Copacabana - The Hottest Spot South of Havana

The Hottest Spot South of Havana

Ever since early June when we were freezing our tushes off in the Uyuni salt desert I have said that I want to go to the beach. It is now the end of August and we are still in Bolivia, a landlocked country. But the travel wheels have been set in motion and we are finally on the move. It is strange, I really liked Bolivia and I could even imagine living there doing volunteer work or something, but I just did not feel like traveling. I think it was the one month in Sucre, which was great, but killed my desire to backpack around the country. Anyway, you will never see everything and now we have a whole list of places to hit next time we are in Bolivia. But before getting to Peru we have one more stop at the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca.

Lake Titicaca at sunset from our hotel window

Singing Copacabana in Sucre

I am ready to zoom into Peru on horribly long bus rides, but Mika prefers to break up the trip so we make one last stop in Bolivia at Copacabana on Lake Titicaca. Which in itself is not so bad because Copacabana also happens to be the name of one of my top karaoke songs though I doubt that this town is the inspiration for the Barry Manilow hit.

From La Paz it is a nice ride that winds around around the lake and includes getting off the bus for a short ferry ride. For the Lonely Planet toting tourist a trip to Copacabana is avoidable without making the trip to the islands on the lake. Visiting Isla del Sol is just one of those tourist things that everyone does. At the moment, however, Mika and I are really not in the mood for sight-seeing. Chalk up these islands as something else we will need to see on our next visit to Bolivia.

Waiting for the passenger ferry while the buses get their own.

A detail from a monument at the ferry town. This really has nothing to do with our travel but I find the excessive gore quite amusing. 

Copacabana itself is not a bad place to be for a few nights if you find the right hotel, preferably one with a lake view. Because of the nearby islands the town has been a backpacker destination for a while and there is a main street lined with travel agencies, dingy hostels and English-menu carrying tourist restaurants to prove it. Yet it is starting to develop into a big destination for Bolivian tourists too. New hotels are sprouting up near the water offering views of Titicaca's deep dark blue waters while blocking the smaller, older hotels behind them. On the shoreline are a fleet of swan paddle boats for good family fun and a row of twenty-four tents housing trout restaurants all with the same menu. Criolla trout (one of the largest types) is farmed and famous here. I would not dream of visiting the lake without eating it. 

row of trout restaurants

Before

and after

Pushing out our swan boat

Paddling our swan on Lake Titicaca

God Bless This Car

Copacabana has a beautiful old cathedral that for some reason has become the place to go to bless your car or truck. In front of the church are stalls selling flowers and assorted ornaments all for vehicular decorating. We are here in the last weekend in August which also happens to be a great time to get a blessing. Cars are lining up for several blocks to be able to park front of the cathedral, buy some decorations and spray the car with beer. And many of these people have come from Peru to do it. Many decorated vehicles can add a general feeling of merriment to any old drab city. Maybe the mayor of and car makers of Detroit should look into it.

In front of the cathedral

The next afternoon I eat delicious trout again by Lake Titicaca while Mika with a shaky stomach chooses a gringo restaurant for a safer option and ends getting the worst pizza on the continent. As we board the bus to Peru after lunch these meals serve as a wonderful metaphor for our entire experience of being travelers and tourists in Bolivia.

Cholitas Way

Hola Cholita

There is nothing that symbolizes La Paz, Bolivia more than the "cholita." Cholitas are the indigenous Aymara ladies who dress in the traditional style of big skirts called polleras, shawls, pigtails and the iconic bowler hat. The word "Cholo/chola" (cholita is diminutive) stems from a derogatory term used by the people with Spanish ancestry when referring to the Indians. Racism in the country still exists, but it is slowly changing. The Cholita has become an iconic image representing all of Bolivia.

Street art homages to the Cholita:

If you are wondering how the British male Bowler hat ended up perched atop Bolivia ladies' heads, the most common story told is that in the 1920's a shipment of the hats arrived to Bolivia for the European railroad workers. These hats were too small for the men's domes but one entrepreneur sold them to the locals and a tradition was born. Hats vary by height, brim widths and colors. Every year new styles dominate the Cholita fashion scene.

The Bowler hat

A help wanted sign. Usually in Spanish they will use a term like "senorita, young lady, waitress, etc." but in La Paz "cholita" works fine.

