After our adventuring in Torotoro we were finally off to the pseudo-capital of Bolivia; La Paz.
La Paz
La Paz is different from Potosi and Sucre because it doesn’t have a lot of old, colonial buildings. It’s a lot more modern and very chaotic. Plenty of cars trying to run you over each time you try to cross the street. La Paz has people dressed up a zebras to help you cross the street. They dance and try to make it fun. But we didn’t see one the whole time we were there. Hopefully we’ll see one when we go back.
We went on a couple of walking tours around the city and the tours were more about explaining the culture and traditions of Bolivia rather than showing us fancy buildings. But the stories they told were very interesting. Like only a few years ago a popular tourist attraction was to visit the San Pedro prison. You could actually go inside and the inmates would give tours. Nowadays it’s pretty damn dangerous and you’d be lucky to get out unscathed. Even now the inmates live with their families in the prison. But the families are free to come and go as they please.
They also have enormous food markets in La Paz. About 30 city blocks turn into the Saturday market each week, selling every type of food you can imagine. Just be careful not to take photos of the sellers. A lot of them wear traditional clothes and tourists like to take photos. But they will curse and spit at you if they think you’re taking their photo without permission. I copped a loud stream of verbal abuse because the way I was holding my camera made it look like I was taking a photo of one woman. Luckily no spit.
Magic in La Paz
The tour guides told us plenty of stories (that sound like urban legends) of homeless people being buried alive in building foundations as a sacrifice to Pachamama (Mother Earth) so that she doesn’t destroy the building. There’s a lot of magic and mysticism still being practised in Bolivia. They have a witch’s market where you can buy magical ingredients and all the things you need to make sacrifices to Pachamama. (No homeless people for sale though.) They normally use baby llamas and llama foetuses for sacrifices, and they sell those at the witch’s market. But the llamas have to have died from natural causes (Pachamama has to be the one that takes their life, not people).
Up high in the neighbouring city of El Alto there are plenty of witches, shamans and fortune tellers you can visit to help you with whatever you need. Some of them keep human skulls, because the spirit of the person whose skull it used to be speaks to these people and gives them advice. So they take great care of the skulls and give them accessories like hats and glasses, or their favourite foods, drinks and cigarettes. (The spirit tells them what they want).
Wrestling Cholitas
Another out-there thing you can do in La Paz is to see the Wrestling Cholitas. “Cholita” is a name for women who dress in traditional clothes: big puffy skirts, shawls, long braided hair and bowler hats. I’m not sure how it started, but now there are wrestling matches between Cholitas. The wrestling isn’t serious, it’s the over-the-top WWE style wrestling with lots of theatrics and aerial moves. And plenty of action outside the ring near the audience.
It’s popular with tourists and locals. Each match has very obvious goodies and baddies, and the locals really get into it. When the baddies got close enough they threw food at them. It started out with just popcorn. But as the evening went on the food thrown turned into bits of oranges and chicken bones. You don’t want to sit in the back row of the tourist section. The poor girls behind us kept getting pelted with sticky oranges and greasy bones because they were right in the firing line as the baddies always walked behind them.
Another typical WWE move is to smash a wooden crate over someone’s head. In the WWE matches they’re careful to make sure that the audience doesn’t get hurt by bits of flying wood. In Bolivia, that’s not something that gets considered. So each time someone was hit with a crate bits of wood would fly out at high speed in all directions. We saw one woman in the audience hit right between the eyes by a large chunk of wood.
Despite the general insanity of the wrestling and everything else going on, it was a very entertaining evening. If you’re game and into wrestling it’s a fun night out, just bring a raincoat. And maybe a hardhat.
To finish up, here’s a photo for our parents to show them that we’re taking good care of ourselves. Here’s our breakfasts in La Paz. And afternoon tea as well! Deep fried cheese pastries that puff up like a balloon, and a sweet spiced purple corn drink.
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