The Good, The Bad, and La Paz

So I spent a good 3.5 days in La Paz for both work and play last week. I was really excited to finally get out of Cochabamba since I was one of the few volunteers in my group to not have left the department yet since my site was so close to where we were for two months during training. Even better that I got to go there for work then (and wander around a bit while I was there taking in the tourist attractions so I know what’s worth going to when you guys come and visit!)…overall it was a good trip, but one with lots of ups and downs and realizations about work and then a little of that fun feeling of just being a tourist again.

Sonia (the artisan woman I work with that weaves stuff out of alpaca) and I left on Thursday to catch a bus to La Paz…or so we thought…so we could be at a Christmas fair at the U.S. embassy to sell her products on Friday. So we’re going along on the bus…then about 4 hours into our trip we turn off at a point and she turns to the man sitting next to us and is like…is this bus going to Oruro? Turns out…we got on the wrong bus and were headed to Oruro instead of La Paz. She started freaking out a bit about her luggage since she had like 70 shawls and 40 scarves in there…on a different bus on it’s way to La Paz…but I couldn’t help but laugh at the situation. I mean, it could have been a lot worse…Oruro is pretty much in the same direction as La Paz but turns off at this one place (we ended up wasting about 2 hours stopping in Oruro and getting on a different bus to get to La Paz) and I had to text my friend Sarah who’s a volunteer in a town right outside of La Paz. Oruro’s a pretty interesting place…I know now why they say it has a “stark beauty”…it was interesting to finally be in a non-hilly place (they call it the altiplano) where you can see far far into the distance. So once we got to Oruro, bought another ticket from Oruro to La Paz, and hopped on another bus…we were on the right track again. We got to La Paz and wandered around to find some food, taking in the incredible steepness of the hills, the cold, and big city. My first impression of the city was “wow” because it’s this huge sprawling city in a little valley (El Alto, another city where the airport is actually located is above it) and has altogether probably about 2 million people…it’s hillier than San Francisco and then at night reminds me of a big city in Asia like Shanghai or Taipei where there’s night markets, along with a big European city feel as well…definitely a place worth visiting.

I visited a few of the attractions while I was there…including Tiahuanaco, Valle de la Luna, and Chacaltaya with a tour group and had some interesting observations about tourism there. In my tour groups I had people that spoke all different languages and came from all different places (notably I think the Swiss and Germans win out on knowing the most languages)…we had Germans (some that were living in Peru), Australians, Swiss, Bolivians, Fins (Finlandians? Haha, what do you call people from Finland? He was actually living in Cuba though going to school), Brazilians (that were living in Peru), French, and Japanese…and me as the lone American. It seems like La Paz is a really popular place for tourists (the city is swarming with over 100 tour agencies) but very few Americans. Hearing all the languages that these people spoke made me want to learn more languages…after English (of course), Spanish, and Chinese…I’m thinking picking up a little Quechua and Taiwanese might be useful…but then next up would probably be French, Japanese, then German for me. Haha, ambitious goals I say…but it really amazed me how these people were speaking three languages fluently. I just like the way French and German sound…and then Portuguese might not be too difficult to learn…I was speaking with a Brazilian man and he told me that they’re pretty similar…anyways, overall I would recommend Valle de la Luna and Chacaltaya (the highest skiing in the world…but we just went there for the view…which we really couldn’t see because of the fog…and when you go there you can just hike a few hundred meters up to reach the pinnacle at 5300 m…trust me, it would be quite difficult to hike anymore than that at that altitude). I also would recommend La Paz for the yummy food (I found this woman that sells banana bread on the street…amazing, way better than anything I ever baked) and the proliferation of fried chicken restaurants…10x better than KFC (haha, I know a bunch of you out there are fans of the KFC…Evie, Lau…you know who you are). Also, I treated myself to this serious swanky Japanese restaurant on the last night I was there…sashimi dinner complete with (real!) rice, miso soup, a few other appetizers and a nice glass of white wine. Overall the dinner set me back around $12…most expensive meal yet in Bolivia for me, but was well worth it since I was majorly craving some sushi…I’ve been deprived for over 3 months and it was about time to take care of that. The sushi wasn’t bad either…quite fresh although there really wasn’t much of a selection…only trout that I saw on the menu (no salmon, yellowtail, etc.) but I did get a few pieces of octopus as well.