Journey To La Paz

Written By: Amelia Aves & Raphael Gutierrez, 2nd Year Medical Students

The journey to La Paz was quite an epic one, taking us 46 hours total! The journey began for all of us at Heathrow where we gathered in terminal 4 and collected our very stylish APEX 7 branded fleeces and coats, courtesy of Workwear Express & Tiso! We were split into different flight routes, and sent to all four corners of the earth (literally).

For those of us on the México City flight route, the first part of our journey involved a 7 hour wait at Heathrow until 22:30. This meant we had the chance to explore duty free in quite some depth as well as to have our last meal in the UK for many weeks - for about five times the price of what we would be paying in Bolivia! We were very fortunate (unlike the unlucky Paris group) that our flight was on time, so we all boarded and explored the rather eclectic mix of entertainment offered by Aeroméxico - everything from Barbie to Magic Mike! The plane meals were as you may expect - questionable, but the 11 hours flew by and before we knew it we were in Mexico making friends with the drug detecting dogs during our seven hour layover. We had been told to re-check our bags for the flight to Lima, so were rather apprehensive when they never appeared, but were (sort of) reassured by airport staff that they would most likely have already been put on our next flight for us, which luckily they were (again unlike our poor Parisian friends).

The seven hour flight to Lima was again a good one, with us making up about half the plane. This made for an interesting situation as there were only two toilets available and many volunteers heeded the advice to drink as much as possible during breakfast service where tea, juice and water were abundant. This resulted in a huge queue down the entire plane aisle at the same time as we encountered quite a bit of turbulence! We all arrived in Lima safely though, where we grabbed dinner and were forced to try the infamous Inca Cola - the waitress pretended she was out of stock of Coke Zero (despite us being able to see it) as she felt Inca Cola was a rite of passage as a tourist in Peru.

The nine hour layover in Peru was a little tougher than Mexico. Some had managed to fight the other tourists for a lie down and a quick nap on comfy sofas, some weren’t so lucky and had to settle for the hard seats at the gate. When boarding the plane, we bumped into some other APEXers who had come overnight via Madrid, so got to hear of their lovely hostel stay and pastry breakfast (not jealous at all).

There’s not much to say about the final flight as quite frankly we were all passed out from take off to landing, but it went nice and fast! When we arrived in La Paz, many of us thought we had altitude sickness from the moment we stepped off the plane - a quick google search told us however that this takes 6 hours to set in so our headaches and general spaced-outness was more likely to be due to 46 hours of travelling and lack of sleep.

Once we’d landed at 5am and persuaded border control that we were indeed all there coincidentally for tourism, we hopped on buses to the hotels. Our hotel was very bizarrely laid out - two room 204s, neither of which were on floor 2 for example. After the hotel receptionist had given each and every one of us a guided tour to our room, we settled down for some much needed rest, ready to explore La Paz just 5 hours later!