The beds are hard and lumpy, the only shower that works is lukewarm, breakfast is not included, all rooms open out onto the central, very loud courtyard where groups of Israeli backpackers sit and smoke endless cigarettes. But it does smell better than the hostel next door. But it still smells like the Witches market outside. (that would be the special smell of freeze-dried llama foetuses, coca leaves, sugar, alcohol and special coloured teas)
"We´ll take it!" I say with enthusiasm. Amiga una does not look pleased, but after accidentally staying in a hotel with hot water, an elevator, breakfast and cable TV last night, it is time to see the real Bolivia, no?
si. she agrees with reluctance.
We choose to spend as little time as possible there. not that this means we go very far. For La Paz is a hilly place, I am still affected by the altitude, and La Paz is cheap.
And we are staying in tourist shopping mecca.
People love you to buy things here. And they laugh when you don´t. For Everybody sells the same stuff, and they know it is just a matter of time until your will is bent to the tourist shopping master and you WILL purchase. Maybe from them, or maybe from their neighbour. But the nature of the tourist market seems to be fair...for they all seem to sell something.
When we tire of the bright colours of tourism, we head uphill...and into the real markets of La Paz. Here it is like 20 square blocks of a crazy outdoor supermarket that repeats itself. We start in suit-street, work our way down fruit lane, across cleaning avenue, through bakery way, around and around party goods and stationary and baby clothes and
I am still sure I have my bearings. I have a great internal compass I tell amiga una.
We sit to rest and indulge in my new favorite thing: Api. A hot, thick drink made from purple (morado) or white (blanco) corn. I am not hungry, but I am so excited to find it here in shopping-labrinth, I will have one anyway. We order a mezclado (a mix) of the two flavours and sit down to drink it with the accompanying deep fried almost-empty-except-for-a-small-piece-of-cheese empanada. I am totally in love with this drink, no joke. Can someone please start making this in Melbourne?
Then we go back to our cheap hostel.
Well, we try.
My bearings seem somewhat addled after the Api...but I´m sure I could smell the witches market somewhere closeby. Llama foetus is not a smell easily forgotten.
We walk and walk. it is dark now and people are packing up. we walk and walk. we look at a map...we walk and walk a bit more. It should be as simple as just going downhill... Shouldn´t it? We finally ask directions and a man in a drycleaning shop draws us another map...it is better he says. it bears no resemblance to our map, or the actual streets we go down. So apparently La Paz isn´t built on the idea of the "grid". We are lost. Whoops. Thanks heaps, internal compass. I look up at the sky in the fiant hope I can see the southern cross for navigation. No, this is a stinky city, I remind myself.
In the end, I think we found home by pure luck. And by our noses. Ahh sweet, stinky, lumpy home. I was relieved, as I realised that I have never ever been that lost before. But as long as there is an Api shop in that lost somewhere, I don´t think I mind.
