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September 11, 1998
La Paz Day 2
Hi everyone. Here's the latest installment of my journal High Plains Backpacker, which covers my September 98 trip to Peru and Bolivia.
This episode: La Paz, Day 2
And please excuse any typos or minor errors, especially with my Spanish. I'm still editing the text.
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Wednesday, September 9
La Paz: In Search of Pachamama and a Hearty Lasagna
I awoke just after 7am with a bit of a headache. Both Susanne and I had been plagued by a nasty head cold since our departure from Machu Picchu; since Copacabana I had wondered whether it had grown into a full blown sinus infection. As far as I could tell the worst was past for me; I was no longer waking up in the middle of the night to blow my nose every other hour. Susanne's cold, on the other hand, seemed to be running a few days behind mine. Hopefully she wouldn't have too many problems, especially now that we were in the warmer and cozier surroundings of La Paz.
Susanne and I got breakfast at the Hostal Republica's small restaurant. They had a desayuno Americano for 15 bolivianos that included both ham and sausage - a little more arterial poison than I could handle. Instead I chose the desayuno Continentale, a 10 boliviano plate of stale toast, butter cookies, coffee and pineapple juice. The small cookies went well with the rich coffee but the toast was by far the worst I've ever had - I could see they had two dozen pieces of toast in the oven at once, dessicating slowly at a low heat. "Tomorrow let's eat somewhere else," I said to Susanne, thumping the petrified toast on the table.
We didn't have much of an agenda for the day apart from walking around and getting to know the city. I suggested we start off the morning with a stroll to Plaza San Francisco, the home of the exquisite Iglesia de San Francisco. After leaving the hotel and walking a half a block down Illimani we turned left to walk downhill along Calle Loayza before heading right along Avenida Potosi. Calle Loayza makes a steep drop towards the Prado, La Paz's main commercial thoroughfare, three blocks away. There's a 50-foot drop between Illimani and Potosi that forced city planners to incorporate a set of stone steps down the sidewalk, just to stop people from sliding down the embankment. I could see why so many people have compared the streets of La Paz to San Francisco, California - San Francisco at an altitude of the Rocky Mountains, perhaps.
As we turned right on Potosi the avenida flattened out into what appeared to be a banking district. Small casa de cambios occupied the space between large banks with armed guards standing out front. We followed Potosi for five or six blocks until it terminated at a busy intersection of the Avenida Mariscal Santa Cruz - one of the many individually named sections of the Prado. After dashing across the avenida and dodging the morning rush hour traffic we found ourselves at the edge of Plaza San Francisco, the home of the oldest major church in La Paz, the Iglesia de San Francisco. The church was founded in 1548 by Fray Francisco de los Angeles and was built soon after. Sixty years later a snowstorm collapsed the original structure; over a century past before the iglesia was rebuilt in the mid-1700s.
Both the church and the plaza were constructed out of brownish grey stone blocks: earthy clay hues that would have rendered the entire image as a sepia- toned daguerrotype if it weren't for the dozens of brightly dressed campesinas occupying the plaza benches. Several hundred people in all mulled about the plaza, reading newspapers, gossiping, getting shoeshines, selling trinkets. As Susanne and I entered the plaza an older gentleman approached us and held out his hand just below my face. "Trilobite se?or?" he started to ask as I politely waved him away. "Did he say trilobite?" I asked Susanne. "I think so," she replied. "It looked like a fossil." The sedimentary rocks of Bolivia are well known to brim with bounteous paleontological treasures, but it struck me as odd that the local touts would hawk fossils as readily as the local street children offered shoeshines.
