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Published: November 20th 2005
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Shocking shower head!
Almost all showers I used in Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru were like this. Sometimes they provided hot water, and if that only a dribble. In house of the host family I stayed with in Ecuador, they had bare wires. Scary! More than half the times I used it, there was some kind of electric shock (low power though). I’m now in Bolivia! I arrived at the airport at El Alto in the dead of night and got a taxi to my pre-booked hotel in La Paz.
I can only describe the location as stunning! El Alto is a city of 800,000 people perched on a plain above the city of La Paz. La Paz is in a giant hollow below. Bolivia is poorer than Ecuador and it shows. The streets of El Alto were dark and scruffy. The taxi driver drove a battered old car and got very close to any pedestrians who happened to cross the road (and there were rather a lot of them around even at that time of night!). As we reached the border of El Alto and La Paz an amazing view appeared with lights from buildings showing the lay of the land.
El Alto is at a breath-taking altitude of 4000m and La Paz drops by 700m. The social hierarchy is inversely proportional to the altitude. The rich people live at the bottom, where the temperature never drops below 0 degrees. The further up you go, the poorer the Paceñas (La Paz residents) get. At the very top of the plateau
That's not Posh!
...or even Rebecca? Hmm. Anyway, another South American country, another Beckham poster. and the bottom of the social scale are the people of El Alto, the largest indigenous city in the World!
At the airport, immigration control saw that I was a UK citizen and checked my passport number against quite a large list of other UK citizens. Now maybe they should have kept this list hidden from me but it was stuck on the window of the post and I couldn’t help noticing that the list included the names “Mohammed Sidique Khan” and “Shahzad Tanweer”. Now maybe Bolivian authorities have some information not available to the general public, but that does seem a bit bizarre to me...
I spent the first day in La Paz getting the feel of the place and booking my next week in the country. I’m going to go to the Salt Flats and countryside in SW Bolivia and hope later to go to the rainforest.
I actually really like La Paz, but find it hard to describe why. Maybe it’s the sheer weirdness of the place. The location; the altitude; the huge numbers of indigenous women, all wearing traditional costume lining the streets to turn the whole city into a colourful street market;
Church of San Francisco, La Paz
Most historic church in city. The square is a focus for demonstrations. In 2004, snipers fired onto the crowd from the buildings on the left. the llama foetuses in the “Witches Market”; the huge mountains visible in the distance. It is a feast for the senses!
My hotel is a bit rubbishy and the shower is tepid. It’s another one of these electric heaters directly above the showerhead and I take care to wear flip-flops as you can get electric shocks. My bedside lamp works by plugging or unplugging in the mains. However I have a private room and prices here are cheap enough that I don’t have to stay in dorms if I’m only here for a little while. Listened to my little FM radio and there are loads of stations, including Radio France International. I listened to French news and then some French lessons for Spanish speakers that was a little surreal to listen to but it felt really good that I could understand lots of both sides!
The next day, I visited some of the museums of La Paz. One of them I found by chance as it wasn’t in my guidebook at all. The church of San Francisco (St Francis of Assisi) is the oldest church in the city is in the city centre and the square outside often
Typical church paining
Mixture of southern European and South American styles. At the virgin's feet are fallen angels, who have had their heads chopped off as punishment for having sexual relations. Gory... forms the focus for demonstrations. They have a small museum there and for just 20 Bs (about USD1.50) I had a two-hour personal guided tour, all in Spanish (really good for my practice) but with lots of hand gestures to make it easier to understand. Having been brought up as a protestant in Scotland, I find the ostentatiousness and idolatry of Southern European Catholic art fascinating. In South America, this mixed with the indigenous cultures after the conquest and there is a rich artistic heritage. You also get a good view of the city from the roof and it felt quite privileged to be the only tourist there!
After San Francisco, I visited La Paz’s famous Coca Museum, which had been well recommended. It tells the story of coca leaves, which South American peoples used for centuries as a medicine, foodstuff and in religious ceremonies. After the Spanish arrived, they first decided that it was the devil’s work and banned it. Then, they discovered that if miners and other slave workers chewed coca, they could work harder, for longer hours and need less food. So instead, they allowed its use, but controlled and taxed it. At one point, coca
Very typical street scene in Bolivia
This is in La Paz, but it could be anywhere. You see desperately poor women everywhere trying to sell whatever they can. Usually with their children in tow and you very rarely see their menfolk. was worth more by mass than the silver it was used to help extract! Anyway, in the 19th Century, Europeans discovered that from coca, you could extract cocaine! After initially thinking this was a good thing, (it became fashionable and the original Coca-Cola contained proper cocaine!) drug abuse turned it into a bad thing. So, as well as deciding that cocaine should be banned, the international community has also decided to ban coca leaves (which you would have to eat more than is physically possible to get a cocaine-high from) and this has caused a lot of resentment and problems in the Andean countries. Well, it’s a complicated issue and the museum certainly showed one side of the argument. However, you can’t escape coca here and come across it everywhere. I certainly tried chewing the leaves (makes your cheek go slightly numb, no other effects) and drinking mate de coca (coca tea), which, I have to say, is very pleasant and it is a pity I can’t drink it outside Bolivia and Peru.
Then I headed down to the South West of the country on a new “luxury” night bus which started just this year.
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