DAY 149
It's 6:30am when we arrive at El alto. La Paz is in the valley below and it's quite the view; A sea of red buildings climbing out of the valley all the way to Lo alto. Half an hour later we arrive in La Paz. We drop our luggage at the hotel and go find a place open to have breakfast. They are clearly not early birds here and the only place open for breakfast is in a nearby hotel. Once that basic need satisfied, we take care of the second order of business: tour shopping! We need to buy the planes tickets for our expedition to the jungle, book some ice climbing in one of the nearby glacier and visit Tiwanaku. The plane tickets price will go down from 1360 to 1050 without even negotiating... Weird. Maybe the tour lady felt we were not convinced? We were though and had got the same prices in other agencies. Our sleepy look must have fooled her ;)
We don't do much the rest of the day. A small walk in the neighborhood where we see they indeed sell lama fetus here. We read about it but it's weird to see them everywhere. They are part of a traditional offering to Pachamama to protect a new house. It's burned along with cotton and other things, and buried under the house. We end the day with some Indian food with a twist - Lama tikka masala. The lama replace the chicken very well in that dish. One fun moment in that restaurant is when 2 Brits enter, clearly relieved to find Indian food at last. Finally a curry after two months they said. Nothing taste like home food right :D
DAY 150
La Paz is not a very aesthetic city but there's still enough material for a good stroll. We go people watching in Abaroa park and have our tension checked on the way out by medical students collecting data. It's higher than it normally is because of the altitude unsurprisingly but nothing to worry about. The we climb the Monticulo for a good views of the city. The whole city is exactly like the glimpse we had arriving from Lo alto. Red brick houses all over the place and they look like climbing plants on the surrounding mountains. There's no separation between La Paz and El alto anymore, the houses going up and coming down joined some time ago.
The following the guide's advice, we head to the mirador laikakota to watch the sunset... Which happens to be closed at 6pm. Not practical for watching the sunset I'd say. The last attraction for the day is Angelo colonial. It's a very old cafe where all the objects and furniture are at least 100 years old :D
DAY 151
Ice climbing today! And since it's just the two of us we go in a cab. Luxury ;) After not even 30min, we are out of both cities (La Paz and El alto) and in the middle of nowhere. Maybe it should not be surprising but as a European I always expect the density of population to gradually go down as we go farther and farther from big cities, or even more slowly if it's a capital but it tends not be like that in the new world. Instead, once we're out of the suburbs there's usually nothing but a few very scattered villages until the next big city.
We pull up at the refuge some time later for a very early lunch (11am is too early for lunch!). We're at 4800m. Last time we got that high we had to walk for 5 days. Here in Bolivia you just have to catch a cab and drive for not even 2 hours. We force ourselves to eat then suit up for the ice climbing. The bad news is we have to walk with very rigid sky boots for an hour to the glacier. It's slow and uncomfortable obviously. Once there it's time to put on the crampons and start walking/climbing the beast. It has lost a lot of its mass in recent years but it's still very impressive. We're first told who to walk on it with the gear and start hiking. It's not easy with all the crevice and the glacier is making worrying noises every now and again. It's tiring but fun. After a while our ropes party gets to the rappelling/climbing spot. Our very professional guide installs everything and we start going up and down. Rappelling is always easy but climbing at 5000m is really really tough. The crampons help a lot but the lack of oxygen takes a heavy toll, turning a 10m climb into a marathon! Ok it's a bit exaggerated... A half-marathon ;)
We've been on the glacier for a good two hours when the snow invites itself to the party. We were leaving anyway but we have one more reason not to linger. The weather is always changing very rapidly in the mountain and it's once again very sunny when we're back at the refuge. And by the time we changed back to civilian clothes the weather is back to being threatening.
We make a few photo stops on the way back, Especially for the cemetery we saw earlier today that has the mountain in the background.
DAY 152
Tiwanaku is a ceremonial center, pre-Inca. When it was build in 700, it was on the shore of the Titicaca lake but now it's kilometers away. Little is known on the civilization who built this. It's unclear why they disappear in 1200 either. Right outside of the visitor center, there's a football field (how surprising) and an ongoing game. What's surprising is to see all the supporters wearing the same clothes. Poncho, traditional wool hat under a regular black hat for men. Traditional puff skirts, waistcoats and a hat for women. It's the first time we see men in traditional costume but we've seen women wearing them all over Bolivia. There are differences in between region of course but they are subtle. The length of the skirt, the type and color of hat. It's only visible to an expert ;)
It's an organized trip so we follow the guide first through the museum (that has lots of beautiful ceramics) then to a second museum (with statues) then onto the site itself. What's gorgeous about the ceramics is that they were blending an animal or a face in the design. The puma and lamas ones are really cleverly done. The first museum also talks about the way they adapted agriculture to the extreme environment. Around each plot of land, they dug a canal, for irrigation but not only. At night, the water's head, trapped during the day, was release to create a little micro-climate, keeping the crops warmer enough so they would not die because of the rigors of the Andean night. Simple but very clever! In the 2nd museum there are lots of different statue. The crown jewel of the collection is a huge 7m tall Pachamama. It had a tumultuous life too. It was brought to La Paz for some time and placed in one of the plaza there but if suffered from pollution, riots, etc.. So they eventually brought it back to where it belongs, in Tiwanaku.
The site itself is impressive. The size of it especially. It was a religious center and at that time, one of the important task of religions was to predict the right time to plant and sow. Failure to do so led to the demise of many a civilization and a painful death for the priests. The site is half reconstructed and gives a pretty good idea what it was back then. Restoration is not an easy task, especially since it got badly looted many times over with its stones used by the Incas, the Spaniards and the modern Bolivians. It was even used for the railroad... In the underground temple, we go checkout the famous alien heads. They are indeed weird looking ;)
DAY 153 (08/11/15)
Today we once again head to the cemetery. We're lucky to be there for one of the weirdest tradition I got to see. It's called las Ñatitas and it's about honoring the dead once again. Before the colonization, they were bringing the whole bodies of the dead one a year to party with them. The church prohibited all pagan rites obviously but couldn't quite have this one go away. It was tuned down a bit though. Instead of the whole body, it's now just the skull that is brought out. As expected, the cemetery is jam-packed. Skulls are carried in procession everywhere all over the place and blessed by the priest. The families hire musicians for their dead. They make the skulls smoke and drink their favorite drinks. It's such a great way to remember and honor your dead. There's no sadness in this. It's amazing to see.
Still trying to comprehend what we just witnessed, we head back downtown to join a city tour. It starts in front of the beautiful San Francisco church. The facade is once again full of pagan symbols. To convert people here they were using unconventional tactics. The natives didn't know about mirrors and the church was telling them what they saw in the mirror was their soul and that it was now trapped in that mirror so they had to come back to church regularly for the well being of their soul. It's cheap blackmail but at the same time the inquisition was purging Europe from heresy so maybe they got a better deal here. Our guide tells us more also about the dead baby lamas. It really is a strange animal. They're born wet and lots of them die of hypothermia due to the cold in altitude. Also the llama can only take care of one offspring but they regularly have twins, triplets or more. So they harshly discard the others...
Next stop of interest is a prison. By some strange twist of law, the cells are privately own and prisoners have to pay a rent. Depending on your means, your prison experience will be very different. The families of the inmates can live there and freely enter and exit. It's also self-policed. The incentive for that is the perpetuation of that crazy system. The rest of the your is stuff we already saw during our wandering about so we leave them to it and head back to the hotel.