Pollution, Witches and Curses

Copacabana - La Paz, four hours of bus, 155 km, from 3800m to 3660m above see level

La Paz - Potosi, ten hours of bus, 538 km, from 3660m to 4600m above see level.

   I arrive in La Paz in the beginning of the afternoon, the view of the city from above is very impressive. It occupies all the sides of the mountains around, leaving the center of the town in the middle of the valley. Impressive valley but also a real hell where the pollution from the old buses with their black smoke can't escape and where it often becomes hard to breath, especially if you add to this the altitude of the place.

Lucky, my hostel is only a few meters away from the bus terminal. It is a gigantic old brewery. The place is very nice and cosy and there are pancakes for breakfast! I arrive in my room and immediately meet Kate, the american who sleeps on the bed above mine. She is very nice and directly proposes me to go with her and her friend Elena to watch women wrestling in traditional bolivian clothing, the Cholitas!

And here we go one hour later. The show is a lot of fun, the Cholitas play their role fully, would pull each others skirts up, pull their brades...

Coming back to the hostel, we are off to the hostel's bar for a few beers, followed by a karaoke night. 

        The inversed clock of La Paz

   The next morning I have absolutely no motivation to pack my bag and to go away so I book another night. Kate, Elena and I go for a walk around the touristic market in the center of La Paz in search for the witch market. It is a traditional market not originally made for tourists, where women sell all sorts of magical powders, love filters, good luck charms and especially dried lamas's foetuses, which all bolivian buy when they move in a new house to protect it from bad charms.

We end the afternoon with a lunch/dinner in a delicious and wonderful mexican restaurant which offers vegetarian options (hallelujah!), the most beautiful mexican restaurant ever seen, a real museum! Once more we end up at our hostel's bar for our daily free beer. 

                             The dried lama feotuses

         At the witch market

   The next day I decide to leave to Sucre. So I check out and then go do a city tour with Elena and Kate. The two animators are very nice and tell a lot of funny things as for exemple, how a young man from the country sides flirts with a Cholita. I won't tell you everything but let's say that it involves throwing a few stones, some running away and showing off a calf!

We then go for lunch in our wonderful mexican place, and going back I decide at the last minute to stay one more night.

At night, after our daily beer, we decide with the barman and a few people from the hostel to go out. We dance until quite late, come home late (or early, depends on the point of view), and the next day I am very glad that the hostel doesn't ask to check out before 1pm!

We spend our day in bed. I borrow another bed than mine since I technically don't have any more right to sleep over... And at 8pm I am off to the bus terminal for my bus to Potosi.

I have a ten hours bus ride, and as most of the bolivian buses, there is no toilet onboard, just a short stop on the side of the road at 3am... Leaving from La Paz at night is as impressive as my arrival there, but this time all the sides of the mountains around are lit by the many houses, and we can really feel the gigantic size of the city.

                       The cursed mountain of Potosi

   I arrive in Potosi, the cursed city, because of the big mountain that stands above it. This cursed mountain that kills the miners in its belly as they go searching for silver.

Potosi used to be the biggest source of silver of the world at the time of the colonization. But today, the silver city sees itself left alone. It is one the five highest cities in the world, being 4600 meters above see level, the town became very poor, polluted and has lost its beauty. The poor men come here to mine, hoping to find a treasure of silver, but they end up working like animals in very dangerous and suffocating conditions inside of the mountain, earning almost nothing except a shortened life, usually only up to 45 years old, ending up dying spitting up blood because of the thin dust breathed all day long in the galeries. An awful job for an awful life.

I really didn't like Potosi. The city is dirty and polluted, the inhabitants aren't very welcoming...

But I enjoyed seeing there the bolivian zebras: the government employes funny young people in the big cities to dress up as zebras and spend their days stoping the cars to help people cross the streets, especially the kids, for them not to get run over. They always are very nice and fun, full of energy.

Begin claustrophobic, I didn't visit the mines but went instead in an old cloister still partly used, where, back in time, the nones entered at 18 and would never ever go out of it again, even their bodies were burried inside the convent. They couldn't ever see their families again, except for one hour a month across a small wonden fence. But the convent was beautiful, with a luxuriant garden. 

The next day very early, I am off to the bus terminal to jump in a bus to Sucre, the administrative capital of the country.

                                   A zebra helping to cross over