Saturday
23rd April
Breakfast
at the Posada De La Abuela Obdulia was fairly typical, bread, ham cheese etc. Walking out into Calle Linares and the area nearby didn’t create a good initial impression. The streets
near the hotel, cobbled and often steep, are congested with vehicles spewing
out clouds of blue-grey fumes. Emission controls haven't caught on yet.
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| Informal Street Market |
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| Fume Belching Private Bus |
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| Typical Side Street |
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| Don't Party on the Balcony |
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| Stalls and Shops |
Walked
downhill towards the San Francisco Church in Plaza San Francisco, which is impressive
with massive stone pillars and plenty of gold. But unlike Quito, Lima and Cusco,
there seems to have been no attempt to retain the colonial city centre. Instead
the San Francisco Church and the adjacent monastery, now a museum, stand
isolated in a mess of modern and not so modern buildings. Immediately in front
of the church are what I think are temporary tents for homeless people;
laudable but they don’t win any brownie points for aesthetic appeal. At one side of the square an ugly multi-storey
market building dominates while a major road cuts close by.
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| San Francisco Church |
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| San Francisco Church Bell Tower |
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Main Road on front of Plaza San Francisco.
Runs along course of River. |
Walked
up one of the pedestrianised streets, lined with stalls selling stuff, to a
small square Alonzo de Mendoza, which was apparently the centre of the pre-Columbian
settlement. There is an old, attractive building on one side which claims to be
a museum but showed no sign of life.
Back down near the market and Plaza Mayor, I followed a pedestrian
bridge across the main road which, according to the map, runs right through the
city and eventually found Calle Jaen, which claims to be one of La Paz's most
finely preserved colonial streets, and was, indeed, very pretty. Picked up some
leaflets for tours from a tour agency and had a coffee chips and little sausage
pieces with chips in a nearby café. Walked along to Plaza Murillo around which
are various Government Offices and the cathedral; one side of the square is the
point from which all distances in Bolivia are measured and has a bronze 0 KM
marker. From close to Murillo Square there is an amazing view of snow-capped
mountains. Maybe La Paz is growing on me?
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| Calle Jaen |
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| Calle Jaen |
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| Plaza Murillo. Invaded by Pigeons |
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| Congress Building in Plaza Murillo |
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Prime Location in Plaza Murillo.
In need of Gentle Resoration |
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| Government Palace, with Elite Guards |
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| Street with a View |
Back near the hotel in Calle Linares I found the “Witches Market” a row of small shops selling spells and potions and which display what appear to be stuffed or mummified llama foetuses; according to Wikipedia “These llama foetuses are buried under the foundations of many Bolivian houses as a sacred offering to the goddess Pachamama. Dropped off some laundry close to the Witches Market and had another very welcome cup of coffee.
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| Witches Market |
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| Local Woman in Witches Market |
In the evening went to the Angelo Colonial Restaurant across the road
from the hotel for dinner which has an amazingly eclectic décor. Apart from
several notices forbidding the taking of photographs there were at least a
dozen clocks telling different times, several oil lamps, some stringed musical instruments,
a concertina, an old fashioned gramophone an even older wax cylinder recorder
or player, a collection of large black padlocks and keys, oil paintings, prints,
assorted cutlery and a couple of Box Brownie type cameras. It was quite popular
with a large group of a dozen or more so service by the one waitress on her own
was leisurely. Since the Llama was “off” I had had an excellent steak with
quinoa and a beer.
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| Quiet Evening in Calle Linares |
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| Entrance too the Angelo Colonial Restaurant |
Sunday 24th April
After breakfast I started looking at options for flights to Cuba
from Northern Chile where I expect to be in early May. My original plan had
been to return from the Bolivian salt flats to La Paz, fly to Columbia
and from there to Cuba. But now I plan to continue from the Salt Flats to the
Atacama desert in Chile from which it appears the only flights are southwards,
opposite direction to Cuba, to Santiago. So it all begins to look time
consuming and expensive. Ridiculously the cheapest option would be to use my
existing return ticket to London and then buy a return ticket to Havana. So it
looks like Cuba is off the itinerary for this trip and my blog title ends in
the wrong country. By the time I had spent the morning reaching this conclusion,
it was too late to join the cable cars tour this morning so I returned to Calle
Jaen to book it for tomorrow morning. Being
Sunday, all the places round that area like museums and cafes were closed so I had
a coffee and a mushroom and chicken crepe at the cafe off Linares which I went
to yesterday. 4.30 went to pick up laundry only to be told “manana”. I showed him
the date on the slip. "But today is manana!" Lots of Spanish followed the gist of which I think was telling me he was only the
messenger.