Susanne and I walked around the plaza, people-watching and taking pictures as unobtrusively as possible. A trio of soldiers stood outside the church entrance; I tried to get a photograph of them with my telephoto but one of them spotted me and gave me the evil eye. We worked our way to the church itself, curious to see if it was open for visitors. Indeed, I spotted several families going in and out its massive wooden doors, so we put away our cameras into our daypacks and entered the church. The interior was decorated in the typical Andean colonial style, not unlike the cathedral in Cusco. One different I did note, though, was the plentiful light that beamed through high stained glass windows. While Cusco's cathedral was dark and sombre, Iglesia del San Francisco glowed from the rays piercing through the portals. Twenty or so parishoners sat along its aisles and prayed; several campesinas kneeled. Susanne and I paced the perimeter of the interior, making our best effort not to interfere with the parishoners. Along the church walls stood large altars, each manned by a resident saint that appeared to have been sculpted in wax. Perhaps they were plastic or frescoed plaster - I couldn't tell without more light. Near the far end of the church I noticed one statue, San Francisco de Los Angeles himself, who possessed a neon halo radiating a bright day-glo blue. "Neon inside a church?" I whispered to Susanne. "I haven't seen religious neon since that streetside mission in southside Chicago." Actually, the more I stared at the luminescent saint the more I liked it. Perhaps they're on to something here.
Returning to the bright, busy scene along Plaza San Francisco, Susanne and I walked towards the street along the left side of the church. We were at the bottom of Calle Sagarnaga, the steep cobblestone road known as Artesenia Alley because of its abundant folk crafts shops. Sagarnaga was the lifeblood of the La Paz shopping scene, at least as far as visitors are concerned: sweaters, leather goods, wall hangings, silver, pottery, even musical instruments could all be found within a few steps of each other. I imagined we'd spend a good part of the next few days right here, shopping for all those knick-knacks and curios we'd managed to neglect buying in Peru or Copacabana. Even if we didn't actually purchase much along Sagarnaga, I quickly felt as if I could spend hours wandering the shops and stalls, watching campesinas haggle with itinerant visitors day and night.
While there were ample opportunities to keep busy here in this artists' colony, our next stop would be a market with a much darker side. Somewhere not far from here we would find this place which goes by many names, including El Mercado de Hechiceria (the Market of Witchcraft) and El Mercado de los Brujos (the Market of Wizards). To local Aymara campesinos, though, it is simply known as Laki'asina Catu: the Witches' Market. For years the Aymara have come to the Witches' Market to purchase potions, powders, talismans and other magical items that carry weight in the spiritual world. Whether you were looking to improve your fertility or to place a curse on your mother-in-law, you'd probably be able to find the right mystical tool at the Witches' Market. Everything I've ever read about the market has always highlighted one particular item - preserved llama fetuses. Llama sacrifice has been an important element in Aymara ritual for centuries, especially when it comes to consecrating a new home; even today you'll find many businesses sacrificing a llama to commemorate a new office building. Yet the average Aymara family cannot afford to buy a full-grown llama, so over time the campesinos adopted the practice of offering llama fetuses as a sacrificial substitute. Dead animals, potions, curses: the Witches' Market sounded like a throwback to a medieval Andean epic. I was eager to find out whether its reputation was a well-earned spookfest or simple tradition played up for the turistas.
Susanne and I walked the short distance up Sagarnaga before taking a right on the next street. I was under the impression that the Witches' Market would be somewhere near the end of this block, yet all we found here were several wood shops, each with stacks of freshly varnished desks and chairs piled along the curbside. I pulled out my Lonely Planet and flipped through its pages to find the map of central La Paz. After staring at the map for a moment I realized we were still one block below the market. "We should have continued up Sagarnaga for another block before making that right," I said to Susanne. "I assume if we take a left on the next street and head uphill for one more block we should be able to find it." We passed two or three more wood shops before reaching Calle Santa Cruz (not to be confused with Avenida Mariscal Santa Cruz, which is probably one of the many good reasons why they refer to that avenida as the Prado instead). Santa Cruz was an archetypal La Paz street, a crowded thoroughfare of shops and market stalls sloping high up a steep hill. Susanne and I both took our time mounting the hill; even though we've probably adapted to the altitude by now, we saw no reason to kill ourselves this early in the day. Both sides of the calle were lined with sporting goods shops - trophies, soccer cleats, game balls and uniforms. I had mentioned to Susanne several weeks earlier I wanted to get a Bolivian soccer shirt in La Paz. It looked like we'd found the place to buy it. "Let's come back here later and find that shirt," I said.
