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La Paz
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La Paz was pretty cool. I defiantly liked it, though I cant quite wrap my finger around the city enough to make many broad generalizations about the city or its residents. The one thing that I can see for sure is that Bolivians are lovely people. They are all very friendly and helpful, with some exception of course. La Paz is located deep in a valley within the Altiplano, an area of flatlands located around 4000 meters above sea level.
The worlds highest capital city at 3600 meters, La Paz is a beautiful splattering of brick shanties (with a few painted light blue, yellow, or green) that cling to the hillsides of the surrounding valleys. Almost every street is a hill, with the downtown conglomeration of 15 gray skyscrapers right in the middle of the city. Incidentally, taxi´s charge much higher fares for going ¨uptown¨ than they do for going ¨downtown¨, because during any downtown trip they just roll the whole way, not using any gas at all.
Almost half of the city´s residents are indigenous people who wear traditional dress, brightly colored multi-layered skirts, and dark felt hats for the women. Gold teeth are everywhere, in every possible variation of styles. The receptionist at our hotel had a fabulous gold star set in one of his front teeth. Other people opt for more natural styles, and proudly announce their missing teeth with bold smiles. I think my favorite look so far is the bridge. This is a very popular style in Bolivia, where the person in question may appear to have all of their teeth at first glance, but upon closer inspection it becomes obvious that each tooth is delicately wrapped in a thin gold frame, and attached to the neighboring teeth by the same method.
Most of the city streets have been converted into markets, some of the more traditional variety, with women selling assortments of herbs and veggies spread out on blankets on the floor. But the market that I liked the most was the Witches Market! It was super cool. You could buy all kinds of things from love potions to llama fetuses to dried frogs! The dried frog was painted with sparkly gold, so of course I had to pick it up, but I put it down as fast as lightning when I realized after smelling the frog that it was real. Gross! Also, there were all kinds of bloody animal wings and animal feet and weird things. Did I mention that the Witch´s Market smelled really badly!?!?! Oh yeah, and I bought all kinds of potions and spells and curses, so don´t F*** with me or I´m gonna get down with some Black Magic.
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