Way up high in La Paz
Leaving behind delicious sandwiches, bell-clad boots, and Canadian prices, we took a very jiggy bus (boxed lunch, movies) from Arica back to La Paz, Bolivia. It was one of those typical Andean-Altiplano busrides where there's a snow capped mountain around every bend or maybe a pasture full of chilling llamas.
Though downtown La Paz sits at an elevation of 3200m, it's at thebottom of a bowl with steep sides that stretch upwards in all directions. Houses pour over the edges from El Alto (4000m), the city above the city. La Paz itself is an amazing mix of insane traffic, old, narrow streets crowded with market stalls, and every kind of street food imagineable.
Our favourite... er... adventure was when a taxi driver went the wrong way and proceeded to reverse down an incredibly steep one-way street for 2.5 blocks, narrowly avoiding carts of flowers, pedestrians, and, yes, other cars. Our favourite 'site' was the Coca museum. This cozy museum is dedicated (obviously) to the coca leaf, which is grown here in massive quantity and is chewed by basically everybody. It is also the base plant for cocaine. Displays that are rather science fair-ish document the huge role that coca plays in all the indigenous cultures here, its nutrional benefits, and the American attempt to eradicate it with its (in)famous War on Drugs. One display points out how US policy only targets the impoverished growers and not the Big Pharma corporations that produce the chemicals necessary for coca's transformation into cocaine, nor the offshore banks that launder the money. A grimly true and unsurprising conclusion.
Our other memorable moments almost all revolved around food. We took advantage of La Paz's big-cityness to eat at Japanese, Middle Eastern and French places. Though we found a restaurant called La Quebecoise, poutine was notably absent from the menu. Judging by the slightly irritated look on the waiter's face, we guessed that he got that question a lot.
Living it up on the bus.
Crossing the street in downtown La Paz.
Though downtown La Paz sits at an elevation of 3200m, it's at thebottom of a bowl with steep sides that stretch upwards in all directions. Houses pour over the edges from El Alto (4000m), the city above the city. La Paz itself is an amazing mix of insane traffic, old, narrow streets crowded with market stalls, and every kind of street food imagineable.
Our favourite... er... adventure was when a taxi driver went the wrong way and proceeded to reverse down an incredibly steep one-way street for 2.5 blocks, narrowly avoiding carts of flowers, pedestrians, and, yes, other cars. Our favourite 'site' was the Coca museum. This cozy museum is dedicated (obviously) to the coca leaf, which is grown here in massive quantity and is chewed by basically everybody. It is also the base plant for cocaine. Displays that are rather science fair-ish document the huge role that coca plays in all the indigenous cultures here, its nutrional benefits, and the American attempt to eradicate it with its (in)famous War on Drugs. One display points out how US policy only targets the impoverished growers and not the Big Pharma corporations that produce the chemicals necessary for coca's transformation into cocaine, nor the offshore banks that launder the money. A grimly true and unsurprising conclusion.
Our other memorable moments almost all revolved around food. We took advantage of La Paz's big-cityness to eat at Japanese, Middle Eastern and French places. Though we found a restaurant called La Quebecoise, poutine was notably absent from the menu. Judging by the slightly irritated look on the waiter's face, we guessed that he got that question a lot.
Living it up on the bus.
Crossing the street in downtown La Paz.
posted by Leah Gold at 5:41 PM
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