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A City With Altitude
La Paz, Bolivia |
La Paz, Bolivia
After our week in the relaxed and calm Sucre it was time to face our fears and head to La Paz, the city that comes with more warnings of taxi hijackings and distraction robbery than anywhere else that we had looked at.
Seriously of all the travellers we had met along our route everyone of them had either been robbed or knew someone who had been robbed in La Paz. When we googled it, it sounded like a nightmare, there are stories of backpackers who unwittingly shared a taxi after a bus with a friendly local they met on the journey and they ended up dead having been held hostage whilst their bank cards were used daily to withdraw their life savings. The distraction robberies whilst less dangerous were more common and more likely to happen to a polite Brit. The way these robberies work is that someone will walk past when you are in a café or on a bus and they will spill water or dirt or drop coins near you. When you are distracted with either picking up coins to help or trying to get whatever water or dirt is on you off, you will be relieved of whatever object is in the vicinity; a backpack on the floor, a phone on the table or your wallet from your pocket. The advice that we were given was not to be a polite Brit and just be ignorant to anything untoward going on around you.
We flew back to La Paz as quite frankly the roads and buses did not appeal to us in the slightest. Bolivia is famed for having the Death Road which is now a tourist attraction whereby adrenaline fuelled backpackers stare death in the face as they fly down the death road on a mountain bike. Needless to say we did not go to the death road, mainly because my skills of riding a mountain bike were rusty at best and the last time I tried left me with a wonky broken basket having fallen off on a flat path in Laos. Not the type of cycling skills you want to put to the test on the infamous Death Road. Anyway back to the point, aside from the death road, all roads in Boliva are pretty awful, they are unpaved, they wind through the mountains which have sheer drops on at least one side, the drivers are renowned for being drunk or high on coca leaves and if you don’t crash you are likely to meet one of the many roadblocks which are in place for one of the many protests going on around the country. Thankfully we discovered Amazonias Airlines which is a state owned airline and offered amazingly cheap flights so there really was no contest when it came to buses or flights.
We landed safely in La Paz which is a feat in itself as landing at altitude is quite terrifying as the air is thin and the plane seems to take forever to actually stop on the runway. We had a taxi awaiting us from our hotel and were ready to face our fears. We had managed to find a great deal on a hotel in La Paz, the hostels all had terrible reviews and for just a few pound a night more we found a hotel outside of the main tourist area which was absolute luxury by our standards. We had an odd arrival at the hotel when the taxi driver actually showed us to our room, gave us our key and left us to it. It turned out that we had arrived on Mothers Day so the hotel owner was busy at work in the hotel kitchen and we had to find our own way around the area until the next day when he was finally around to give us some much needed advice.
We made the slightly wrong decision to walk to the main tourist area on our first day and it turned out that it was all uphill from our hstel, still struggling with the altitude at 3,600 meters and with the sun beating down we were stopped huffing and puffing at every road junction. We were soon rewarded as we rounded a corner and found ourselves in San Pedro Square, the home to Bolivia’s largest and infamous San Pedro Prison. If anyone had read the Book Marching Powder by Rusty Young you will know this place, if not here are a few factoids…
San Pedro is not your ordinary prison, it is a society itself within the walls, when you arrive in San Pedro you are not given a cell like usual prisions, you have to pay to buy your own space within the prison and it is completely usual for entire families to move into the prison to live with their loved one. The wives and children of incarcerated husbands leave the prison daily to go to their jobs and schools. The prison was originally designed to hold 250 inmates, but now has a population of around 1,500. Cocaine production within the prison is said to be rife and that is not the only coke you can buy in there… In true South American corrupt style, Embol the Bolivian Brewery have exclusive rights to sell only Coke products within the prison, so you are more likely to be able to get a bag of cocaine than you are a Pepsi! We were over the moon to see San Pedro for real, it was visiting day so there were people and guards everywhere. Once upon a time you could go into the prison on tours but now whilst possible it is not recommended after several rapes and robberies of tourists so we just took in the atmosphere from the pretty little square overlooking the front gate.
La Paz was to be our base in Bolivia to visit the two main attractions, the Pampas which is Bolivia’s answer to the Amazon Rainforest and Uyuni the entrance to the much photographed and to us much anticipated Salt Flats. We did a lot of research on tours to book and discovered that there was no best tour company, there was just the best of the worst. We found a reputable agency and spent our entire day getting tours booked. We left with a Pampas tour to Rurrenebeque with flights, a Red Planet booking for the Uyuni Salt Flat with flights, a free t-shirt and a booking to go Cholita Wrestling that evening.
Whats a Cholita? I hear you all ask… well it is a female wrestler who performs each Sunday with a few male wrestlers thrown in for good measure. The ladies wear their traditional outfits of colourful skirts and wear their hair in plaited pigtails but they are ferocious.
