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Published: September 7th 2012
La Paz - in a picture
A cholita paceña waits for her bus in the evening rush hourAfter two wonderful days on idyllic, sun-drenched Isla del Sol, it's once again time to move on. An unbelievably slow boat gets me back to Copacabana just in time for a quick spot of lunch (home-made baked beans in tomato sauce on home-made soda bread? In Bolivia? For real?) before catching my bus - cleverly booked before I went to Isla del Sol - eastwards to La Paz. La Paz is a city I've heard a lot about - most of it not particularly flattering - and I'm looking forward to seeing what it's really like.
The bus journey from Copabana to La Paz is short but memorable. To begin with, shortly after leaving Copabana we reach the narrow Strait of Tiquina where the lake narrows to about eight hundred metres wide, separating Lake Titicaca proper from its small neighbour to the south, Lake Wiñaymarka. Despite the fact that this road is a major route out of Bolivia towards the Pacific Ocean (and more on Bolivian's interesting relationship with the sea later...), there is no bridge at Tiquina. There is no vehicle ferry either...hmm, do we have a problem? But of course not! The clever Bolivian solution is to make
all passengers disembark from their vehicle and board small motorboats to cross the straits, while the car/minivan/bus is gingerly wheeled onto a distinctly shaky-looking barge which is then maneuvered to the other side with the help of an incredibly inadequate-looking outboard motor. The whole setup looks and feels quite ridiculous and ill-suited to a relatively busy road, but it works - and with surprisingly little delay. Fortunately for Bolivia, serious traffic - by which I mean the thousands of massive lorries which keep this landlocked nation supplied with fuel and other essentials - can bypass the straits by passing through the Desaguadero border crossing or, as we experienced first hand, trundle through the altiplano of northern Chile towards the seaport of Arica.
Back on the bus and it's full speed ahead - literally: perhaps all those terrifying stories you hear about bus travel in Bolivia are true... - towards La Paz. It was pretty toasty in the bus as we were leaving Titicaca's sunny shores, but as we thunder down the highway (a very high highway: we're at 3,700-odd metres here) it rapidly cools down. Unfortunately for us, many of the bus's windows are open and refuse to shut:
pretty soon everybody's in woolly jackets and knitted hats (it's officially impossible to visit Peru or Bolivia without buying a piece of knitted Andean headgear), looking rather fed up. Even worse, the bus's roof window (one of those square ones which moves upwards and downwards) won't close either. A couple of passengers have a fiddle, trying to close it, and - this being a rather rickety Bolivian bus - the inevitable happens. The mechanism breaks and the window flies off at high speed behind the bus. Whoops. I do hope it didn't crash into the vehicle behind...Everyone is far too embarrassed to tell the driver so on goes another layer, and on go we. And then it starts to rain. Inside the bus. Fortunately it's only a shower and nobody gets too wet.
We slow down as we approach La Paz's predictably dreary outer suburbs, mile upon mile of low-rise, red-brick sameness. Progressively the construction becomes denser, the streets busier. We are entering El Alto, a sprawling city of hundreds of thousands. El Alto means "The Heights", and the last neighbourhood of El Alto we pass through is La Ceja - The Brim. The explanation for these intriguing place
names comes quickly and jaw-droppingly: the flat expanse of El Alto suddenly drops precipitously away to a deep, vast canyon. A canyon filled, edge to edge, with solid, uninterrupted
city. They say your first glimpse of La Paz takes your breath away, and that it's not only the altitude - it's absolutely true. I've never seen anything like it: a huge, sprawling bowl of concrete and humanity. It sounds horrible, but in a strange way it's a deeply impressive sight. With our noses glued to the windows (there isn't a Bolivian on the bus, except behind the wheel) the bus snakes its way down the steep side of the canyon and into the fray of La Paz.
Its incredible topography aside, La Paz is an absolutely captivating city. It is neither Bolivia's official capital, nor even its largest city - honours which go to Sucre and Santa Cruz, respectively - but must surely be its most representative: a chaotic, heady mix of old and new, rich and poor, great and small. Here is a city where an Aymara woman in traditional dress - a veritable Bolivian phenomenon called the
cholita paceña, the "Little La Paz Indian Lady" (it's not
a demeaning expression in Bolivia) - is as common a sight among the skyscrapers as a suited businessman. A city where it is as easy to find Lebanese, Japanese and Indian food as Bolivian staples such as
quinua or
api. Where wealthy paceños rub shoulders with an army of impoverished, underage
lustrabotas (shoe-shine boys). I don't spend long in La Paz - three nights - but it's enough to see that it is an utterly unique city.
