La Paz

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So we, my friend Steven and I (a partner on the project) arrived in La paz on the 15th. At 13,000 feet we were obviously light headed and tired after five connections. We went through Costa Rica, Ecuador (Quito and Guayaquil), Lima, Peru and then finally arrived in La Paz. It was super cold and we were super tired. We stayed with Ramon´s Aunt Martha at her apartment. For those of you who don´t know he is another partner on the project. La Paz was nice enough but it literally took us until Tuesday to feel normal. The headaches associated with an altitude like this were really aweful. Plus not being acclimated you would be winded from walking just one block. Also since La Paz lies in a valley everything is up one hil down the other. We relaxed on Saturday, walked around as much as our bodies could take and had a nice dinner with Aunt Martha. Sunday we drove to Lago Titicaca to eat some fresh trout. It was about a two hour drive so we rented a taxi for the day and took off about noon. Once we arrived we stopped at the first restaurant we saw, it was full of people and out of trout. So we drove on to the next, but before we could arrive we encounted our first bloqueo in Boilivia. Essentially whenever the people protest something from the president down to a municipal issue. This was a municipal issue some people wanted the border of the town in one place others in another place. So we encounted a mass of people sitting in the street, rocks and broken glass in the street and some burning tree stump as well. Intent on getting some trout we hoofed it about 30 minutes to the nearest town, had a delicious lunch and hoofed it back. It was worth it, plus the walk gave us a chance to really enjoy looking at the lake and taking in the surrounding villages. Monday we worked, more or less. We had a morning meeting with IISEC, Instituto de Investigaciones Social y Economico, we chatted with some PhD students about the situation in Bolivia and got some great advice for making our project more quantitative because as it stands it is purely qualitative. After our morning meeting we headed to USAID in the afternoon to meet with the director of alternative development. He was surprisingly honest about the situation, regading coca eradication etc.. It was informative but also filled with some propaganda of US goverment intervention, but pleasingly not too filled with propaganda. Like I said, actually pretty honest, much more than we expected from an official. Once we finished there we headed to the meet with Ramon´s uncle who is the director of alternative development in Bolivia. We discussed the program, initiatives and met some of his colleagues who work in the Chapare (where we will be working). We set up a meeting for Tuesday of the next week to discuss the project further once the entire team is assembled. We expected to have more meetings but this was it so we basically bummed around on Tuesday and Wednesday morning until we flew to Cochabamba. La Paz was nice enough but not my favorite city, the altitude, inability to catch our breathe and the cold made it less than an ideal place to hang out. Plus the way the city is mapped out makes it difficult to walk places, you pretty much have to cab it unless you have time to figure out the bus system. Anyway, that´s all for La Paz.

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