Tiwanaku - Temple of the Sun tour

  La Paz, Bolivia Thursday, April 21, 2016

Whilst in La Paz, we took a trip to see this very old and very famous Temple. This is Bolivia's oldest archaeological site and their most important so we were very interested to see it. It all started out ok but the scenery along the route wasn't anywhere near as beautiful as that we had seen in Peru which considering we were so close was unexpected. We were still in the same mountains afterall. Our first stop was a viewpoint so we could marvel at the snowcapped peaks away in the distance...and the rubbish piled on the floor where the bus stopped! It was filthy. Not a very good impression at all. Then the museum located near the temple was next. No photos allowed in here as the flashes might damage the pottery! That must be the same excuse they used for not having any lights at all in there. The objects were not lit so you couldn't really see them and the lights in the museum were all the old fashioned fluorescent strips and none of those were turned on either. There were very few information boards and those were all in Spanish so many people needed a translator. All they had in the way of explanation of the exhibits were a few A4 sheets of paper stuck to the back of the cabinet. The cabinets looked like they had been made in the 1950s and were shockingly bad. All in all it was dreadful. It felt more like a school strapped for cash had put an exhibition on made by the kids. Jody found the visitors book when we left to leave a message to urge them to update the museum. This was supposed to be the country's premier site afterall. The woman manning the desk came over and snatched the book out of Jody's hand, giving her a mouthful of Quechua, which we were sure was not pleasant! What a dreadful way to treat your visitors Jody snatched the book back even more determined to write something in it now! We all walked next door to the stone museum. We have to say this one was much nicer and clearly had been built to impress. The lighting was dim and the ancient stones lit beautifully so they really shone out. But no photos here either. Apparently, these stones which spent a couple of 1000 years in the ground, were then moved to La Paz near the football ground where they spent 40 years being climbed on and had bottles thrown at them and had even been shot at by football fans, were then hauled somewhere else before being brought to the museum, will be damaged by camera flashes. Go figure! We really were beginning to take a dislike to this country and we had only been here a week. Our guide Edwin, led us over to the temple at last and another disappointment lay in store for us. Over the centuries, the temple has been robbed of it's stone and a mere 40% of it is left. The beautiful sun gate (for which the temple is most famous) got moved by a British Lord in the 19C who had planned to take it back to his stately home in England. When war broke out between Chile & Bolivia, he abandoned it where he left it so it wasn't even where it had been originally built. Everything about this once beautiful temple had a bleak abandoned feel - which of course it is. It hasn't been inhabited by anything except guinea pigs for 1000's of years. Not of course the fault of anyone living today either but such a shame. All of this was followed by a very disappointing lunch in a "tourist restaurant" and altogether this was probably the worst trip we have taken to see anything anywhere in the world. We had come to Bolivia excited as always, but our enthusiasm for it was disappearing fast. Would we find anywhere in this country to redeem it?? Let's hope so!