out so we decided to crack on with them and worry about the clamp later. In the evening we returned to the van to find another surprise...
Now we were even more confused but at least we weren't clamped any more!
It finally twigged for us when we came back from breakfast on the Wednesday to find the clamp attached again....they obviously clamp vehicles during the day but remove the clamps in the evening even if the fine hasn't been paid. Seemed like a strange system but that's Bolivia.
'Never mind, we have the 12V compressor we bought in Chile for just such an emergency' we thought. Unfortunately this turned out to be a useless piece of cheap Chinese tat that couldn't blow up a beach ball.
'Never mind, we can just fit the spare tyre and drive to a garage to pump the other one up' we thought. Seemed like a plan until we discovered the jack that came with the van had a worn thread and wasn't working.
By now we were a little disheartened but we really needed to find a solution. I decided our best bet was to find someone to borrow a jack from and managed to luck out with the first person I asked who not only was happy to lend us his jack but also spoke English, making the whole situation much easier. The luck didn't hold though, whilst the jack was fine for removing our flat tyre it wasn't quite high enough to put the inflated spare on. Worse still was once the flat tyre was off it returned to its inflated state and was then too big to put back on, meaning I couldn't return the jack to the helpful Bolivian! In the end we managed to get it back on with the help of a screwdriver for leverage and the Bolivian who stood on the tyre to make it deflate.
By this point it was after midnight and we were running out of options. However the Bolivian guy was still able to help by pointing us in the direction of a street of late night mechanics, about 15 minutes walk away.
We found a mechanic but had to wait for him to finish the jobs he was working on so by the time we had all got a cab back to the van, fitted the spare and returned to his workshop to reinflate the tyre and refit it, it was well after 2am. The whole job cost 100Bs, twice the price of the fine! At least we were back on the road.
We parked on a different street that night!
The next day we headed into the town to get a new jack. However, after 20 minutes looking around in the car spares area of town we began to think we weren't going to find one...only a few shops sold them and none big enough for the van. We were about to give up when I spotted a shop with lots of metal working machines in it. Christine was pretty confused about why I was heading to a shop that obviously didn't sell car parts but it turned out to be an inspired decision as the guy said he could fix the jack for 80Bs, way less than we were expecting to pay for a new one.
The thread through one of the pieces of the jack was totally worn away so the guy machined us a new part.
While this was being done we decided to head to the electronic market to try to buy a waterproof camera for the trip into the rainforest we were planning. On the way we passed through the gas appliance area of town so decided to stop to see if we could get our cylinder refilled....big mistake. Not only did we end up paying 20Bs for an incompetent gas guy to fail to fill our cylinder, we also got clamped again while we were trying to sort it out!!
This was extremely annoying as we were standing right next to the van while the guy was covertly clamping on the other side.....what made it worse was there were loads of non-Chilean cars parked all the way up the street but of course we were the only ones clamped.
We didn't really feel in a camera buying mood after all this.
We paid the fine this time....and have been parking in private parking lots ever since!
