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Published: October 26th 2008
It is one thirty in the morning and I'm half drunk. It feels like the only way that would do a La Paz blog legitimate. However, as I am currently lacking both the coordination and the patience to operate a spanish keyboard, it is going to be short...
It is a fantastic city. As high as you can get at 12,000 feet and streched down into a valley towards 9,000 feet, it offers amazing vistas of the surrounding mountains, enormous alpine platues, and a valley as full of buildings as is possible. Every time you walk up a set of stairs you are out of breath, however the night life is unreal and you always seem to muster the strength to go dancing until six in the morning. The only thing I can compare it to is a black hole. Without prior knowledge, you would think you could escape in a few days, however you always seem to stay longer than expected.
While the city doesn't really offer much in the way of "sites," it has as much character as you could ever want. It reminds me of Eastern Europe in being extremely easy to sink your teeth into,
Evo Si
There are Evo Si signs all over certain parts of Bolvia, specifical the El Alto area above La Paz.as gritty as you could want it to be, while still being extremely tourist friendly. You see the opitimy of the diversity of South American wealth. You can walk down the street and see classical
cholita women in traditional garb of huge dresses and bowler hats and two seconds later see middle aged men in Armani suits going to work. There are older indigeanous Andean women selling goods at impromptu, informal, non taxed, sidewalk businesses all over, and young, teenaged, white skinned, designer clothes wearing, kids at American fast food chains. The extreme diversity leads to a polarized view of politics, and given the recent spat between the U.S. and Bolivia, I've found it to be an interesting observation ground. While I have, and will continue to, avoid political discussion in my blog, with a few notable exceptions, I think the grafitti in the area offers a diverse range of views both in support of Evo Morales, the current Chavez supporting president, and the right wing opposition. (Sorry, that was an awkard sentence, but as previously mentioned, I'm half drunk.)
Anyway, La Paz is damn crazy. To give you a simple anecdote, on our first full day here we
were in a cab and Eric asked about shamans in the Amazon area. The cab drivers response, in my translation from Spanish, was that "You can't get
lap dances in Rurre. La Paz has the best strippers. You need to get a lap dance in La Paz." To say the least, something was lost in translation. That was the last thing he was lookikng for. Seriously. Not joking. We really didn't go to a strip club. Honestly...
We have spent most of our days in a college like haze recovering from the night before, making it out to explore the streets in an afternoon stuppor before our evening nap and our late night binging. We seem to be in a constant cycle of deciding to leave, celebrating our "last night in La Paz" and then waking up to realize we can't move in time to buy bus tickets to our next destination.
However, in one move of brillance, we did make it to the Peru versus Bolivia Wold Cup qualifier. It was amazing. A fantastic display of nationalism for a team, that despite all odds, should not have made it as far as they did. I'm a huge
fan of local sporting events, and while this didn't match a Mumbai cricket match, it was a great experience of local culture.
Anyway, to make a several week adventure in Bolivia's capital short, this blog is censored to ensure that I can make it back into the U.S. without any problems at customs.
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Ann Marie
non-member comment
awww...
I want a llama fetus!