La Paz

The city looks a lot larger than it is by the fact that when you are in the valley of the central city you can see the buildings crawling up the steep cliffs like concrete ivy in all directions.  It´s not a pretty city, but it is in a pretty place, snow capped mountains and lunar cliffs are never far from eyesight and every so often a normal street gives you a panaramic view of the Andean surroundings.

It´s also a really lively city.  Unlike Quito, the streets are full of people and market stalls well into the evening.  People had warned us that the food wasn't very good in Bolivia and while it's true there is quite a lot of hamburgers and sliced hot-dogs with chips (in the british sense of chips), there are numerous tasty things such as the stuffed potatoes we found in Cusco and Api which is like chicha morada but hot.  OK so we ran out of things.  The food isn't Bolivia's crowning glory, but everything is SO cheap it's hard to care.  Also bottles of local wine only cost two pounds.

We've been enjoying local markets.  There is one in a poor district high on a hill above the centre (here the rich districts are lower down because it is milder), which only happens twice a week and sells EVERYTHING.  Really, everything.  Clothes, cosmetics, army surplus, books, films (from Bollywood to Korean), games, power tools, tyres, bits of cars dismantled, unexplained metal things, things that look like they have just been nicked, food, etc etc.  It was also huge, we wandered for over two hours and didn't see it all, and insanely cheap.  Back in the centre near our hostel, there is the Mercado de Las Brujas (Witches' Market), which sells weird cures and items for ritual offerings, including these dried sea-horses and llama fetuses.

We've also got out of the city a couple of times to hike the Valle de la Luna park, where different periods of rock formations have made a moon-like area

and the Muela del Diablo peak, not far from the city but a beautiful walk, with great views of La Paz.

We found a cafe run by Mujeres Creando, a very cool feminist collective who have also covered the city in graffiti and we enjoyed a meal there of Pesk'e (which is an unusual hot combo of quinoa, milk and cheese.  As we said food isn't Bolivia's thing.)

This is the cafe.  You can tell they are lesbian llamas because only women wear those hats.  Hurray!

Other strange animals we have observed are La Paz's Socially Conscious Zebras (SCZ).  It started when they were helping people cross the road, which given there are no actual crossings made sense (Zebra crossings get it?).  But then, we saw wall paintings of them helping children with homework and gardening and saw increasing numbers of SCZ roaming around

Then one night, it culminated in a collection of SCZ waving banners about brushing your teeth or choosing to be happy putting on a show in a main plaza with a drama group, an orchestra and break dancers.  It was weird.  But at least it seems they are getting some use out of out-of-work actors because the SCZ were all so enthusiastic and hammy.

We also briefly visited the National Museum of Art.  They were having a big display of gender equality posters from around the world, some of which were quite good

but then you entered the salas and found a bunch of paintings done by old men depicting women only occasionally as either saints or boobs.  But hey ho can't have everything from art museums... wouldn't have killed them to have thrown in a radical anarcha-fem lesbian llama though would it?! 

Tonight we are off to see some wrestling.  We never saw any Lucha Libre in Mexico and Chile (the next place where this is a big cultural thing) will be much more expensive than Bolivia.  Plus here, a lot of the wrestlers are traditionally indigenous women, which is a bit different.  So even though wrestling is not usually our thing, we are gonna give it a go.

Tomorrow we head for the Amazon to be proper tourists in an eco-lodge.  More on that afterwards.