We soon reached the corner of Santa Cruz and Linares, the intersection that marked one end of the Witches' Market. Calle Linares was a long, rolling hill covered in rounded cobblestone - the kind of pedestrian-unfriendly cobblestone I've tripped over on so many occasions, from the winding passageways off Edinburgh's Royal Mile to the alleyways of Barcelona's Barri Gotic. Further up the road I could hear music playing from a charango shop. Nothing seemed really out of the ordinary until I saw several market stalls lined along the left side of the street. Young campesinas stood guard over their alchemist's paradise of magical goods - statues of the goddess Pachamama; plates of powdered sulfur, iron ore and assorted mineral dusts; tiny glass bottles of mysterious tinctures, solutions, and other elixers of toil and trouble. There was no mistaking it; we had found el Mercado de Hecheceria. The Witches' Market was much smaller than I expected: hardly a market at all in the typical crowded-with-shoppers sense, in fact. There were no more than three or four women selling things here, and at that particular moment we were the only customers in sight. Then again, it's not every day that the average campesino has to build a house or alleviate a curse. The Witches' Market was an open-air specialty shop. You come here when you need to.
We, of course, didn't exactly need to be here, but the idea of a real-life witches' market was too intriguing to pass up. The campesinas didn't seem to mind our browsing, as long as we didn't jump in their faces, snap pictures and run off like other tourists have been known to do. The colorful concotions and the staring faces of the Pachamama statues were the first things that caught my attention. I then looked down to a large cardboard box just below the table and noticed what appeared to be shriveled My Little Pony dolls with matted hair, big cartoon eyes and absurdly long legs. It took me a moment to realize that I had been staring at dead llamas fetuses. I really had no conception of what they might look like; for some reason the haphazard arrangement of these strange, freeze-dried creatures in a discarded appliance box caught me off guard. "I take it you've noticed the llamas," I said to Susanne, staring at the fetuses. "Of course," she replied. "First thing I saw."
I walked closer to one of the market stalls and perused the selection of Pachamama statues. Several dozen of them occupied a wooden shelf, most no taller than six or eight inches. "Pachamama, s?," the campesina said to me, pointing to the array of stone figures. Many of the statues showed Pachamama as a campesina with a young child and several small animals clinging to her back. "?sta es Pachamama y su hija Mama Coca." Pachamama was the mother earth goddess to both the Aymara and Quechua, while her daughter, Mama Coca, represented the power and the bounty of the sacred coca leaf. "Pachamama," the campesina continued, pointing to the images on the statue. "Mama Coca, y animales: la rana, la serpiente, la tortuga..." The frog, snake and turtle were all talismans of good luck, as were the images of Pachamama and her child: to possess the statue was to possess the protection of the goddesses and their familiars.
While I wasn't in the market specifically for spiritual protection, I liked the idea of bringing home a Pachamama statue for myself, perhaps for my mom as well (she collects pre-Columbian figurines). I found one particular statue carved out of a white soapstone whose thin goddess faces reminded me of a Modigliani painting. I asked the campesina how much she wanted for it. "Veinte bolivianos," she replied, just under four dollars. Before I would proceed with the haggling process I asked her to hand me the statue. I placed it on a flat surface to see how well it would stand. To my disappointment it immediately leaned to the side. I gave the statue a slight tap, causing it to tumble over into my hand. My little Pachamama was cursed by a dangerously high center of gravity. After trying to stand the statue once again I returned it to the campesina. "No, gracias," I said to her, hoping she would sympathize with my plight. "Malo, malo," she replied, shaking her head as she returned the statue to its place on the shelf. "Malo means bad, right?" I asked Susanne. I didn't intend to be a bad customer - perhaps I'd have better luck later. There was plenty of time to find the right Pachamama.
We continued along the sloping cobblestone of Calle Linares, eyeing the Witches' Market stalls and music shops. Each music shop had its specialty items, usually zampo?as, flutes and other wind instruments, as well as guitars, charangos, and assorted implements for strumming a tune. I seriously considered buying a charango - the 10-string, eukalele sized instrument would be small enough to bring home - but the better hand-made charangos easily surpassed 500 bolivianos. Unless I was serious enough to learn how to play Andean music I wasn't sure if I wanted to make the investment. I was also in the market for another sweater, though from what I had seen along Sagarnaga, the sweaters here were pricier and more limited in variety compared to the ones I had seen in Cusco. In hindsight that was a little frustrating, but hopefully I'd still be able to spot a bargain somewhere in town.
