La Paz

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Happy Valentines Day!

I am in La Paz and have been since this past Wednesday. The french coupld and I parted in teh bus terminal. The headed straight for Coroico and I stayed here. I scrapped my plans to go to Rurrenabaque. The flights were more expensive than I had heard and I could not justify the 18+ hour bus ride there and back. I hope to get some Amazon exposure in Peru, (i would like to use the Malaria pills, they were really expensive).

Arriving in La Paz I got a tip to check out the Wild Rover Hostel. Thats where I have been calling home for the last few days. It's a little expensive as far as hostels go but it is exceptionally clean and well organized and has a bar/restaurant which so far has been a great palce to meet other travelers. Out front the place is flying the Irish Flag and most of the patrons are either Irish or English. Today the bar is going crazy for the England/ Wales rugby game.

La Paz is a crazy place. Its terribly polluted and congested. On Thursday, I took the tour of the infamous San Pedro Prison, made known to the world a few years back in a book called Marching Powder. The prison tour is a must-do for any visit to La Paz and I went with three others I met at the hostel. The prison is right in the heart of the city, next to the Plaza San Pedro. We went to the plaza and were immediately approached by a South African woman, who offered to organize the tour for us. (Afterward I met her husband, a former inmate, who is now out on probabtion awaiting trial.) The tour organizer escorted us pat securityand into a little room where we met three others also waiting for a tour. We were given a short briefing about how it all works, paid our money and were introduced to our tour guide, Luis Felipe, a Portuguese drug dealer who has been an inmate for the past 8 months. He was an older man, I´d guess about 50 or so, and well-dressed in a sport coat and jeans with recently shined shoes. We had three security guards as well, also inmates.

The prison is divided into seven sections of which we visited six, the international section is off-limits on the tour. Each section is unique and prisoners buy cells in the section they can afford. If one has the money, a cell can be bought for anywhere from 300 to 1000 US dollars. If one is a little short on cash, cells can be rented for about 200 Bolivians a month; thats about 30 US dollars. For those with no money there are crowded dormitory type cells. Inmates have keys to there cells and free to do as they wish with their time as they long as they are at there cell at 6am every day for a report. They are little stores, a barber shop, a place to make photocopies, restaurant. Many of the prisoners kill time by making little toys to sell in the plaza or to those on the tour. One prisoner made a pencil drawing of me and asked 5 bolivianos for it. Its not much of a likeness but of course I bought it. Families are also allowed into the prison, to live with the inmates, but spouses and children are free to come and go as they please, to attend school or work.

The whole tour lasted about 2 and a half hours and and at the end we thanked and tipped Luis Felipe. It was well worth the 250 boliviano fee. The tour is the by far the coolest thing I have seen in La Paz yet, but I also like the witches market, where one can buy a dried llama fetus (good luck for a new house), or any number of animal parts, powders, or herbs for whatever reason. Its fun to talk to the witches.

I'll be leaving La Paz on Monday for Lake Titicaca and from Lake Titicaca I plan to return to Oruro for the start of Carnaval. I wasnt impressed with Oruro, but I did get a sneak peak of the Carnaval the one night that I was there and decided that it would be worth returning.

That's all for now.

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