One of La Paz's most interesting features is the extraordinary way in which its geography, economy and demography are intertwined. There is an altitude difference of some half a kilometre between La Paz's highest and lowest points: perched up on the edge of the canyon, in La Ceja, are the city's poor, ramshackle neighbourhoods, dominated by Aymara immigrants from the surrounding countryside. In these neighbourhoods, as in the sprawl of El Alto, you are unlikely to hear Castilian spoken in the street here - Aymara dominates. As you descend into the canyon, these neighbourhoods give way to the city's bustling business districts, markets and middle-class neighbourhoods. Workaday La Paz. Beyond this, far to the other, lower side of the canyon, is the
Zona Sur - here is where the wealthy of La Paz live, dine out and shop. Here Aymara gives way to Spanish. Altitude and money are closely linked here, in a way which is quite unique. This amazing parallel stratification is displayed in fascinating style on a half-day "urban safari" I go on with a local travel company, a morning's walk which takes us down from the heights of El Alto to La Paz's bustling urban heart - with all there is in between. My guide, a young
paceña, is a great source of information about what it's like to live in such an unusual city. The altitude differences between richer and poorer districts goes as far as to give different neighbourhoods distinct climates: apparently, it can be snowing quite heavily in El Alto while richer paceños carry on with their lives, completely oblivious, lower down. It really is fascinating.
La Paz doesn't win any prizes on the architectural front - while many colonial buildings remain, a lot are in a sorry state, and much of La Paz is soulless and modern. And yet, for me, it is a far more appealing and interesting place than Santiago, Quito, Bogotá
or Lima. Its population swelled by generations of immigration from rural areas, La Paz positively breathes energy, and effortlessly mingles tradition with a surprising degree of cosmopolitanism. In two days I dine on succulent Argentina
parrilla, an authentic Japanese set meal, an Indian curry to give any London restaurant a run for its money, and some of the best Middle-Eastern food - seriously - I've ever tasted. The way I see it I'll have plenty of time for Bolivian fare outside the city - why not make the most of what's on offer here and now?
A few pretty colonial-era churches aside, La Paz doesn't have very many sights, as such. One of the city's main squares, Plaza Murillo, was off-limits during my visit: political protests - a fact of life in Bolivia, perhaps more than in any other country in the world - had closed it off. The main attraction is wandering the streets, shamelessly people-watching. One "sight" which caught my eye, however, was the
Museo del Litoral Boliviano - the Bolivian Coastline Museum. How can it not catch your eye - the country is landlocked! Indeed, Bolivia's lack of coastline - it is one of only two
countries in the Americas, north, central and south, without access to the sea (the other being Paraguay) - is a key feature of its national psyche and attitude towards its neighbours. Bolivia was not always without access to the sea. Until the late 19th century it controlled a short stretch of Pacific coastline - Antofagasta (now, with its unshakeable associations with copper, the red gold, famously Chilean) was then a Bolivian port. Then, in 1879, war broke out between Chile, Peru and Bolivia - the underlying
casus belli was a border dispute involving the Atacama desert and its untold wealth in copper and nitrates (both topics I have written about in earlier entires on northern Chile). Some five years later, Chile emerged the decisive victor, and borders were redrawn - dramatically. While Peru lost its southern provinces, Bolivia came out ever worse: it lost its entire coastline and found itself locked in. It is something Bolivia has never forgiven Chile for - and the country certainly has not forgotten. Bolivia has a navy - and not a minute one, at that - stationed on Lake Titicaca, and every day on 23rd March the country observes ("celebrates" is not really the
word)
El Día del Mar and its loss at the hands of Chile. Chile's refusal to discuss the outcome - it claims it won the territories fair and square - is a sore point in Bolivian-Chilean relations to this day, with Bolivian politicians publicly denouncing Chile as a
mal vecino, a bad neighbour, for its refusal to discuss the situation. Having also lost a large chunk of its territory to Paraguay in the 1930s Chaco War, it's not surprising that Bolivia feels rather sore. With some of the world's richest copper reserves to be found in the desert beyond Antofagasta, one does wonder how different South America would look today if Bolivia had won
La Guerra del Pacífico.
La Paz's quirky Coastline Museum, as it turns out, consists of little more that multiple copies (I counted at least four) of maps showing that, yes, Bolivia did used to have a coastline. Well, yes it did. And large chunks of France used to belong to England, did they not? Perhaps our Prime Minister should call the French President and invite him over for a serious talk...Still, it's hard not to feel sorry for Bolivia.
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