Evening went out to Layka restaurant in Linares where I finally
got my llama steak. About same texture as beef but I found the flavour rather
bland. Including beer, it came to 120B.
Monday 25th April
Checked out of the hotel in Linares this morning and walked up
to Calle Jaen for the cable car tour. Only two of us, Matt from Washington DC
and me. Our guide was Sylvia who later explained that she had completed her
training as a doctor but was waiting to sort out some administrative issues
before she could actually start working. She did a great job, taking us first in
a minibus to the lower station on the cable car network, known as “Mi
Teleferico". The cable car system is quite new, opened about two years ago,
and is the world’s first urban public transport system based on cable cars. One
of the big challenges was to provide efficient transport from the central area
to the rapidly growing second city of El Alto 400 metres higher.
More information available at
The first station on the Red Line is the now disused main
railway station for Le Paz. From there we spared over the huge main cemetery
before arriving at El Alto, way above the downtown area. Walked through some of
El Alto which is more civilised than I had expected, but probably not a great
place for a tourist to walk round on his own. Walked along a long row of metal
stalls, most of them closed, which Sylvia explained were used by
"witches". This is the second "witches" market in La Paz.
The old one in Linares is where people buy stuff but then they come to the one
in El Alto where they burn offerings to make ambitions come true and have
fortunes told. It's big business, there are dozens of stalls and Sylvia told us
that consultations and fortune telling can run to many hundreds of Bolivianos.
Tuesday and Friday are popular days but today Monday is not, hence the closed
stalls. Being a doctor, Sylvia explained her frustration that when it came to
solving medical problems people had more faith in the “witches” than they did
in medically qualified doctors and nurses. Of all the South American countries
I have been, Bolivia is the one where the indigenous people are most strongly
represented; all the signs on the cable car system are in both Spanish and
Aymara, the indigenous language.
Sylvia took us on another minibus in El Alto to the yellow Line
station from where we descended over the rooftops before finally transferring
to the green Line which took us into the most prosperous area of La Paz. Then it
was another minibus back to the Plaza San Francisco.
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| View from the Cable Car |
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| View from the Cable Car |
After thanking Sylvia for
a great tour and saying goodbye to Matt I went to the San Francisco Museum next
to the church where a young man gave me an excellent personal tour of the old Franciscan
monastery and up into the tower and belfry of the church. My guide explained that the main road
through central La Paz follows the course of the river that once divided the
city during the colonial period. This side was for the indigenous people while
the Calle Jaen and Plaza Murillo side was exclusively for people of Spanish
descent.
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| Courtyard of San Francisco Monastery |
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| San Francisco Church Bells |
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| San Francisco Church Roof |
Back out in Plaza San Francisco I could see people in a rooftop café which
turned out to be Ichuri, accessed via a lift from a rather hidden away
entrance. Great place to relax with a cup of coffee and watch the bustle of La
Paz from on high.
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| Looking Down on Plaza San Francisco |
Almost opposite the hotel was the Coca Museum, which had been
closed on Sunday but was open today. Very interesting and well worth the small entrance
fee. Although all the exhibits were labelled in Spanish I was given an English
translation. The museum does have a clear “agenda” pointing out the inconsistencies
of North American and European attitudes towards the cocaine derivatives of the
Coca leaf. Interesting to learn that the Coca Cola Company still puts Coca
leaves into its fizzy sweet drink but only after removing the active cocaine.
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| Coca press in the Coca Museum |
Finally managed to pick up my laundry, picked up my bag from the
hotel and got taxi to another small hotel close to the bus station for an early
start tomorrow morning.
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