The Witches' Market petered out by the time we reached Sagarnaga. On the other side of the intersection I could see a variety of colorful streamers strung from one side of the street to the other high above the cobblestone. The streamers instantly reminded me of Kathmandu, which had been decorated generously with streamers for the Newari new year during our 1996 visit. Most of the streamers were in Spanish but one announcement caught my eye: Internet Cafe. I pointed at the streamer and smiled. "Shall we check in with home?" I asked. Susanne agreed, so we stopped briefly at the cafe - an office on the second floor of a courtyard hostal - sending emails to our families and catching up with the latest news.
After using up most of our 30-minute Internet allowance Susanne and I returned to Sagarnaga hoping to find a good place for lunch. Back in Copacabana our friend Scott had recommended a place called Lobo, known for its cheap eats and backpacker crowd. I noticed that Lobo was a block or so east of Sagarnaga on Calle Illampu, also only a block further up the hill. We proceeded to walk high up Sagarnaga, passing a variety of tour agencies and hostals. Sagarnaga appeared to become more of a typical business district here, with appliance stores and wholesale fabric shops lining the left side of the road. It didn't seem like we were going to find much of interest in this part of town, so we hung a right on Illampu and walked until we found Restaurant Lobo.
Just as Scott had described it, Lobo was a backpacker joint: menus were available in both English and Hebrew. In fact, just as we were settling in to place our order, the two Israeli women we had met on the bus ride from Copacabana walked through the door. "Long time no see," I said to them.
"Is this your first time at Lobo," asked the brunette woman, who appeared to have recovered well from her seasickness. "This is our third time." As they wandered off to find the Hebrew menu Susanne and I both ordered veggie lentil burgers. A few minutes later the waitress returned with two plates, each covered in huge round slabs of processed lentils on top of open buns slathered in butter. "Now that's one hell of a veggie burger," I said. "I just wish they hadn't coated it with butter," Susanne replied, scraping it off with a knife. Considering we were eating in beef country I was surprised they even had lentil burgers in the first place, let alone delicious ones. I soon slumped over, having gorged myself to full satisfaction.
After paying the check we went over to the Israelis to say goodbye to them. Before leaving I asked them what else they've done in La Paz. "Have you been to the prison?" the brunette replied.
"Is there much to see there?" Susanne responded, surprised as I was with the question.
"Oh, it is sad," she replied, "the conditions there are not very good. You really should go."
"Okay," Susanne answered. "We'll think about it."
"The prison?" I said to Susanne as we descended the stairs to the street below. "I have no idea either," Susanne replied. "Perhaps they knew someone who was arrested and spent some time there." I couldn't figure it out but it sounded like it could have been interesting in a Midnight Express sort of way if there were time available for it. For now, though, my only major concern was some serious shopping time along the Witches' Market.
After leaving the restaurant we backtracked to Sagarnaga and walked down the hill towards Calle Linares and the Witches' Market. Immediately to our left we found a string of witches' shops that had opened since our initial visit earlier this morning. One older woman with a small shawl wrapped around her head was selling more Pachamama statues. I looked at several of the statues and found two that I particularly liked, which of course made it harder to decide which one to buy. "Cuanto cuesta?" I asked her. "Quince bolivianos," she replied - about three dollars. As I examined the Pachamamas I realized the two statues were almost mirror opposites of each other - one with Mama Coca hanging on to Pachamama's left shoulder, the other with Mama Coca on her right shoulder. "I bet these would make good bookends," I said to Susanne.
I held the two statues up to the woman and asked for a llapa, a discount for buying more than one. "Veinte bolivianos," I offered. The woman shook her head and repeated, "No llapa, no llapa - treinte bolivianos." Thirty bolivianos was no bargain, so again I insisted on 20 bolivianos. Eventually the woman relented and began to drop the price, but she froze at 25 bolivianos - just under five dollars for the two statues. That was good enough for me, so I agreed to the price. She then proceeded to tie a rainbow colored braid of alpaca yarn around each statue's neck and wrapped them neatly in several layers of newspaper. Susanne asked if she could take a picture of her. Normally the women of the witches' market frown upon photographers but they're sometimes persuaded when the request follows a successful business transaction. The woman nodded her head in approval and straightened her shoulders for the photograph.
