As beautiful as Lake Titicaca was, after a week of taking it easy by a big lake, I was ready for some action! Luckily the next stop on my journey was Bolivia’s crazy capital, La Paz, the highest capital city in the world.
Arriving in La Paz by bus was pretty awe-inspiring. The city literally clings to the side of the mountains, meaning that the elevation can be anywhere between 3000m and 4100m, depending on which part of the city you’re in. Towering above it all are the snow-capped peaks of Illimani, the second-highest mountain in Bolivia.
My first taste of the city was the Witches Market, right on the doorstep of my hostel. Here you can buy all sorts of spells and potions including llama foetuses which can be buried under your new house to bring luck. After wandering around one of the “witch’s” stores for 30 minutes and asking her lots of questions about the meaning of different items (pretty much everything brings you luck), I felt inclined to buy something in case she put a curse on me! I picked up two talismans, which promise to bring me luck, good health, love, money, wisdom and safe travels. And all for only £2... a veritable bargain!
On Sunday afternoon I had another unusual experience: I went to see Cholitas Wrestling. Cholitas are indigenous Bolivian women, in traditional dress. Cholitas Wrestling is like some weird form of WWF, complete with heroes, villains, corrupt referees, participants falling out of the ring and into the crowd, etc. Not sure that in WWF the participants shake up bottles of Coca Cola and spray each other and the crowd with them though! It wasn't just put on for tourists though - more than half of the spectators were locals and half of the fun was seeing how passionate they were about it all. It was a very random experience, and entertaining for a while although after 3 hours I’d had enough and was ready to get back to the city for my dinner!
On my last day I also visited the Coca Museum. As mentioned, I have developed a bit of a love for chewing coca leaves so I found it interesting to learn more about them. The leaves have been an integral part of Andean culture for thousands of years. The plant is considered sacred and the leaves are used in many social and religious rituals, including offerings to Pachamama and the mountain deities. As you can imagine this didn’t sit too well with the Catholic Church when the Spanish conquistadores arrived in the 1500s, and they tried to ban coca leaves. Later they noticed that chewing coca actually allowed the indigenous people to work longer hours, so they decided to lift the ban and collect a 10% tax instead!
Later the West managed to cause even more problems for the indigenous folk by extracting an alkaloid called cocaine from the leaf. Cocaine was initially used as a local anaesthetic for surgery (as the Incas had used coca leaves hundreds of years before) and is still used in some medical procedures today. It was also known to be a stimulant and this lead to the creation of Coca Wine, and later during prohibition, to its non-alcoholic cousin, Coca Cola, which contained cocaine up until 1902. The drink still contains coca leaf extract and The Coca Cola Company imports several hundred tonnes of leaves from Bolivia each year.
It wasn’t long before people discovered the euphoric effects of sniffing/ injecting Cocaine (initially popularised by Sigmund Freud!) and I guess it was all downhill from there.
After other measures to restrict cocaine use failed, the UN finally passed an act to prohibit the production of the coca leaf except for medical or scientific purposes. The humble little leaf is actually listed alongside cocaine and heroin on the list of most dangerous narcotics! Bolivia and Peru have been lobbying to have this amended, which seems fair to me as coca leaves have none of the effects of cocaine, and are such an important part of the Andean culture, but hey, what do I know about international drug laws?! In any case, I must make sure I finish off my giant bag of coca leaves before leaving South America!
The rest of my weekend in La Paz was spent wandering through the different neighbourhoods, doing some tedious admin stuff (I haven’t mentioned, but I actually lost my debit card whilst in Peru and it took a bit of effort to get Citibank to send a replacement to Bolivia!) and whiling away a couple of evenings at the English pub, Oliver’s Travels! Well, everyone needs a taste of home now and then, and a curry and a few pints was just what was needed!
Arriving in La Paz by bus was pretty awe-inspiring. The city literally clings to the side of the mountains, meaning that the elevation can be anywhere between 3000m and 4100m, depending on which part of the city you’re in. Towering above it all are the snow-capped peaks of Illimani, the second-highest mountain in Bolivia.
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| La Paz |
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| LLama foetuses |
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| Other lucky talismans |
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| Cholitas Wrestling |
Later the West managed to cause even more problems for the indigenous folk by extracting an alkaloid called cocaine from the leaf. Cocaine was initially used as a local anaesthetic for surgery (as the Incas had used coca leaves hundreds of years before) and is still used in some medical procedures today. It was also known to be a stimulant and this lead to the creation of Coca Wine, and later during prohibition, to its non-alcoholic cousin, Coca Cola, which contained cocaine up until 1902. The drink still contains coca leaf extract and The Coca Cola Company imports several hundred tonnes of leaves from Bolivia each year.
It wasn’t long before people discovered the euphoric effects of sniffing/ injecting Cocaine (initially popularised by Sigmund Freud!) and I guess it was all downhill from there.
After other measures to restrict cocaine use failed, the UN finally passed an act to prohibit the production of the coca leaf except for medical or scientific purposes. The humble little leaf is actually listed alongside cocaine and heroin on the list of most dangerous narcotics! Bolivia and Peru have been lobbying to have this amended, which seems fair to me as coca leaves have none of the effects of cocaine, and are such an important part of the Andean culture, but hey, what do I know about international drug laws?! In any case, I must make sure I finish off my giant bag of coca leaves before leaving South America!
The rest of my weekend in La Paz was spent wandering through the different neighbourhoods, doing some tedious admin stuff (I haven’t mentioned, but I actually lost my debit card whilst in Peru and it took a bit of effort to get Citibank to send a replacement to Bolivia!) and whiling away a couple of evenings at the English pub, Oliver’s Travels! Well, everyone needs a taste of home now and then, and a curry and a few pints was just what was needed!
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| La Paz street, with San Francisco church in background |
Great! There was an interesting bit in the Guardian last month about the Cholitas here:
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/d2ta6p8
and a link to a short film on the same:
http://vimeo.com/50363178
Worth a look - if you're internet is fast enough!
How funny - that's exactly the one I went to. Perhaps I also saw "Denita the Untouchable", but I can't be sure!
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