First day wandering the streets of Nuestra Señora de La Paz

This morning I woke up on my own rather early with a bit of a headache from the altitude. The evening was pretty chilly - it gets down to about 30/35 and there's no heat. I was comfortable in a sleeping bag under two alpaca blankets, and I had to submerge my entire head in my sleeping bag. And not five minutes after I'd gotten dressed, the landlady started banging on the door - apparently the last girl who lived here didn't pay the phone bill so the line got cut off, and Doña Emma ushered Ben and I over to the office, which was closed, and told me to take care of it. She's a bit of a menacing woman, as she kind of just yells at you when she wants something done, but she's also quite endearing.

After a brief breakfast (I still don’t have much of an appetite from this altitude business, which I'm feeling a bit more now...) I headed out to the city center with Ben. He had to buy a ticket to Cochabamba to go photograph and Aymara ritual (called a tinku), so I found an ATM in the bus terminal and spent about 5 minutes trying to figure out the conversion from Dollars to Bolivianos...I want to blame it on the altitude, but I could just be really pathetic at mental math. Then we walked down El Prado, the main street in the city center, and headed over past the Plaza San Francisco and on to the area around what is sometimes referred to as the "witches market" - the area where a lot of indigenous people sell their goods in artesanías, and also where my landlady happens to keep her shop. The guidebooks say it's known for selling all sorts of weird stuff, but it actually seems like a pretty normal, if not colorful, area of the city.

[La Plaza San Francisco]

We decided we were hungry, so Ben took me to the only place he could think of that had anything vegetarian, this place on Calle Linares (in the Mercado de Hechería) called "Angel Colonial", tucked away in a little courtyard between some of the shops.


[El Angel Colonial]



Ben had to go get read for his travels, so I decided I would wander around the city for a while and try to get my bearings. I started off walking around the Calle Sagárnaga area, which is more touristy (although it's quite a relative thing in Bolivia...) and then headed north to explore some of the less touristy markets in the area filled with mostly indigenous people. The streets are dotted with tiny stands selling fruits and vegetables, grains I’ve never seen before, and even raw fish. One of the more intriguing sights are the indigenous women called Cholas, who wear skirts, alpaca textile shawls, have long braids, and wear a bowler hat. It’s a bit of a cultural taboo to photograph them, so unfortunately I don’t have any pictures…yet.

[Calle Sagárnaga]


[Random street market]

After a while I decided I needed a better map, and as I wanted to explore a bit more of the city center I started walking down El Prado, the main street in the center of La Paz. It has the same tiny tiendas lining the streets, but it's also lined with more glitzy, modern shops that reminded me a bit too much of the U.S. and Europe. When I came across a Burger King and a car dealership, it made me sort of mad that those places were starting to come into such a unique city (although I still haven't seen a McDonalds).

[El Prado]


[Crazy traffic of downtown]

However, I did come across a pretty hilarious Pizza shop. When you look at the picture, make sure you read the small print that says “Chicago Pan Pizza”…even in Bolivia!

[Pizza Shop on El Prado]


I veered off the main drag on my quest to find a good map, and as I was walking by what I think was the Oficina del Vice-Presidente, I ran into a demonstration. It was actually very low-key, three groups of people standing around, occasionally raising their voices. When I was about half a block down the street, a few people started firing blanks into the air, but I was surprised that there was not at all a sense of violent tension.

[Protesters]



Using my new-found map, I decided that I wanted to try to walk back to my place from the center of the city rather than take a bus, which took me down further down El Prado. Maybe it's because I'm a little bit afraid of the mini-buses, which smell like burning oil, advertise where they go with block-letter signs on their windshields, and have people yelling destinations and price out the window. But even after the cultural shock, I think the most striking thing about La Paz for me, so far, is that you only have to walk one or two blocks in any direction to catch a breathtaking view of the canyon walls and the mountains.

[View of the hills from El Prado]

[Mountain?]

After seeing the view of the mountain (I have no idea which mountain it is) I veered off onto the Av. del Poeta that ran down by the city’s official park. Seeing lots of kids playing soccer on little fenced in hard-courts made me want to join them really badly. I though I was well on my way towards my place, having walked around for about 3 hours straight by then, when I came to my supposed road and realized that it a) didn’t have a sidewalk and b) didn’t really go where I needed it to go. At that point, I was feeling a bit lost (not really, just confused…), and combined with my complete lack of a desire to backtrack uphill for about an hour and walk back to my place for another hour, I hailed a cab and somehow found my way home. It's nice knowing that even though I completely filled the "tourist with a camera" role, I have my own keys to an apartment and I'm beginning to catch on to this places ways (mini-buses, I will conquer you!)