The hotel where we stay in La Paz sits next to a large market covering several blocks with Aymara ladies selling every type of food item available all wearing a similar type of apron. The Bowler hats are not for work. A few blocks from that is a street which I have named the "Cholita's market." Everything is sold here that one needs to get in full Cholita regalia from expensive, colorful skirts to simple hairbands worn between braids.

Wrestlemania - Cholita Style

Every Sunday locals and tourists head uphill to watch Cholitas Wrestling. They advertise this event as off the tourist trail, but the six busloads of gringos would say otherwise. Tour tickets sold by every agency in La Paz include entrance, snack, a little souvenir and two guide-escorted trips to the bathroom outside because the neighborhood around the arena is supposedly dangerous. It is possible to go to Cholita's Wrestling by yourself but you will not save that much money.

View of La Paz from El Alto

Outside the wrestling arena

I know that we will see women wrestle, but at first I think it would be competitive. I soon learn that we are going to a show - lucha libre- like wrestling on TV. We arrive at the arena and line up to go in - foreigners on the right and locals on the left. We are seated ringside in plastic chairs while the locals sit on bleachers a little further from the action but with better views.

The arena

We have several matches throughout the night. The first one is laughably amateurish with wrestling skills no better than that of any respectable ten year old WWF fan. With costumes that look homemade I am worried about what we have signed up for and wonder how soon we will bolt for the exits. But as the matches progress so does the talent of the athletes (actors?) and the built-in drama full of leading ladies, dastardly villains, crooked refs and a midget.

Really Catman? The first match

It is not until the third match that we get our first Cholita coming out wearing a full traditional outfit. She enters the ring to the cheers of the crowd, removes the Bowler hat and shawl and gets ready to rumble. Surprisingly she is fighting a man - a masked villain that might be able to beat her in strength but never in charisma nor on tonight's script. You can feel the crowd's involvement starting to pick up also. Rabid insults are slung at the bad guys who respond by screaming at everyone to "shut up!" Not just insults, popcorn and water are flying too. I wonder if some of the Bolivians in the audience are in on the joke.

Her grand entrance in tradional clothing

As the matches continue we get just one with two Cholitas squaring off. A darling starlet versus a true baddie who pulls pigtails, chokes with hair ribbons, verbally abuses the audience and conspires with the evil ref. The men's talents are also improving as the night goes on. It is not the steroid-induced wrestling of North America, but they do get tossed around quite a bit and take it like a man when losing to a lady.

The final bout features another star of the ring who has brought along her cholita friend - who happens to be a midget. The little lady does not fight but she seems quite adept and head-butting men in the groin. Of course the leading lady wins the bout taking out both her opponent and the evil ref.

Talking trash before the fight: Lady in yellow is the villain while the one is red is the darling

A masked luchador watching the entrance of his Cholita opponent

About to toss her male opponent into the crowd

and then beat him with an empty water bottle

The star of the main event dancing before the match

High flying act

Cholita wrestler in training

Overall, the night is fun. There is a raucous crowd and everyone falls head-over-heels for the charismatic Cholita wrestlers. If around La Paz the Cholita image is of a woman timid and stoic it is in El Alto where that stereotype gets literally smashed to pieces.

Cholitas fighting for their rights by marching on the streets of La Paz

To see my blog post about La Paz click here

A Walk Through La Paz

Welcome to La Paz

No trip to Bolivia would be complete without a visit to the capital, La Paz. The city sits in a large bowl that was carved out by a river with large buildings of the city center in the bottom of the bowl and houses dotting the edge of the bowl all the way to the rim. The city is most famous for its altitude - 3660 m (12,000 ft), and huffing up the hills is not uncommon, but it does have some other things to offer. Overall I think we end up staying longer in La Paz than most tourists and I cannot really say that we did all that much. But the city kind of grew on me and I enjoy our time walking through La Paz. 

La Paz with the ever-present Mt. Illamani in the background

The city was founded in the 16th century and has grown ever since with an influx campesinos (rural, mostly indigenous folk) coming relatively recently. So while parts of the city are staring to develop with clean, modern architecture there is still a layer of grit, graffiti and garbage. If I was mayor for a day the first thing I would do is power wash the whole place. But there are still numerous, well-maintained colonial gems to be spotted around town. There is also a blend of all classes of people: men in suits, men chewing coca leaves, teens in the latest fashions and many women wearing their traditional skirts and bowler hats.

