La Feria de Chocolate y Zona Sur

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This entry will probably be short as I don´t have too much to talk about for this weekend, but I wanted to add an entry anyway.

Well I had plans to travel this weekend, but due to various reasons, I stayed in the city. One of the reasons was threat of blockades on the highways around La Paz. On Saturday, I had a mission to go to the black market to buy a new landline phone as the one that came with my apartment always has a lot of static. I called up Kevin, a new Oxfam Quebec cooperant from Bathurst, New Brunswick (45 minutes from my hometown) to see if would like to go to the market as well and he gratefully accepted. Besides buying a phone for my apartment, it was a pretty unproductive day in the market. There are just so many people there all the time. I did take the opportunity to show Kevin the Artisinal market (aka. the tourist market) and the witches market, where they have dried llama fetuses and other weird herbal medicines. Like always, after walking to the market, which is on the other side of the city, and then walking back, I was so exhausted, so the night was pretty much a write off.

Sunday afternoon, Alejanadro, Linnea and I took an adventure to Zona Sur to check out a chocolate fair (Feria de Chocolate) that was going on in one of its districts. I must say that it really did not meet my expectations. First of all, it had a 10 boliviano entrance fee that we had to wait in line to about a half and hour to get. Once we finally got inside the hall where the fair was going on, all these chocolate companies had booths set up around the perimeter of the hall and people walked around in single-file looking at all the exhibitions. There were barely any free samples. I ended up being suckered in to buy fruit covered in chocolate, and on my way back to meet Alejandro and Linnea, some women bumped into me, the chocolate from my fruit went onto my shirt, she looked at me in disgust and walked away. This did not help with my impressions of people who live in this area of town. It´s funny that in central La Paz it is very hard to use a 50 boliviano bill as no one has change, but since we were in the rich area, people were using 100s left and right, just to buy chocolate.

After the disappointing chocolate fair, we head onto the main street of Zona Sur to check out the grocery store (Ketal) as this one is much, much larger than the one that is close to me. I was able to find some stuff that I can't find in the central part of La Paz, like oyster sauce and hoisin sauce, however, for the asian-inspired cooking I enjoy, I can´t find fish sauce anywhere in this country. After shopping at the grocery store (hipermercado) we headed back to our place to eat dinner and relax for the rest of the evening.

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Photos

Rio Choqueyapu
The Lonely Planet books say the river name should be shortened to Rio Choke because of the nauseous fumes that it expels. The river runs underground for most of the Central Zone of the city, but here in Zona Sur (the rich area) it is exposed.

My chocolate spot
Some woman ran into me while I was carrying fruit covered in chocolate, she looked at me like I was in the wrong and walked away. Unfortunately, this just confirmed my impression of people from Zona Sur.

El Ceibo
In my preference, this company makes the best chocolate in town. There chocolate covered raisins are amazing.

Political Campaign from Opposition
Currently in Bolivia, the opposition is trying to put through a law that 2/3 of the vote is needed to pass a law.

Pre-made Canned Drinks
You can buy pre-made drinks here in a can...including chuflay (7-up, lemon and singani), whiskey and cola and rum and cola.

3 beer for 10 bolivianos
That´s cheap...about $1.25

Comments

[Cindy (Mom's friend)]

Merry Christmas Patrick
I hope you have something wonderful planned for today. I'm looking forward to your next entry.