What I love about La Paz

Omri, Itay, Amir and I took a bus from Cusco to La Paz, Bolivia, via Lake Titicaca and Cochabamba.

(Did you know that Titi Caca means "grey puma"? Amazingly, it was named this way by the Incans...or possibly even pre-Incan, but I will need to check that fact...because upside-down, the lake actually looks like a stretched-out cat. How could they have known this though, without an ariel view? The answer to my question was vague: the Incan empire holds a lot of mysteries.)

In the middle of the night, as we neared the city of La Paz, we were all woken up and informed that we would need to get off the bus and onto a ferry so that the bus could cross the lake empty of passengers. (There had been accidents in the past. Did I mention that before a bus-ride in Peru or Bolivia, somebody hired by the bus company walks around the inside of the bus filming the passengers faces in case of a bus crash? A rather disconcerting thought for people intending on travelling around South America in the future, I know...so I´m sorry if I have put anybody off...but it is one of the quirks of travelling in this vast mountaineous continent, and as I find it amusing myself, I thought I would mention it.)

Rugged up in blankets and warm clothes, we huddled up in what was not really a ferry but more like a dinghy, sleepy dismal faces on a rocky boat that didn´t leave until nearly all of us were already seasick. I remember that boat-ride, because it felt like a dream. The most surreal experiences tend to be, not surprisingly, at strange hours, and when you are not expecting them.

We were glad when we finally got a hostel and climbed into warm beds.

What do I love most about La Paz? Well, everything, nearly.

Drinking Bock (a local beer), 7 percent alcohol content, at high altitude. It really improves my Spanish. (This is my first point, because I was jotting down notes in my journal whilst sitting in the bar of my hostel, the Wild Rover, and having a drink whilst waiting for a friend.)

I love the Witches Markets. This is my second point, because everybody has to mention Witches Markets. They are quirky, and you can get great bargains. The textiles are dazzlingly colourful and there are things that constantly surprise you - such as walking around a corner, and finding shrunken, dried up llama fetuses, their eyes gouged out, necks stretched thin as string beans (can you imagine bombarding Australian Customs at the airport with a couple of those? Yuck. Yet tempting...).

I love the mix of old and new. I love the way in which people go about in old-fashioned business suits, in the streets lined with boot-polishers and men employed to type on clunky old typewriters whilst somebody dicates to them. I entertained the idea of dictating a letter to somebody this way - a Pablo Neruda poem perhaps, or a Bolivian counterpart - but sadly didn´t get around to doing this (like many things).

I lean against the table in the bar and scratch the mostquito bites on my legs, a ritual that has become a daily, automated event ever since my rafting trip. In between my leg scratches, requiring heavy concentration, I think a little more about what I love the most about La Paz.

I love the kindness of people that takes you by surprise. Walking down the street with Brooke one night, an older ex-patriot approached us and asked if we would like two tickets to see the Bolivian Symphony Orchestra, with a guest violinist from Argentina. It was on in five minutes, and we gladly accepted. It was lovely to watch some classical music, and the violinist performed exquisitely. I´ll include his name when I remember it. Brooke and I were enchanted and left feeling very grateful at the man´s kindness, and filled with the sweet potion of music from head to toe.

It is funny, that many people don´t like La Paz for the reason that many people live below the poverty line. Remembering my walk around the city, I wonder why there aren´t as many beggars and desperation here as I expected - at least, what is visible to the tourist´s eye. Have the poor - who possess the type of desperateness that causes people to claw at you, cling onto your clothing as you brush past them, to wail, to cry - have they been swept out of sight? Into the backstreets of oblivion and out of the suit-clad man´s consciousness?

I wonder about the welfare system here and how society is taken care of. Is it different here from that of other countries? I don´t know how much you can tell from the smiling faces about a country´s government.

I love the old women, the cholitas, who stroll along the narrow pavements, in a slow gait. Large women wearing long, puffy skirts that make them appear twice as wide, with polished black shoes and bowler hats, which were introduced by an English business-man once upon a time when the hats were in fashion in London. The story goes that the hats didn´t catch on amongst the Bolivian men, and so in order to sell them he convinced the Bolivian women that bowler hats were a current London fashion item (amongst women). They caught on, and are still worn, although you don´t really see any young person wearing them. Perhaps my generation will be the last to see this sort of dress, to feel as though you have stepped into a time capsule and gone back several hundred years. I feel that in this way, La Paz is a real treasure, in that precious, genuine tradition has been preserved.