A few steps up the curb sat an older gentleman neatly dressed in a suit jacket and hat, sunning himself on a stool. He was an image straight out of an old European photo album. I approached him, saying "Buenos tardes, se?or" as I pointed to my camera. He looked at the camera and smiled, replying "S?, se?or." Assuming he wanted a couple bolivianos for his time I asked him how much he would charge. "No bolivianos," he replied. "Coca, coca..." A barter of coca leaves for a picture? That would be fine with me but I didn't have any coca, nor did I know where I could get any (though I probably could have approached any campesina in the local shops and asked her for some). "Permiso," I replied, "no tengo coca, se?or. Dos bolivianos okay?" "Okay, okay," he muttered as he suddenly got up and walked away. Where was he going? The man crossed the street and grabbed a small sack, pulling out a colorful red cap and a poncho. Apparently he though I wanted him to pose in Aymara costume. "Oh no, se?or," I said, hoping not to lose face in any way. I pointed at his jacket and hat and smiled. "Bueno, se?or." "Okay, okay," he again replied, settling back down on his stool as I squatted on the pavement to take the photograph.
We spent the next hour or so shopping in the many artesenia co-ops along Sagarnaga. I had read somewhere that the more expensive shops tended to be further down the street, towards the Plaza San Francisco and the Prado, while the cheaper stores were usually higher up the hill. I guess it's all a matter of shoppers' endurance - if you're wealthy and lazy you won't want to bother with climbing all the way up the road. The inverse would be those of us who were willing to cough up a lung conquering the steep hillside in search of a good bargain - if you climb it, you'll get a discount for your effort. Calle Linares appeared to be the treeline between retail and bargain prices: all the shops we visited below Linares had inflated prices for most of their goods, especially sweaters. I was actually quite disappointed with the sweater selection. Most shops sold the same collection of a dozen or so varieties for prices starting at $30 to $40, much more expensive than the shops in Cusco. Other stores sold unique sweater patterns at inflated prices of $70 or more. I really enjoyed poking my head from one store to another but found it hard to get serious about buying anything today. Perhaps tomorrow or Friday would be better.
As we descended Sagarnaga towards the plaza Susanne pointed at a man across the street. "Isn't that Scott from Copacabana?" she asked. Indeed it was Scott, the long-haired blonde guitarist we met at the Hostal C?pula. We called out his name and got his attention, clearly surprising him in the process. "Hey there," he laughed "welcome to La Paz!" Scott had spent the day shopping and was clearly more successful than we were, holding several small bags in a fishnet sack slung over his shoulder. "I'm doing all my Christmas shopping here," he said. "Where else can you shop for 30 people and not bust your bank account?" Scott pulled out a small watercolor he purchased from an art gallery across the street. It was a pretty black and white La Paz street scene. "I got this from an artist in the shop over there," he said. "I might have to go back and get some more." Scott then asked if we had any dinner plans tonight. "This is my last night in La Paz so I want to go out in style," he said. "There's a great Italian place called Restaurante Pronto in the Sopacachi neighborhood. It's really classy but they don't care if people show up dressed like us." Like us?, I thought? I knew I hadn't shaved in a few days, but... He wrote down the name of the restaurant and "Sopacachi" on a small piece of paper. "It's kinda hard to find," he continued, "so why don't we meet at Cafe Montmartre around 7:30? It's right around the corner from the restaurant and every taxi driver will know where it is." Susanne and I both thought it sounded like fun so we agreed to meet him at the cafe.
After parting company with Scott we visited the art gallery he had just recommended. The resident artist specialized in watercolors and oils, with styles ranging from abstract to primitive. Susanne and I found a few nice paintings of rural villages and Aymara campesinas, including one marvelous blue watercolor of a campesina standing on a hillside as a storm came in. Susanne strongly considered buying it but decided to hold off and see if she still had the urge later in the week. We then stopped at a small cafe inside the mall and split a piece of angel cake over a couple of Cokes (including my first glass bottle Diet Coke - I think old fashioned glass bottles were gone by the time Diet Coke came out in the States). As we sat in the courtyard enjoying our snack we noticed a quartet of mannequins propped up near the exit, each dressed in garish polyester. Their accoutrements were bad enough, but the mannequins' most haunting features were their faces - 1950s howdy-doody teethy grins straight out of an abandoned Montgomery Ward. Papa mannequin looked like a bald Jim Carrey in the middle of a knee-slapping pratfall; Mama mannequin bore the false eyelashes, greasy rouge and marachino lipstick of an old French whore; Brother and Sister mannequins were characters in a late-night pay-cable B-movie horror flick - "The mannequins are alive, and they're out for blood!!!" "Why on earth would anyone be inspired to buy that clothing after looking at those awful things?" Susanne asked. "Comedic irony?" I wondered.
