The other side of South America...

Well, here I am in La Paz. I had a pretty great day. I took mom to the airport at 5 am and hopefully she´s just about home now. I got to watch the sunrise over La Paz on my way back in to town. The sun illuminating the mountains and the clouds rolling off the ridiculously large city. La Paz is breathtaking. Its in a bowl and for as far as you can see there are houses and people and streets. In the background, the Andes loom over the city keeping this crazy energy inside the bowl.

I slept a couple more hours and got up to have a full hour long massage (my first ever!) complete with hot stones on the trouble spots followed by the best pedicure I´ve ever had. Two hours later I had spent $20 US and felt perfectly pampered. I had lunch with my sis before she left and then packed up and relocated to the Loki hostel on the seedier side of downtown. I wandered around a bit, ending up at the National Museum of Art. It was a wonderfully hilarious museum. The best way I can describe it is like this: An art class was given as assignment (say, the coronation of the Virgin Mary or the past rulers of Bolivia), everyone in the class painted their interpretation of the event, and then the hung all the different versions on the walls. I mean, seriously, there was an entire room of coronation of the Virgin paintings that varied only just. I kind of laughed my way through the whole thing, though there were some very interesting paintings that I stopped for a while to look at. They also had a poster exhibition, in english, about free speech in Iran. It was interesting, I admit, but the weird connections between Iran and Bolivia are kiiiind of awkward, especially in the national museum.

On a not-really-related tangent, yesterday we went to Tiwanaku, a pre-Incan site outside of La Paz. It left much to be desired. The site was basically destroyed by the Spanish, there´s a half finished museum with terrible lighting, no one has any idea why the site was there or what its significance was in the overall Tiwanakan empire, and the upkeep leaves much to be desired; there are shards of ancient pottery and bones scattered all over the site just waiting to be excavated- or taken by tourists. The best part of the half-day excursion was that next week, January 21st, Bolivia´s coca leaf chewing, agricultural, socialist leader, Evo Morales, is being sworn in Again- at Tiwanaku. So our trip coincided with the dress rehearsal for the main event which will be attended by various world leaders from as far afield as Iran (again!), Spain, Syria, Chile, etc. I didn´t hear anything about a US representative though the private security force prepping the site were all definitely american ¨mercenaries¨. The coordinators were walking past the ¨Don´t pass¨ signs and touching the thousand year old statues that have barely survived the last 700 years, and generally taking advantage of the space. There were maybe 3-400 people at this rehearsal. Next week there will be 40,000. I don´t think the archeological site stands a chance.

But back to now. I am at the Loki hostel and really experiencing the other side of south American tourism. I am so grateful my mom isn´t staying here (it reeks of smoke, there are LOUD backpackers everywhere) and I am pretty damn happy I´ll only be here tonight and when I come back to go to the airport. There is a bar and from what I can tell everyone here (mostly Australians) drink at the bar all night long, go out to clubs, snort a lot of cheap cocaine, come back and sleep all day long just to get up and do it all again. The few people I have talked to have all pretty much lost track of how many days they´ve been here, how much they´ve spent, and what day it is- or was- the last time they saw the sun. One girl said she was going to Tiwanaku tomorrow and a group of seven people all said, ¨Where? What´s that?¨even though Tiwanaku is basically the biggest tourist site around. Amazing.

So I am headed to the jungle tomorrow. Or, rather, an eco-tourism site not too far from La Paz, but in a tropical setting. I read about it on some travel blogs months ago when I was doing research and it seemed like a great place to go and relax before I go back to Austin and my life totally changes. I was looking forward to going with my mom, but I think it will be good by myself too. It´s called La Senda Verde if anyone wants to check it out: La Senda

Until then, it´s 9 pm on a Saturday night, and I´m going to shower and crash. As appealing as a night of cheap cocaine and beligerent Australians sounds, I think an early night of good sleep sounds much better. Sweet dreams, all!