La Paz

A lot of people I met didn't really like La Paz and called it a "fucking shithole" so I was prepared for the worst. But when I started exploring the city I was actually pleasantly surprised. The center could easily walked by foot and I liked the fact that a lot of the streets were crowded with people sitting on the street selling all different kinds of goods.
My first day I went out to find an agency for my tour in the amazon basin. Phil (who I had met month ago in Guatemala and then again in Nicaragua) had done a tour to the jungle and recommended a company that was also mentioned in the Lonely Planet. I went there first and a nice lady told me everything about the different tours and showed me pictures of the accommodation and even the food. There were 2 kinds of tours. To the jungle or to the pampas. Jungle meant hiking and a lot of flora and fauna. Pampas meant going on a little boat along the river and seeing more animals. That sounded a lot more appealing to me.
When it came to the price she told me that there is a law in Rurrenabaque (a small town in the Amazon basin where the tour starts) that forbids you to sell the 3-day-tour for less than 1,200 Bolivianos. She showed me her calculator and said: "So this is what you pay: 1,200 Bs!" She smiled at me and winked as her calculator was showing 750,- Bs.
The price was pretty convincing but I still wanted to ask around before making my final decision. I went to 3 other places but they all wanted around 1,000,- - 1,300,- Bs. I double checked with Phil that I had the right agency and after he told me again that the tour was amazing (even though he did the hike into the jungle) I made my decision.
For lunch that day I met with an old colleague from germany! Sven and I had been working together over 5 years ago but I had met him on a birthday party just before my trip and told him about my plans to travel. So a few weeks before he left for Bolivia he wrote me on Facebook to ask if I would be anywhere around that area at that time. And I was. His mother is originally from La Paz so he came here with his wife and 2 kids to visit the family in La Paz and a few places close by.
It was fun meeting a familiar face and also talking to someone who knows more about the city and the country. I also found it really interesting to learn about the difference when traveling a country like Bolivia with little kids. Obviously it's not as easy and it might be a little scary if a little blond boy tries to venture of exploring his surroundings in a city like La Paz. But I think it also makes you see stuff with different eyes as kids might find other things remarkable than you.
After a nice lunch and coffee Sven and his family headed one way and I another to visit a place that had caught my attention earlier on my trip. The San Pedro Prison in the center of La Paz. It was just a short walk from where I was.
A girl had recommended a book to me in Colombia and I actually started reading it without knowing anything about the story. It was the real story of Thomas Mc Fadden, an English guy who had been caught drug trafficking in La Paz and was send to this exact prison. What he revealed with this book is hard to believe. The prison is run by its own rules basically made by the prisoners themselves. To enter the prison as a evicted fellow you have to pay an entrance fee. Once inside you have to buy or rent your cell. Depending on how much money you have you gonna share a basic cell with other prisoners or you gonna live in your own apartment with proper furniture, TV, ensuite bathroom and kitchen. There are a lot more absurd details about life in prison like that whole families live there with their evicted husbands and fathers. Or that you make money inside the prison with running a restaurant or small shop inside the prison. Also the purest cocain in Bolivia is being produced inside the prison and then smuggled out by the kids going to school or thrown over the prison wall in what looks like used nappies. The police is obviously in on most of what's happening in there but they are also in on the money so they keep their mouths shout.
During the time Thomas Mc Fadden was still in San Pedro he started getting foreign travelers in to show them around and have them spend a night with him partying in prison. This "prison tours" were even mentioned in an earlier version of the Lonely Planet.
So with all this in my mind I arrived to Plaza San Pedro, a lively plaza with the typical little street stalls selling food and souvenirs, and looked at a big building without any windows and a watchtower at every corner. This was the only feature that gave the building away as a prison. But the factor that they were all empty suggested that something was different here.
When reading the book it still felt like fiction. Standing outside the walls made it pretty real.
I highly recommend the book called "Marching Powder" to everyone who comes to Bolivia or wants to learn more about corruption in South America.
From here it was only 10 minutes more to get to one of the stations of the cable car that connects the rich area of La Paz "El Sur" (which lays pretty low) with the poorer area "El Alto" (which is the highest point of La Paz). The cable cars were the perfect way to get an idea of the size and the differences within the city of La Paz. You could see the city stretch into the surrounding mountains and see the architecture change below you in the different areas.
When I came back to the hostel afterwards I ran into Pepijn who I had met on the party in Sucre. He had just arrived and was staying in my room. We went out to get dinner together. Originally we wanted to go to a nice vegetarian place that Pepijn had heard about but when we finally got there it was closed. So we went to a basic pizzeria with cheap but good pizza and wine.
On our way back to the hostel we explored a bit more of the surrounding streets. It was even busier now that the sun was down with lots of people on the streets having dinner at street stalls or just hanging out together in the many squares.
We found an arcade that was also crowded with locals playing computer games and something like guitar hero where you had to step on specifically colored fields on the ground according to what was shown on the screen. One girl was ridiculously fast.
We played a round of air hockey which I lost by far.
Back at our hostel we had our nightly free beer (the hostel was called "Adventure Brew" and had its own Craft Beer).
Jeanine and Dianne arrived the next morning and we all went to the walking tour of La Paz together. The tour was pretty good. We went to the witch market where you can buy all kind of potions and lama fetuses. These fetuses were pretty creepy. But apparently people believe that burning one of these with other ingredients in the place you want to build a new house keeps it save. Our guide told us a story about people putting living humans in the fundaments of big buildings where lama fetuses are not enough.
The story says that rich people would go to find a homeless person and invite them for a drink. When the homeless is to drunk to save himself they throw him in the excavation and poor fresh concrete over him. According to our guide a book exists about this story from someone who survived called "I was drunk but I remember!" - unfortunately just in Spanish.
After the tour I tried to convince the 3 others to join me for a crazy activity I had discovered on TripAdvisor: Urban Rush. It's like rappelling down a building but face first. First everybody was skeptical but in the end Dianne and Pepijn decided to join me. We went up to the 17th floor of a fancy hotel (walking through their restaurant to get there) and got a short introduction on how to get down. The scariest part was to lean face forward out of the window and bring yourself in a 90 degree angle facing the ground 50m away. Once here you could start jumping off the wall while constantly releasing the rope that holds you. About halfway down you let go of the rope and a guy standing on the ground takes over. Now you jump into a 20m free fall and the guy on the ground breaks for you just a few meters above ground. A pretty crazy experience!
The next day I mainly organized stuff regarding my tour to the Pampas. I had met Natascha from Germany in my hostel and she decided to join me for the same tour. It was nice to already know someone on my tour.
After getting everything ready for the tour Natascha and me went to Dinner with Pepijn who was leaving for Holland the next morning. Of course I miss my friends and family sometimes but in this moment I was really happy it wasn't me who had to say goodbye to traveling.Read more