After paying the tab Susanne and I continued our walk past the Iglesia del San Francisco and Plaza Murillo until we reached our hotel. The Pachamama statues I had been lugging around were beginning to put a strain on my back so I was eager to drop them off in the room. When I approached the front desk for our key the resident travel agent informed me that tomorrow's trip to Tiwanaku would probably be cancelled due to a blockade along the main highway. Apparently a group of cocaleros - native coca farmers - were blocking the road to protest President Banzer's coca eradication policy. "The protest may end tonight," she said, "so check with me tomorrow morning and we'll see if you can go. Otherwise you can visit Tiwanaku the next day."
Susanne returned to the room while I discussed our options with the tour agent. Meanwhile, the hotel receptionist, a cherubic, freckly redheaded woman named Katrina, asked me out of the blue, "Do you know anything about the Internet?" I was rather surprised by the question - rarely has anyone ever brought up my profession without my prompting on our trips outside of the US. "Sure," I said, "I do a lot of work with schools and communities on the Net. Why do you ask?"
"I just finished taking a course on Windows 98 and Microsoft Office and was wondering how difficult it is to learn how to go online," Katrina replied. Windows 98? Microsoft Office?, I thought to myself; where did she learn her English? Reading Bill Gates biographies? "It's really easy," I said. "Internet software has gotten smart enough for anyone to learn how to do it."
"I really want to learn about the Internet," she continued, "but it's so expensive in Bolivia. Not even most big businesses can afford it. Only a couple of companies offer Internet access so it's almost cheaper to get an account in Peru and make an international call rather than pay for it here."
"Well, that's the way it often starts for countries new to the Internet," I said. "A few companies will use the Net, their employees with introduce it to their friends and families, so the demand will spread. The government may begin to use it, increasing the number of people who want it. Eventually prices will come down but it may take a few years."
"Prices won't come down here, thanks to our president," Katrina grimaced. "Banzer is an old man who probably won't run again, so he just doesn't care about helping the rest of us. Our last presdient, he was really connected to the people, but he lost to Banzer. Sanchez was educated at Harvard and spoke Spanish like a Norte Americano. Banzer's campaign ads would say 'how can you trust a president who speaks Spanish like a Gringo?' Now Banzer is president and we're stuck with him."
"I have to ask," I interrupted, "Where did you learn your English?"
"In Texas," she smiled. "I spent seven years in Houston when I was a kid. But then I moved back to La Paz and didn't speak English for nine years until I got this job about a year ago. At first I didn't speak it well but the more I get to practice the better it gets."
We continued to chat for a while until I realized that Susanne must be wondering what had happened to me. I wrapped up my conversation with Katrina and returned to the room, where I found Susanne sitting on the bed looking over her journal. "What happened to you?" she asked.
"Internet and politics talk," I replied. "And no, I didn't start it." I looked at our travel alarm clock and saw that it was just after 4pm: that gave us some time to relax, maybe go for a walk, then head to Sopacachi for dinner with Scott. I looked at one of the maps in my LP guide and estimated it would take us about half an hour of walking to reach Sopacachi from our hotel. "Let's check out Murillo Plaza for a little bit," I suggested. "We can then head back to the hotel around 6pm, grab our jackets and walk down the Prado to Sopacachi. We should get to Cafe Montmartre around 6:30, which'll give us plenty of time to grab a drink before we meet Scott." I removed the Pachamama statues from my backpack and propped them like bookends on a night stand, placing my journal and sketchbook between them. "That'll look good on my shelf," I said.
Posted by acarvin at September 11, 1998 12:59 PM
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