La Paz - the Old World and the New

My stay here has been a weird one. I was only going to be around for a couple of days, but a nasty bit of food poisoning meant that I stayed here a week. Despite being the dry season it has also managed to rain almost every day, which really limited what I was able to do. Nevertheless...

This city is a strange one. It kind of sprawls through a deep valley, then overflows over one side into the neighbouring city of El Alto. It is an incredibly picturesque place, with the craggy edges of the valley framing the city and soaring 6000m peaks in the background. The streets are crammed with buses and taxi-trufis (a minibus of sorts), street food, the bustle of people and a cacophony of noise from all of them. It's possible to get above this quite literally by taking the Teleferico, the system of gondolas built above the city which wins the prize for the coolest and most mildly terrifying public transport experience in the world.

Indigenous tradition runs very deep here and come out in many forms. A very common sight on the street are cholitas, indigenous women who are the vast majority of street and market vendors. They have a very distinct dress style - black shoes, colourful skirts, a blouse and shawl, long hair in two plaits, topped with a small bowler hat. 

Why bowler hats? In the 19th century, railway workers from the UK decided to make a tidy profit by selling the hats, in fashion at the time, to Bolivian gents. Unfortunately, the hats were made for European heads, and did not fit the much larger Bolivian bonce. Desperate, the Brits decided to market them to indigenous women as a fashion accessory and status symbol. It worked, and the hats are still perched to this day on many heads in La Paz.

You can also find lots of people here who believe in witchcraft, and in fact there is a whole area of the city centre called the Witch's Market. Here you can find love potions, strange smells, mystic medicines, and creepiest of all, dried llama foetuses. According to my tour guide, a llama foetus is an essential part of the ceremony to dedicate a new building in the city. The ceremony also includes offerings of coca leaves, alcohol, food and other gifts that Pachamama (the earth goddess) might enjoy which are placed under the first foundation stone and burned. The foetuses are always taken naturally through stillbirth or miscarriage, and builders will refuse to work on the site until the ceremony has been performed.

The nightlife here is pretty great, definitely the best I've had since Valparaiso. Backpackers have a choice of going to the two or three party hostels which operate their own club nights, or going out on the town and mixing with the local crowd. The city clubs were much better I thought - better music for starters, and often less expensive for drinks. I ended up staying an extra day after getting the number of a gorgeous girl from Santa Cruz on Friday night, but unfortunately it didn't go anywhere.

Overall, it's hard to get a fix on this town, but it's been a decent enough stay. I had hoped to go explore some of the mountains and trails in the area but my stomach and the weather put paid to that plan. I had actually planned a 3 day hike the day I got sick, and lucky I didn't go because thunderstorms came in and the group I was going with got soaked! There was also the Death Road cycling which sounded great, but was also wildly expensive for a bike ride and probably not a great idea on wet roads. 

This is almost the end of my time in Bolivia, with one last stop at Lake Titicaca before I start on Peru. Time to tuck into some trout and see some ancient ruins!