Over the border into Bolivia, and La Paz

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So at long last, we finally start to move downhill again - that is if you call a reduction of 200m to 3,600m going downhill. La Paz is quite different from those places we have visited over the last few weeks. It is a big bustling city, all wrapped up in its own needs, and with barely a thought for the tourist apart from one very small area. It reminds me in some ways of the Indian sub-continent, and especially my recent trip to Bangladesh, with people, animals, transport and produce all appearing to be fighting for the same small piece of space. Rather than running through the various sites visited, as per previous blogs, let me just comment on a few of the observations that I found interesting.

1. As I said above, there just seems to be a mass of activity everywhere you go in the main city. Markets are everywhere, not just confined to shops, but many people have their stalls either on the footpath or even spilling out onto the road. A lot of these stallholders are only selling one product, eg bananas, or cigarettes, or batteries etc, and it is hard to see how they can even exist given the number of them. Thus at times, traffic appears to be dodging people and produce, as well as other vehicles. Like other busy cities, the cars and minibuses miss each other by cms, and it is a wonder that there are not more scrapes and crashes. We did not see one. There are very few private vehicles - almost all those on the road are either taxis or public minibuses. The latter appear to family run businesses, with dad driving, and either mum or one of the kids leaning out the door advising of the destination and touting for business. As in all these cities, honking the horn continuously appears to be compulsory, however, it might be my imagination, but it just seemed to happen for the sake of it here, whereas driving and honking struck us as very aggressive, especially in Ecuador. One evening, we had a ferocious hailstorm and after an hour or so, the place resembled a snow scene. And yet within 5 minutes of the storm subsiding, the streets were choked yet again with people, scraping the ice off the sidewalk, picking up the remnants of their stalls etc, almost as though nothing had happened.

2. Despite the fact that La Paz is basically situated in a valley (refer pics), it is far from level in the main part of the city. In direct contrast to almost every other city in the world, the further downhill you go, the better the real estate. Thus the poor people live up the top end of town and the rich people live down south in the hollow of the valley. Refer pic of El Alto, which is right up on top of the hill (could you guess that - how is your Spanish coming along now!), while Valley of the Moons, and its accompanyting houses, are right down south. We were staying in a hotel down south (now isn´t that a surprise!) and with the altitude making even a short uphill climb difficult, we would generally take a taxi going out (and uphill), but walk back home again.

3. As in most South American countries, the women dress up and the men and kids don´t. The unique fashion for the women here is the bowler hat, which is worn by almost all women, whether manning a stall or just walking around. When it rains, they still wear the bowler hat, but this time wrapped in a plastic bag! Again as in most SA countries, almost all stalls and shops are manned by women. I´m not sure what the men do for a living - perhaps we had better not ask!

4. One disappointing aspect, and again shared with the sub-continent and other developing countries is what I call their lack of ´civic pride´. You see people all the time peel off rubbish and just throw it in the street, so apart from the obvious health concerns, the streets, as well as being very busy, are very dirty. Also I have yet to understand why people from developing countries have a need to spit every few minutes, but those from wealthier parts manage to keep their saliva in their mouths. Can any of you intrepid travellers answer this one for me?

5. A small but facinating item was the number of protests we saw in our 5 days here. It seems that every few hours, the streets are closed down while a march of some description, some comprising several hundred people, took to the streets to push their particular cause. They were usually surrounded by hundreds of police in riot gear, although fortuntely we never saw any of it used, and most of the time the police seemed to find it all a big joke.

6. Now on the positive side, it is naturally pretty cheap living, and you all know I can´t resist a bargain. You can get across town by cab for about a US buck (and from what I undestand, that is about an Aussie buck these days!), and you can get a good feed with a beer for under 10 bucks.

Lest you think we didn´t visit anywhere, we did do a brief city tour, the most interesting part of which was a visit to the Valley of the Moons, which is a bizarre hillside full of canyons and pinnacles, resembling a moonscape (or so Neil Armstrong tells me!) or for us mere mortals, it resembles Goreme Valley in the north of Greece where I visited all those years ago.

Anyway folks, that´s it for Bolivia, and we are now winging our way south to the, I suspect, much more civilised and sophisticated Buenos Aires, although I suspect it will come at a much greater price tag!

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Photos

El Alto, just north of La Paz
Not exactly 5 star accommodation!

Witches Market
Note the llama foetuses on sale - bury within your house when building to bring you good luck!

Comments

[erictjie]

spitting
spitting is a kind of habit in most uneducated ,poor society world like China and part of south asia. the spitting habit is now being banned in China and country like singapore will incur big big fine.