First Day Around La Paz

5/15/11pm
Didn’t get to see as much today as I would have liked because most shops and museums were closed for Sunday. I mostly wandered the city and people watched. La Paz is a very sloped city with El Alto and the airport at the top around 14,000 feet. As you descend lower and lower into the valley, it gets much easier to walk and breath. Unlike many areas where the wealthier live in the higher up areas, the rich areas are at the lowest points of La Paz. I’m staying somewhere in between, right near the bus terminal, so had to ride about 15 minutes downhill to get to El Prado where the central cultural areas of the city area.
I was surprised, though, in that it was so much less centralized than Lima or Cuzco – there, I was able to walk around a central plaza near the big church and there were museums and shops everywhere, really easy to navigate and find things to do. From my map and my experience, it was the opposite here – there are a bunch of museums I want to go to, but they are all clustered in different parts of La Paz. Tuesday, my museum day, will involve lots of bussing around! It doesn’t help that today was Sunday or that to get anywhere involves winding (and slippery, eek) cobbled roads with very steep slopes. I was trying to find El Museo de Coca because it is supposed to be a really interesting place about coca as both an illegal drug and in sodas, etc. I finally found it after tons of wandering, but it was closed – the sign on the door said they would be back at 4, but asking local shopkeepers, I eventually found out it was closed for the day. Not sure if I’m going to have time to go there while I’m here.
The street the museum was on was a good find, though, with booths and booths of artisans with colorful woven goods. I’m going to wait and buy things till later in my trip so I don’t have to lug everything around, but it was fun to just look around at everything. Also amusing were the blocks where every single store sold the same thing – there were two blocks in a row where the only stores were barber shops/hair salons, each with their own sign, and every one of them had at least one customer inside. Maybe Sunday is hair day? It just seems so crazy to have it all centralized like that in one place. I later wandered to the big market area with several floors of booths. Most were closed, but it was a really interesting setup looking at the signs, things were categorized in the same way. Each row of booths was labeled as calle (street) # something, and each calle had either all flower shops or all meat booths or all book stores, etc. How do they make any money that way? I guess it makes it easy to find stuff with there directory of what is where!
During my wanderings, ran into one of the few vegetarian restaurants in the area and got the lunch buffet. It wasn’t very flavored and I somehow had almost no appetite, so I couldn’t even finish my plate, very unusual! But it was nice to be able to try a bit of everything. Fried soya was decent, though very fried, and the soup was good – one of the few times I’ll actually be able to eat soup here.
Another random point today was seeing all the dogs around. There were tons of street dogs, which was to be expected, but they weren’t starving to death and weren’t scared at all of people, but didn’t beg either. I was surprised, though, to see a good number of dogs being walked on leashes by their owners, many of them wearing coats – I haven’t seen that anywhere else that I’ve traveled, they usually look pretty scraggly and wander the streets on their own even if they do belong to someone. I also passed by a woman walking a sheep on a leash, it seemed very well trained…
I had taken a taxi down to El Prado because I was completely unfamiliar with the area, but decided to take a micro back up the hill (similar to the mini bus-ish things that stop anywhere that I’ve seen in a bunch of other countries, but not like anything in the US). Back near the train station, I heard festive music and followed it until I found a group of musicians and dancers. The women were in traditional clothing with very flowy skirts and sang as they spun in circles, I don’t know how they didn’t get dizzy, I got a bit dizzy just watching them. Most of the men played the trumpet or tuba or drums, and two of the men joined in the dancing – one was dressed in a suit and seemed to be the one in charge, and the other held up a sign as he spun around that translated to ‘Jesus Loves You.’ I don’t know what the occasion was, but there are celebrations in Bolivia constantly. Earlier today, I kept hearing loud noises and asked one of the shopkeepers – she said that they were fireworks being set off, but she didn’t even know which celebration it was for because there’s almost always something. Anyway, I sat and watched the celebration for a bit and then walked around to search for dinner. There were many less restaurants in this area than lower down in El Prado, so everything had only meat on the menu. I eventually asked at one of the restaurants and got them to make me a dish with two fried eggs, rice, tomatoes, and these really yummy fries. They also put a couple pieces of cheese on top, which were really nice for flavor – the cheese here is so good because it’s all really fresh and natural. I only spent 4 dollars on food all day – breakfast was included with the hostel (with deliciousss fresh papaya juice) and lunch and dinner were 2 each for tons of food.
Then back to the hostel I went – it was getting dark and I shouldn’t wander around alone at night here, so I’m holed up in my room instead. Started planning the details out for the next couple days and of course writing this long ramble. Tomorrow, I should hopefully get my backpack delivered in the early morning and can finally take a shower – it’s a bit hard to do when it’s freezing and I don’t have a towel. I’ll be picked up from my hostel a bit later to go on a guided day trip to Tiwanaku, a ruins site that is about an hour and a half away. I was told today that the guide would be bilingual, so hopefully other people in the group with speak English and we can get an English tour.