Advertisement
Published: February 19th 2008
So on the way from Copacabana to La Paz all of a sudden the bus driver barks at everybody to get off! It turned out that we needed to take a 15 minute
speedboat ride across Titicaca (although didn't turn out to be so speedy after all since we experienced engine troubles) as the bus and our luggage were transported by a different vessel. Hilarious! Except nobody mentioned this at the ticket office in Puno. The tourists that did not speak Spanish were completely confused. Then once you cross the lake you have to find your bus in among the many buses and of course all the buses look the same since you have probably traveled in buses for most of the trip. Then you are trying to find people that were on your bus and stick to them. Quite an ordeal. Especially since the bus driver said he wouldn’t wait for people who were late. Sounds like excellent service, doesn’t it??
I was very excited about visiting La Paz. However, I was also uneasy because the Lonely Planet guide said that it was a dangerous city and that there were lots of scams going on involving tourists. Hence, I
View of La Paz
from the Kusillo Children's Centerwas very cautious and was totally fine, but I think Lonely Planet was just overreacting.
Anyway, so the bus left us right in the city center although the bus terminal wasn’t that far. My preferred hotel was just two blocks away so that couldn’t have been more convenient, taking into consideration my Lonely Planet fear. The hotel was a Hostelling International affiliate so I got a 5%!d(MISSING)iscount for being a member (finally! Lol) and I got a double room even though it was only me. I used a common bathroom, which was surprisingly clean every time I used it. Now get ready for THE most important thing… I had a
TV in my room
with cable! 100 channels! I was over the moon. Actually, my room really stank of cigarettes so I tried to change the room, but the other room had very bad color on the TV so I stuck to my room. The janitor air-freshened it a little bit and I could finally use my room freshener that Dries had given me for Xmas as part of my crazy cleanliness package 😊
My La Paz experience was very much a walking one. The walking was
Super cute.
A child in a carton box in a souvenir store. even more pronounced since La Paz is sooooo hilly and steep. You haven’t seen steep in a city center until you’ve been to La Paz. Therefore, most people walk slowly. It’s not so good when you are in a hurry. In no other city have I gotten lost so many times. I would start walking towards one place and end up somewhere completely different. Lonely Planet’s map was entirely upside down - it’s all Lonely Planet’s fault!
On the
plaza of San Francisco I accidentally walked into its church during mass. I was very surprised that people just kept walking in and out of the church, even the people that seemed to be listening and were there specifically for the mass. Also, in La Paz, plaza doesn’t mean a nice park with benches. It means a clearing entirely overtaken by street vendors. The only plaza that was actually a park was further out of the center and it was
Plaza San Pedro, next to
San Pedro Prison, once the world most unique jail. It used to be open to the public, especially tourists, who could get a tour of the jail from one of the prisoners. The jail also
had few security guards as it was a self-run prison. After, apparently, too many people visited for a cocaine shopping spree, the prison closed its doors 😞
La Paz Cemetery was an interesting visit. As in most Latin American cemeteries, bodies are first buried in the traditional Western way or are placed in a crypt. Then, within 10 years, they are disinterred and cremated. After cremation, families purchase or rent glass-fronted spaces in the cemetery walls for the ashes, and affix plaques and mementos of the deceased, and place flowers behind the glass door. Each wall has hundreds of these doors, and some of the walls have been expanded upward to such an extent that they resemble three- or four-story apartment blocks. There are also huge family mausoleums, as well as sections dedicated to mine workers and their families, and common graves for soldiers killed in battle. . There are even
professional mourners, if you can believe that, who wail and cry during burials. The cemetery in La Paz was so big that it even had a map!
My favorite stop in La Paz turned out to
be more of an adventure than expected. After walking 45 minutes down to the
Kusillo Cultural Complex and Children’s Museum I get there and it’s deserted! Looking very unkempt, yet the gates were open, so I ventured up the stairs to the
mirador that Lonely Planet had mentioned. And yes, it had a very nice view. After hanging out there for a while I noticed construction workers doing some work at the complex.
From Kusillo I noticed a
children’s playground on another hill right next to where I was and that was one impressive playground. You had to pay to go in but it cost only 3.5 bolivianos. It was huge! There were also a lot of people, from kids to parents to
mamitas just chilling in the shade. It even had a little café and lots of ice-cream vendors. I was very impressed but it. So in the end I did get a children’s experience 😊
Another observation: Although the
traffic is crazy in La Paz there were a lot of traffic police controlling traffic with their whistles and it made a big difference. What I found surprising is that they completely ignored the pedestrians - but
An abortion slogan against Evo Morales.
