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Photo Album: La Paz - May Day craze
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La Paz is a city full of life, the defacto Capital of Bolivia ( Sucre is the official Capital), is one of the highest elevated cities in the World, at 3640m above sea level. It sits inside a canyon surrounded by hills, so when looking around, one feels like walking in a very huge sports stadium.
It was May Day craze in La Paz ( no wonder the Uyuni blockade came off yesterday, I surmised ! ), everywhere we walked in the morning, was full of festivities, celebrating the International Labour Day. And there were parades, marching bands, and people with different traditional dresses, mainly with Charlie Chaplin hats though, for ladies.
I was really glad to be observing this, so lucky.
And a few of us joined a free city tour, operated by a young Bolivian couple, who were brought up in the UK. We started from the San Pedro Park just next to the La Paz prison of “Marching Powder” fame.
The story is this prison, being a low security type, has a culture and social structure of its own. Inmates can buy and sell their “cells” like an asset, according to the “affordability” of the person. There are much more to this, best is to read the real life fiction “Marching Powder - A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail (book)- 2003”, according to Wikipedia.
We also tour a very large open market, covering about 10 blocks, plenty of fresh foods, meats, staples, and daily necessities etc. are available. And there are raw nuts which I missed since leaving home.”
And we visited the “Witch’s Market”, just behind our hotel.
Unfortunately, due to the May Day holiday, not many were opened. They sell witchcrafts, herbs and any “curses” to your fancy, I guess. And alpaca foetus as well !
The story goes that whenever a building is erected, a sacrificial animal must be buried under the foundation to thank Mother of The Earth, “Pachamama” However, it was also pointed out that, for multistory building, Pachamama would only be satisfied with a human being....ostensibly still being practiced today. Sometime, a few drunken homeless had fallen prey to this practice, so it was rumored.
We had a lunch stop at an newly built under-cover market, which sells local Bolivian foods plus many fresh fruit salad / juice soups. I baulked at the stuffed potatos on offer because of its high GI and meat stuffing, but I found all through this trip, the fresh fruits in Latin America are always clean and delicious.
Disclaimer: Beware, fruit juices are not necessarily healthy, just because fruits are !!
It was off to the Murillo Square to catch the speech by the President, unfortunately, we missed it just by a whisker, apparently, only the Vice President was in residence. But the festivities there were thunderous.....especially, I like all the different tunics by the various ethnicity. And of course, the Charlie Chaplin hats were cute.
From the top floor of the Presidential Hotel, which was under going internal fit-out, I was able to have a almost panoramic view of the surrounding hill side suburbs and the towering and snow capped Mt Illamani.
Such is La Paz, a city of much Bolivian culture and experience, but we chose to have Thai food that evening...LOL!
Next Post: Dashing down the Most Dangerous Road of the World
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