La Paz

       La Paz.  With her dizzing off balance height, her whirlwind of traffic, people and vendors.  Her music never stops; locals and tourists alike delight in her sounds until the morning light is at arm´s length.  She is alluring like a woman engaged in an exotic and foreign dance and dangerous like a dark alley with to many encroaching shadows.  She takes your breath away.  Literally.  At 12,007 feet she sits as Inca once did overlooking her people, all the while grining at being the heighest city in the world.  
       As the locals sit selling their wares, chewing the medicinal and mythical coca leaf, tourists race like out of focus neon lights prepping their noses for the cheap cocaine.  La Paz is where you set your clock to noon so you know when to rise from a comotose slumber.  There is an old poem that says, ¨where the Inca shall find comfort and healing and prosperity from the coca leaf, the white man, when he attempts to let it enter his body, shall find only pain and his veins will run through his body in chaos.  He shall encounter only poison and a shattered mind.¨ That is a rough paraphrase but what an accurate prediction of the future.

       It is early today when I wake.  I sip on some coca tea that I bought from and exteremly kind mother who was selling on the street.  My head faintly pounds from the music and costumes of last night´s festivities.  I am toying with the idea of a brief walk down to the Witches Market where an exhilar for any aliment can be purchased.  Dried llama fetus´s hang everywhere.  When a new home is purchased they are burried in the front to wash the house clean and ward off evil spirits.  It is impossible not to stare at the tiny creatures, dried up with eyes wide open.  Such a brief moment they had in this world.  Their first breath was immediately followed by their last and in those eyes I see them screaming, ¨Wait!  I want to be a blessing in life before you make me a martyr in death.¨ Tiny forepaws that aren´t yet totally developed stretch up to cover their face rather than hang down to take a first step on dry soil and stumble to drink their mother´s milk.  I don´t know whether they are still born or untimely ripped from their mother´s womb.  I suspect the latter.  So hang the hundreds of MacDuff´s, killers of Macbeth just as the witches prophesied.
      My eyes wander over them, past the armadillos and charm braclets of animal claws and teeth.  Thousands of tiny viles filled with liquids and powders fill the stalls, promising to to cure everything from poor digestion to fertility.  I stop just for a moment to examine one witche´s brew a little closer.  It is enhance the size of a man´s member.  Hmmm....who couldn´t use an extra inch or two?  But the hag will not sell to foreigners and she cast an evil eye on me while I snap a photo and move on.
       I  stumbe and try to catch my breath on the steep cobblestone streets.  Around the corner is the famous black market.  Here in what consumes dozens of city blocks a person can buy anything from fabric to stereo equipment.  Tobacco, alcohol, toys, hardware supplies etc.  All of it seems neatly packaged and ready for Western consumption.  But it will never make the western shore.  Pirated, it now sells for pennies on the dollar in La Paz.  I had to pick up some Camel smokes since they were only four dollars for 10 packs!  I am amazed at the vast amount of toilets, faucets and piping s this whole continent seems to be void of any sort of septic system or sanitation.
       Tonight Linda and I have a ten hour bus ride that will herd us and hundreds of other weary travellors out of La Paz and south Uyuni where the world´s largest salt flats reside.  We will spend three quiet days in a Landcruiser touring southern Bolivia and camping in mud villages along the way.  It will be a welcome change to the disharmony of Bolivia´s capital.  I prefer the quiet open space and dirt roads of the country to the dazzling cities and throngs of local buses spewing out endless amounts of carbon minoxide.  When I go to wash my face and clean my nails, I like to know that I am washing simple soils rather than soot and exhaust fumes.


Adios La Paz.  Adios Boliva.
Estoy consados y debil con su enfermo.
Gracias para su casa y comida y personas,
Estoy caminando a la Sol.
Bienvendios Chili!