"Si Evo tuviera utero el aborto sería despenalizado y nacionalizado." ¬ Mujeres Creando
[translation:]
[If Evo had a uterus abortion would be depenalized and nationalized. ¬ Women Creating]
PS Evo Morales is the current president of Bolivia. in a good way. People would be crossing on a red light and they wouldn’t say anything; I found that quite strange. But there were no accidents. Generally, I think that considering how everyone drives, the accident rate is minimal. There are far more accidents due to curvy roads, such as driving off a cliff, than there are of cars crashing into each other.
Another interesting experience was trying to find some
food in the evening. I was looking more for a snack, especially a sweet one. But all I could find was chicken with fried potatoes. But then nobody would sell me just the potatoes. After twenty minutes I finally found a place where the guy agreed to ell me just potatoes. So I ask for two potatoes and the guy is just so surprised. He did end up selling them to me but I’m sure he thought I was out of my mind!
One of my favorite moments in La Paz was stumbling into the
pirate DVD street. Although there are plenty of street vendors all around the city selling pirate movies, the pirate DVD street had every possible movie and TV show you can imagine.
I actually found a 1940ies movie with Barbara Stanwyck. Most of the booths also have little tellies and DVD players so that you can check if the DVD works before you buy it. Super cool!
**
My last stop was to the
Museo de la Coca, which chronicled the history and modern use of the coca leaf (legal in South America, illegal in the US and Europe, so don’t think you’ll be getting any in the main from me 😊
There are 200 coca leaf species. The majority is found in the Americas, but some species have also been found in Africa, Madagascar, India, tropical Asia, and Oceania. However it is only in America that the coca leaf is chewed and has cultural importance. In the other areas some coca species are used in medicine.
The
coca leaf, aka
Mamacoca, was considered the sacred leaf in Incan times but its use has been traced to at least 3000 B.C. It is the symbol of indigenous Andean identity, so it was not accepted by Hispanics. In the indigenous communities it is part of social interaction, much like alcohol today in the Western world. For example, in the
Yungas (Bolivian rainforest), cultivating the coca is a communal function, shared equally among all members of the community, as one family plot is harvested by all the community members at a time. This forms part of the reciprocity ideal that is part of the Andean culture. Men do the sowing, which women harvest the fields. For the harvest women dress in their best clothing, wearing blue skirts to contrast with the red soil of the Yungas and the bright green of the coca leaves. As women work the harvest looking their best, they tend to attract most of the village’s men, who flirt, show off, and jovially toss rocks at the women to get their attention!
Historically, the coca leaf has been exploited by foreigners, especially when it came to cheap yet hard labor. Since chewing the coca leaf increases physical endurance to work, the Inca royalty and the Spanish conquistadors ‘fed’ the laboring peasants only water and the coca leaf for days at a time, while they labored building temples or searching for gold in goldmines.
Today, the coca leaf is used in cocaine production although the coca leaf makes up only a fraction of the ingredients
Pretty architecture
at Museo de la Coca in cocaine. All around Peru and Bolivia there are t-shirts that say
“La hoja the coca no es droga” in an attempt to fight the ignorance. Living in an Andean region myself, coca leaves can be found anywhere and everywhere. Their taste is not very much to my liking, but coca tea is quite acceptable.
The coca leaf was also the original ingredient in Coca-Cola but after the cocaine industry skyrocketed, the ingredient was replaced with a non-narcotic coca leaf extract, with Stepan Company is the only manufacturing plant authorized by the Federal Government to import and process the coca plant in the U.S.
Another benefit of coca leaf consumption is that people in higher altitudes of Latin America are less likely to suffer from thrombosis. The coca leaf also allows the lungs to absorb more oxygen. How cool is that?!
**
I must say that I quite enjoyed La Paz. It really comes alive at night because all the people that work during the day go out. I felt such energy walking down the streets in the evening. It was perfect! I like to think of La
Paz as a Latin American New York; so many people, so many things going on all the time, crazy traffic, never boring. Apart from the steep streets, I think I would really enjoy living in La Paz.
Spanish Word of the Day:
hoja =
leaf (of a tree); sheet (of paper) *
Next stop: Arequipa
Advertisement
Tot: 0.096s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 12; qc: 26; dbt: 0.0238s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Ivanchica
non-member comment
La Paz izgleda jako lijepo! I isto! ie od veine zgb kih ulica!!! The lickle tree that could- awwwww!