Around the World

This morning we headed back to the airport to collect my coat. Instead of getting a taxi we flagged down the local minibus and jumped in with the locals. Our taxi yesterday cost us 80 bolívianos (around £9) however the mini bus only cost us 3 bolívianos each so around 67p! It's definitely worth travelling like the locals do.

They say in Laz Paz that you can get all 4 seasons in one day and we certainly witnessed that today. When we left our hostel to get the bus, it was drizzling but at the airport it was snowing! Later in the afternoon the sun came out, crazy! One things for sure, I'm so glad I managed to get my coat back!

After being reunited with my coat we headed to the bus to get back into town. One down side of travelling with the locals and not in a taxi is that you need to be slightly aggressive in order to get a spot. There is no British queuing system here! As soon as the bus pulled up everyone charged towards the bus. There was no way me and Si were waiting in the snow for the next one so we did as the locals do and muscled our way on to the bus! Si managed to get a front seat next to the driver (ideal for telling the driver to partially stop when you want to get out) and I couldn't be further away in the back seat.

In the afternoon we joined a local walking tour. I think this one has made it in to our top 3 so far! The tour started outside San Pedro prison. The prison was originally built as a monastery but was later turned into a prison. It is designed to hold 400 inmates however there are now 2000+ inmates and their families living in there today. In Bolivia you are guilty until proven innocent and it can take up to 8 years to get a trial date so this is why the prison is so overcrowded. 15 prison guards are posted outside the prison during the week and only 5 at the weekend but there are none inside the prison which is run by the prisoners themselves. The prison is split into 8 sections and there is a leader of each (also a prisoner). If anyone tries to escape, then they are drowned in a well in the prison along with their family. When you first arrive in the prison, you don't get given anything by the government so you have to find yourself a place to sleep. For around 50 bolívianos a month you can buy a very small empty cell which may or may not have a mattress on the floor but for 5000 bolívianos a month you can get a space with plasma TVs and a jacuzzi! Tourists used to be able to have a tour of the prison however that stopped when people started getting hurt. You can still get an 'unofficial' tour but be warned the prison guards may not let you out again!

After the prison we walked around one of the markets and learnt about the Bolivian women that work on the market stalls. There are hundreds of stalls selling pretty much the same thing so we had wondered how they made any money. Our guide explained that they visit the same stall every time and that 3 generations of a family could be visiting the same stall and therefore it becomes a social thing as well. If you break up with your boyfriend, you could go to the lady at the stall and she would give you a hug, that kind of thing. If you visit someone else's stall they get very upset and offended and will chuck fruit at you. After hearing this we felt obliged to visit the same lady in the market that we visited the day before to get our vegetables for dinner.

We also got a demonstration in Bolivian flirting amongst these traditional women. In Bolivia, a women is sexy if she has wide child bearing hips, big juicy calfs and can carry a baby on her back, another on her hip and a basket up a steep hill (and La Paz is steep and at a very high altitude). You always see the women carrying everything on their backs in colourful blankets. It's very impressive and sometimes slightly terrifying when you discover that the bulge on her back is a sleeping child! Anyway back to the flirting. If a lady likes a guy she will give him the eye and swing her beautiful child bearing hips at him. He will check out her juicy calfs and if he likes her he will throw small stones at her feet. If she is feeling really saucy, she will pull up her skirt slightly so that he can see the most sexist part of her, her big juicy calf!

After the market, we visited the witches market where you can find llama foetus' and lots of other herbs and spices for various potions! Our guide told us about a number of potions that you could buy from the witches such as a potion to get you a guy, another to get your lazy oaf of a boyfriend to start pulling his weight around the house, another to get rid of a guy and so on. The most interesting of all though was the story of the rituals that take place before you start constructing a new building / house. Before you build a house you visit one of the most senior witches (to become a senior witch you have to have survived a lightening strike) and ask them to perform the ritual for you. As part of the ritual they dig a small hole and place the llama foetus in it along with some coca leaves, 95% alcohol (that they also drink) and then set fire too it. After that the construction workers have a week long party before construction actually starts.

Now there are also some very tall 20 storey buildings in La Paz, so our guide asked us what kind of sacrifice would be required for this ritual. I was thinking maybe a whole llama but no, the answer was a human sacrifice! So for this ritual you need an even more senior witch that has survived 2 lightening strikes (I've literally no idea how you go about getting struck by lightening once, let alone twice). These are hard to come by as apparently there are only 7 confirmed witches of this kind today. To obtain a human sacrifice they go in search of homeless people. They dress like them, hang around with them and then when they have picked their victim they ply them with alcohol and lead them unsuspectingly to the construction site. Like the llama foetus they get chucked in the hole along with a llama foetus, the coca leaves and alcohol however instead of setting them on fire they cover them in a layer of concrete, because of course human sacrifice is not legal. Now today this is more of an urban legend however there are rumours that this does still happen and bones have been found under large buildings.Leer más