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Published: February 4th 2008
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El Prada and Plaza San Francisco
I live just up from here, it is not the most quiet of places but there is plenty to see. Ahh, La Paz. This is now my fourth time arriving in this fair city so I figured it deserved mention. There are give or take a million people who claim residency in La Paz and its uphill counterpart, El Alto. Not including El Alto, most of these people are stuffed into a valley with steep walls and a mix of colonial cobble and indigenous resourcefulness. I have spent altogether a couple weeks in this place but still haven´t quite wrapped my brain around it. However, as I am unable to refrain from doing so, below are some contrived observations and sweeping generalizations:
In sharp contrast to the states, the further uphill you go the poorer the people get. Starting in El Alto, you have the have-nots: have-not a door, have-not four walls, have-not enough food, have-not a solution for growing gang violence, and have-not an idea why they should live with the fact that they have to pay five times what they used to for the coca they need to relieve their altitude headaches because we in the good old US of A destroy their fields (more on that later). Then, as you walk downhill to El Prada and
La Paz by day
So many buildings, so little space then continue towards the path of least resistance, money starts sprouting out of the ground. It is as if the plata was so heavy in the pockets of the descendants of Spanish money that they just rolled downhill until they slowed enough to find a place to build their sky scraper.
So you have that side of it. Now here are some other aspects that you are going to have to imagine because I have to rely on other people for pictures.
An old woman with a stiff, short gait but brilliant eyes walking arm in arm with her daughter on a narrow path. Me, stuck behind them for 5 minutes with nobody else in sight, smiling the whole time, with nowhere to be. Rodolpho, who I bought the bike from, with his patient speech and trustworthy eyes, talking about mountaineering, dreams of Alaska, and Alastair, the gringo ladrone. Vegetable markets stretching for kilometers up steep cobblestone streets, each blanketed by glowing red tarps rustling gently in the wind and protecting its maker from 4000m UV and daily downpours. One pound of carrots, six tomatoes, a bag of spinach, two bell peppers, and five mini loafs
Valle de la Luna
Pillars of mud and rock just outside of La Paz. They were formed by a perfect mixture of fairy dust and black magic, or at least that´s my best guess as I know jack shit about geology. of a sort of wet Italian style bread for 5.5 Bs (75 cents). People gathered with newspapers in hand in the plaza San Francisco at night to discuss politics and life. Realizing that the woman just over belly button height behind her salteña stand is not sitting down, nor is she a dwarf. Fresh popcorn with just a touch of butter and salt, bringing me sharply back to grease spotted brown paper grocery bags stuffed under my dad´s coat while sneaking into a rare movie. Little girls in traditional dresses with small round top hats and a blanket folded in half and slung over shoulders, just like their mothers, in preparation for their first child likely to come well too soon. They are selling candy or tomatoes or herbs, and could be ten or twenty.
And then, again:
Shoe shiners lining the streets, men from the ages of seven to seventy, eyes barely showing below billed hats and creeping over full face masks, the shame of their work overcoming the heat of mid-day. Me with gortex coated shoes that would be destroyed if they shined them. Or, me, with gortex coated shoes, that could pay for several months
Shadow Play
Me to your right, looking like a character out of a Jim Henson movie with my startlingly stick-like silouhette. out of face masks and off the street. The old woman laying on their blankets or waving alms cups up and down, as if using them to bow, and asking for pesitos with preternaturally high pitched voices.
So, yep, still a little confused about what to think about La Paz, but it is well worth visiting, as is the rest of Bolivia that I have seen so far. Basically I´m walking around, buying street food, reading the morning newspaper with my dictionary in hand, checking the post office for my stuff every morning, meeting people at the hostile and making dinner or eating alone, sometimes too alone. This is what I have been doing while waiting for my stuff to arrive in La Paz. I have also left twice, once to Sucre, and once to Potosi, Uyuni, and Oruro, which I´ll write about soon (hopefully with some pictures people are emailing me). Until then, que les vayan bien.
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