We were picked up from our accommodation and delivered to El Alto, the city which is above La Paz and is home to the infamous El Alto market, the old Forest Gump style bus chugged up the hill and delivered us to what looked like an old warehouse. Inside it was pretty bare, with just some concrete seating around the edge, an old boxing ring in the middle and a few plastic chairs which turned out to be for us. With our ticket we each got a free fizzy drink, a bag of popcorn and a mini Cholita on a keyring. Our expectations were low, I honestly expected the girls to dance around the ring for a bit and then we wold all go home, what we actually witnessed was some seriously fierce and ferocious ladies running at each other, throwing each other around and even leaping from the ropes onto the concrete floor. We were astounded and thoroughly enjoyed the whole show which included Sponge Bob being battered, a scary clown, several men with dodgy costumes and make up and several fierce and talented Cholitas. The evening flew by which was in one way good as it was absolutely freezing in the old warehouse on top of El Alto, we could only look on in pity at some of the poor unprepared backpackers who had turned up in shorts and flip flops as even with several layers we were freezing. When the show was finished we all hopped back on our Forest Gump Bus to be dropped back at our accommodation. Tim and I and one other couple were told that we would be dropped outside a hostel and a taxi would pick us up and take us to our hotels. We were not convinced that this was going to run smoothly when we were stood freezing outside a dark hostel in the middle of La Paz, until out of nowhere our chariot arrived as promised and safely returned us home.
As La Paz is basically built into a valley with El Alto overlooking it, transport is a nightmare, however in 2014 at much expense a cable car system was opened, of the 9 planned lines 3 are currently operational and whilst for us it didn’t provide us with transport to anywhere we wanted to go we rode the yellow and green lines to just take in the views and it was so cheap that if we
got put in a car with other people we just got out at the next stop and went back to the top in the hope of getting a car to ourselves. The Green line is clearly the most controversial as it goes over the poshest area of La Paz with perfect views into the pools and mansions of the rich and famous. It was not surprising to see a lot of for sale signs on the mansions that were in direct view of the cable cars!
Like all cities in South America we had to do the free walking tour, these tours are not technically free as they are based on a tip system, however the other tour operators in La Paz objected to this and they now make you buy a ticket, although payment is still just in the guides cap at the end of the tour so strictly speaking you can pay what you like. The tour started at the San Pedro prison and took us up and down the graffiti lined streets of La Paz. We went through a market where we got to see the ladies in their traditional outfits selling their produce and we passed through the witches market where random witchy products, dried llama foetuses, lotions and various potions were on sale like it was nothing out of the ordinary! We ended up outside the main government buildings. The guide did a great job of entertaining us with tales of the mad leaders that Bolivia has had, one of the most fascinating stories was that of Mariano Melgarejo, the 18th president who reined from 1864-1871. This president was renowned for being a crazy debauched loonatic and his legend lives on because during his reign there was a gathering of South American Presidents in La Paz and the Brazillian president arrived on a magnificent white horse. Melgarejo declared that he wanted the white horse and would give anything for it. Our guide advised us that a map of Bolivia was produced and it was agreed that whatever size poop the horse did on the map that land covered would be given to Brazil. A little research has confirmed the story, although they actually drew around the horses hoof to determine the size of the land to be exchanged. Still today this land is owned by Brazil, all on account of one crazy president and his desire for a white horse.
We had one last place to visit in La Paz, the immense El Alto market which takes place every Sunday and Thursday. This giant market which sprawls for over 5kms is the biggest market in South America (I think) and has a reputation to be feared. If you google it you are sure to discover at least 10 blogs of terrified tourist claiming that they were nearly abducted and raped in the taxi to the market and the stalls were selling used syringes and all sorts of terrible things. We decided to see for ourselves. As a precaution, we didn’t take our cameras and took just enough cash to get there and back with a few dollars in case we wanted to buy anything. Usefully the red cable car goes directly to the market, so no danger of being raped or murdered in a taxi for us. We walked into the market, fearful for what we were about to discover…. And what we discovered was a huge but completely normal market, the same as any that I have ever been to ever. Yes there may have been some odd things for sale, but I never felt in danger or threatened or anything else. It was just a lovely sunny day with a whole bunch of Bolivians going about their day buying their weekly provisions. We didn’t have a huge amount of time to explore and even if we did we still probably wouldn’t have seen the whole market but it was great to see and also great to be able to call out the idiots that have written senseless blogs warning people not to go here.
As I mentioned La Paz for us was a base for exploring and so we returned here after our trip to the Pampas which I will write about next, however I can’t miss the opportunity to share the tale of possibly the worst hospitality we received when we returned to our lovely Hotel Rendezvous. Having stayed once and having made our reservation with the owner direct we were enroute back from 3 wifi free days in the jungle to discover an email from the hotel advising us that we could not have the room we had booked as the wife of the people that had been in it before us had developed altitude sickness and was in hospital. I didn’t entirely understand how someone who was in hospital needed our room but we got to the hotel and figured the owner would be there to apologise and let us know what was going on. Oh how wrong. Once again the taxi driver just gave us the key and tried to send us into the owners house to spend the night in his spare room. Usually we would go with the flow, but the sole reason we returned to La Paz was to have a couple of nights of luxury in a nice hotel, so a tiny twin room with a shared house hold bathroom was not what we had in mind, plus to add insult to injury, the email didn’t even mention how much he was charging us for this room. Tim had come down with a bad stomach after the jungle and we had both been up since 4am so at 8pm we had little choice but to just take the room and sort it out the following day. Thankfully the next day we were given a proper hotel room and were not charged for the night in the spare room, but the owner then gave us the cold shoulder as if we had done something wrong and then when I left a very fair trip advisor review he proceeded to personally attack us for being heartless souls who didn’t care about the woman with altitude sickness!! Heh ho, we had been continuing to recommend that people stay at The Rendezvous, and we meet a lot of people to recommend it to, so badly played Zac, you won’t be getting any more referrals from us, bad move, very bad move!
So we survived it, we weren’t mugged or hijacked and in fact we had a really great time exploring the city.
Next stop the Pampas of Rurrenabaque!
Beans Around The World 