La Paz

La Paz
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I book ended my trip in Bolivia with the city of La Paz and it is one of my favourite cities in South America.  It is massive and sits in a valley at about 3800 metres which sharply rise up to the plateau that surrounds it for miles around, with the Andes in the far distance.

The city is in both the valley and the plateau and is crammed with red brick buildings in various stages of completion.  It is full of people, narrow streets, wide avenues and every bit of footpath is filled with street stalls selling anything from newspapers, to bread, to plumbing supplies.

Can't buy porn on Sundays

Pre-Incan ruins
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I loved wandering around, especially in the sprawling street markets where there was a lighting street, a fruit street, a trophy street, a colourful skirt street and so on..

I also saw the witches market where at any given stall you could buy coke, cigarettes, herbs and llama foetuses..!

The city is also very politically active, with constant protests, marches, blockades and explosions to really make a point.  They started at about 8am and didn’t stop until after dark – the only thing that did stop it was Sunday..

Keep out
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While in La Paz I visited a pre-Incan ruin a few hours away and while the ruins were very basic and only in the early stages of recovery, the museum was fascinating with lots of pottery, cone shaped skulls and jewellery.  Again it was a shame that the ruins were struggling for research money but it’s a start I guess.

The other touristy spot I visited was the coca museum which was tiny, but great value.. you walked around with an English book and read all about how coca leaves were prized throughout history for their medicinal function, etc and how it only became a problem when the westerners started making cocaine.. and how unfair it is that the west tried to eradicate the coca leaves because they had a problem with it..  But the highlight line from the book is definitely the one at the bottom of this blog…

Wanna buy a llama fetus
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La Paz nightlife was amusing, we had a great dinner at the start of the trip and at the end of many a bottle of wine and pisco sour, we began to settle our bill. At that point the waiter delivered a tray of shot glasses to our table and carried over something large in his arms, covered by a red cloth.. With a flourish he pulled off the cloth to reveal a large pickling jar jam-packed with a snake… he then proceeded to take-off the lid and begin to pour the liquid into shot glasses.. and with all of us loudly protesting he held up two glasses, holding one to his own lips and one out to whoever would also drink it… someone did and down it went and so after that the rest of us had a go… it was all fine and just tasted like burning…!

Current ruins
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On my final night in South America we ended up at La Paz’s Hard Rock Café and while it was quiet at the start of the night, it soon turned into Tel-Aviv’s hottest nightspot!

I had a fantastic trip all up in South America; the Galapagos Islands, Inca Trail and Bolivian salt plains were definitely the highlights.  However it was also an experience to see the Peruvian and Bolivian towns and villages, to see just how poor these people are and how basic their lives and possessions are.  It was humbling to see, though it pissed me off endlessly just how tight with money some of our fellow travellers were.  I actually ended up subsidising an English lawyer and accountant couple’s holiday because they “didn’t have enough money” to tip our guides – a tip that was often less than the cost of a pint of beer in the cheapest pub in London.  It really was shameful that people who travel to experience another culture, don’t understand that also involves experiencing another cultures’ economy and workplace relations!!

Big mountains
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The final story of this blog will be the gift that we gave our guide… he was a lovely guy, but very touchy feely and made a few slightly inappropriate comments along the way and so the idea was floated of giving him some playing cards (seeing as we played a lot of card games during the trip) with some nuddie girls, girls in bikinis, that sort of thing.  So we asked at hotel reception in La Paz and they pointed us in a general direction, but what we hadn’t counted on was that it was Sunday and apparently you can’t buy porn on Sundays, and even asking for it gained us some very bad looks… So we weren’t successful, but the receptionist said her cousin had some and he could source them for us.  A phone call was made and he asked what sort of cards we wanted and she answered, “just get what you’d like”…

Pissed
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Yes dangerous.

I made a little thank you speech at dinner and we then handed over the unopened cards (unopened as we figured if they were bad at least we could plead we didn’t know!) and one look at his face showed us just how bad they turned out to be!! It was hardcore porn (from the 70’s, we could tell by the gold curtains and side burns – insert joke here..) and the joker cards were especially nasty!! After a few minutes of passing the cards around and comments about “shuffling the deck”, “playing solitaire”, etc we all managed to stop laughing…

Quote of the day (at the Coca Museum):

"Just like an orgasm after masturbation doesn’t satisfy and leaves you wanting more, so to does the chemical high from illegal drugs, rather than true happiness”