January 27-29, 2018
Getting Acclimated
La Paz gets quite a bad wrap as a tourist destination, but I really enjoyed it there. It’s shaped like a bowl, with mountains and hills surrounding the already-high city center. It’s definitely got some grit, but it’s got a good vibe, decent transportation and cheaper prices than most of the country as I experienced it.
I had coordinated a Couchsurfing host, Maritza, to take me in for the 2 days / 1 night of my stay. I found it pretty hard to find someone to host in South America, partly I think because many people live with their parents for longer than in other places, but also I think because it’s still pretty cheap to stay in hostels that the appeal isn’t as strong. I texted Maritza as I left the free wifi of the bus station that I was on my way and made the 30-minute trek to her apartment. I tried to find the right public bus, but the streets in La Paz are a spaghetti of curves and hills, so I decided to just walk with my little blue dot. What I hadn’t expected though, was all of the stairs and hills I’d have to go up and down to get there. Add in the altitude and I was pretty wiped. Thankfully the city of La Paz keeps a pretty cool climate, and the sun was only just coming above the hills to warm up the center of the bowl.
It was about 9am on a Saturday morning when I arrived, so her street was almost completely deserted. I found her building and rang the bell, but nobody came for awhile. Then I asked a man passing by if this was Maritza’s place, and he said it was, so I just waited. Maritza came down soon after to let me in, and she showed me into her place, which was quite spacious. It was the whole top floor of this small building, which she had inherited from her father who had recently passed. She also had just quit her job at the equivalent of the MTA, which manages the world-famous cable car public transit system. Taking them as a tourist is just a great way to see the city from above. She used to do business analytics for them, so I was super interested to hear about her job, but she wasn’t as excited seeing as she had just left a couple weeks prior. She also ran an ecommerce business on the side selling flowers and stuffed animal gifts around La Paz. So the room I was to stay in, her office, was full of shelves of balloons, boxes of chocolate, and stuffed animals. It was a bit eerie at first, but I got used to it quickly.
The one snag was that Maritza had messed up the dates and had actually accepted another female guest first, so she would take the couch, and I would take the floor in the office. I was a bit frustrated by this at first, but it was only for a night, and she had a lot of blankets to pad the floor (along with my yoga mat that I added later, thanks again Emmelie!).
Views Of The Bowl
After having a little breakfast together and chatting, I took her recommendation for taking the teleferico (cable car) up to El Alto (a poorer, but large part of the city up in the hills). The views were indeed spectacular, and you can really get a sense for the “bowl” nature of the city. Plus, I just like checking out the public transit in new places, so this was a success and cost less than a dollar.
I took the car back down and into the center of town to walk around the center, see the main square, and check out the famous “mercado de las brujas” (witches’ market) known for its potions and llama fetuses. I wasn’t so taken with that stuff, but I loved walking into an alpaca shop alone and putting on lots of furry hats and scarves. Sadly, all of it was out of my price range for now.
I took a reading / eating break at a cute cafe called Miami with an interior courtyard, a good selection of tea, and even blueberry cheesecake. Then I made my way down to a different neighborhood to try to donate blood at the Hemocentro (blood center) there. I hadn’t had the opportunity in Chile / Argentina, but figured I was well-past the eight weeks since I’d donated before I left NYC in October and would give it a shot. Just even to see how the process was handled in another country felt like it was worth the time alone.
I walked in and filled out all the paperwork easily, they took my vitals, and I had to sit back down while they ran my blood sample. They called me back in, and told me that unfortunately, my blood was low in the hemoglobin count. I was surprised, and they said that their threshold was unusually high because of the high altitude, it needed to be higher than most other places to account for the thinner air and the general blood type of hte population. They told me I would probably adjust within a few days, but sadly, I would already be gone. But, I was not discouraged and vowed to keep trying in different places along the journey. Already, I was just surprised that they would let foreigners donate at all, though I suppose it makes a lot of sense since we’re all the same on the inside, more or less.
Eating My Heart Out
The plan for this evening was pretty special.
I had found a fancy vegan restaurant, Ali Pacha, with a five-course tasting menu for less than $30 USD. I was able to email for a reservation earlier in the day, and got a table shortly after they opened. As most of you know, I absolutely love eating great food. But, I’m not a snob about it. A lot of the time, this can be gotten for pretty cheap and from street vendors ideally, but sometimes, I really do love a fine-dining experience.
I had made sure to wear my best-condition v-neck t-shirt, but I still felt funny walking in with my hiking pants and fleece zip jacket. The inside reminded me a lot of a typical restaurant in NYC, so I really felt at home here. I was seated at the bar, and got to watch the chefs prepare and serve me some really delicious vegan food. I was joined shortly at the bar by an older Vancouver couple, and we enjoyed talking about all things related to love and life over the course of the couple hours that we dined “together”. They opted for the wine pairing, but I was still recovering somewhat from my cold / altitude sickness so I opted against it. There were mangoes, figs, mushrooms, and a several types of potatoes served (the Andes are known for thousands of species of potatoes). Even the bread with lightly salted butter was absolutely divine, and I was just so grateful to have this evening and being able to treat myself to it!
I was too full and it was already getting cold when I finished, so I “splurged” for a $2.62 USD Uber to take me back to Maritza’s apartment. There, I met Rebecca the other Couchsurfing guest, a Swiss girl who had been living in Dubai, China, and traveling for the past four years. The three of us were immediately deep in conversation that lasted a few hours. I always love meeting someone like that when you know instantly that there’s a strong connection. She would be taking the next day out of the city to see some of the famed ruins, but we said we’d see what the morning brought us, and maybe we’d hang out.
It turned out that what Rebecca wanted to see was closed on Sundays, so we ended up joining forces to see some of the city together. We first tried to go on a free guided walking tour of the city, but when we arrived in the main square at the assigned place, nobody was to be found. There was a different walking tour, but they thought it was strange also that the one we were looking for didn’t appear. We shrugged it off and went to a cool cafe I had seen the day before, nearby Miami, to get a coffee and some lunch. I took advantage of the pesto pasta set lunch, which was absolutely delicious. Pesto never seems to disappoint! We ended up chatting there for a couple of hours until we realized they were closing and we had to leave.
Then, Rebecca suggested we go up to one of the lookouts over the city, Mirador Killi Killi, which was a healthy 30-minute walk directly up. The views were pretty spectacular though, and we could even hear the massive cheering of an ongoing football game in the main stadium nearby. I particularly liked the graffiti on the ground at the observation area which said: “Nunca es demasiado tarde para volver a empezar” meaning “it’s never too late to start again”.
At this point, we decided to find another cafe to relax in while we waited for Maritza to meet us for dinner. We happened upon one owned by an American guy who had been in a motorcycle accident in La Paz years earlier and decided to stay and start a cafe called Higher Ground. It had amazing music, served cereal, among other things, and had plenty of diverse food selection. Maritza arrived a bit later due to delays from the rain outside, and we enjoyed a final meal together. Both Rebecca and Maritza embodied the ethos of Couchsurfing – community, openness and wanting to help others. We really had a beautiful time together and took a taxi back to her apartment since it was pouring rain, where I began to pack up. I ended up leaving for the airport around midnight and got myself an Uber, which turned out to be the cheapest way.
A Strange Exit
This was one of the more bizarre Uber / taxi rides of my life. I waited at the entrance to Maritza’s building so I could stay dry and maintain wifi. I saw the driver making a few circles around the area, clearly lost. I messaged and called him a couple times but he didn’t respond at all. I was ready to cancel it, but there were really no others in the area, and I had time to spare. Once he finally arrived, I got in and he immediately told me how tired he was. Granted, it was 1am, but still, not something you really offer up to a passenger who you just picked up. I was like “okayyyy, but do you think you can still drive me? You should have canceled if you couldn’t.” He was quick to say everything was okay, but then a couple minutes later he asked if he could try calling some friends to swap drivers and they would take me the rest of the way. I almost laughed at this, but I figured whatever, it’s an experience. He must have called four of his friends, but at 1am, nobody was really interested in going out in the rain to swap cars. I was already typing up my ride comments that I’d send to Uber afterwards to get the ride credited. We had been driving in the opposite direction in hopes that he’d find a replacement driver, but at this point I put my foot down, and he agreed to get on the highway. This took longer than we expected due to some road work, but Waze still showed it was the best way.
Finally, I arrived at the airport with still enough time to spare for a lounge visit. I checked-in as normal, with the only snag being that the person at the check-in counter asked to see my US passport as well. I explained the situation and she was totally understanding, and just said that it was okay to enter Ecuador on the US passport, but just to make sure I showed my German passport at immigration here in La Paz. No problem. Except that when I arrived at the immigration desk, it turned out that all of the power to their computers had been cut, so about five of us had to sit and wait for their computers to boot back up, open all the programs and get back to normal. As they say, nothing good happens when you stay up past midnight!
I cleared immigration without a sweat, and ended up getting to the lounge before they opened (contrary to the posted hours – tsk, tsk), but eventually got some snacks and tea before my flight. In a strange aligning of the planets, the ticket in economy class was more points than for business, so I jumped at the opportunity when I booked this flight earlier in the month when we were delayed in the airport in Buenos Aires. I would connect in Bogota, and then arrive in Quito in the afternoon. Avianca business class was pretty nice, nothing crazy since it was a short flight, but the food was good, and I enjoyed the extra space to get some rest as it had been a couple long days with two overnight travel nights in three days.
The connection in Bogota turned out to be awesome. Besides being in a place that I really loved, after visiting Sarah there when she was on her Fulbright Scholarship in 2015, they had just opened a new lounge called “El Dorado”, and it felt like something out of the Austin Powers: Goldmember set. Colombia is famous for its gold (a third of its flag is yellow for this), and Bogota has a great gold museum, which had a small exhibition in the front of the lounge. This place was absolutely massive, with conference rooms, a full restaurant, a buffet, many “napping areas”, a little rainforest area for kids, and even a salon! I was impressed and thoroughly enjoyed the extra snacks. Somehow I always get really hungry in airports, so I was pretty excited to not need to eat boiled eggs this time.
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