A sculpture dedicated to an Aymara leader

Contemporary art museum in a mansion designed by Gustave Eiffel

A theatre

The bowler hat

A fruit seller having a nap

We have two different stays in La Paz one week apart. We first stay in the main tourist area with numerous hostels, travel agencies, tourist restaurants and souvenir stalls. At the end of this gringo ghetto is the witches market selling trinkets, offerings and llama fetuses. I feel kind of bad for these ladies because their traditional market has been surrounded by tourist services and not many tourists that I know of are in the market for llama fetuses. It would probably serve these witches better to be moved to another part of town  

Dried llama fetuses for sale

Our second hotel is also near the tourist area, but just outside and feels part of a different world. We are on the sixth (and top) floor of one of the biggest buildings in the neighborhood giving us great city views. The hotel sits near a large local market giving us bad city smells, but there is local character, cheap avocados and some small, cheap fish restaurants right outside our door.

The street outside our hotel is closed on weekends for the market

At the Plaza

Like all Latin American cities La Paz has a plaza, several in fact. They are the places of history, gatherings and to meet friends, feed pigeons and to people watch.
Plaza Murillo is the historic city center and is surrounded by the presidential palace, cathedral and congress building. The old buildings are beautiful, but the most noticeable thing to me, however, is the thousands of pigeons flying around this plaza. But I seem to be the only person bothered by this infestation. Everyone else seems happy feeding the winged rats.

Hitchcock inspired plaza

The cathedral from the plaza

Right near the plaza is the national museum of art in a beautifully well-kept colonial mansion. The art spans from colonial to modern with some works by Bolivian maestros, but the contemporary section is a bit sparse and left me wanting to see more.

Only photos o the courtyard are allowed

A modern wing attached to the old mansion

The church of San Francisco was started in 1549, but the surrounding plaza is quite new. It has gotten a face lift recently when they constructed the new thoroughfare through the middle of the city. There is a new three story market, lots of cement and organized crosswalks. In a continent full of churches that tend to all blend together, this one is worth a peek. The high-domed stone interior walls are quite impressive and I have not said that about a church in awhile.

San Francisco plaza, church and La Paz

The Plaza Avaroa sits in the well-to-do Sopocachi neighborhood surrounded by high rise apartment buildings and nice bars and restaurants. In the center of the plaza is a statue of Eduardo Avaroa, Bolivia's hero during the Pacific War with Chile that ended in 1884 with Bolivia losing its land on the Pacific coast. One hundred twenty-seven years later Bolivia is still miffed about its landlocked destiny. When surrounded by Chilean troops and asked to surrender the injured Avaroa gave the now legendary reply, "Surrender? Your grandmother should surrender, you bastard!" 

Plaza Avaroa

And so it doesn't get stuck in history La Paz also has an ever-growing number of modern day plazas for the people to gather.

2-for-1 Wednesday at the movie theater 

Everyone Loves a Parade

If it's true that everyone loves a parade, then it is safe to say that Bolivians take the adoration to a whole other level. We seem to be running into parades wherever we go, but the one that greets us on our first day in La Paz dwarfs them all. It is a colorful parade of folkloric dancing by university students. Each group has its own band which means that La Paz must have the highest rate of tuba players per capita in the world.

The fun begins around 9:00 AM passing in front of our hotel while we are having breakfast. Twice we go out and come back and the parade has not stopped. Tired from our night bus the day before we crash around 9:00 PM even with the parade still going strong outside our window. We learn that it finally ended around 12:00 AM. Fifteen hours of non-stop parading. That's hardcore!

A few days later is Bolivian Independence day - like they need an excuse to parade in Bolivia. I catch one passing in front of the presidential palace and cathedral with lots of schools and lots of flags. Everyone loves a parade.

And though technically protests are not parades they do consist of marching, blocking the roads from traffic and the Bolivians seem to love it. Hang around Bolivia long enough and you are bound to run into some type of manifestation. Blocking roads and disrupting the natural flow of transportation appears to be one of the only manners that the people can get their voice heard. Just walking around La Paz I see several random protests taking up lanes on the main thoroughfare. While when we leave a huge one is forming with thousands of indigenous people marching for weeks towards the capital to protest a highway that will cut through their land.

Marching in protest on one of La Paz's busiest streets

Food Glorious Food

Eating in markets and typical restaurants is a great way to immerse yourself in local culture and does do wonders for the travel budget, but the food does get repetitive (especially in South America that lacks the variety found in Asian countries). So one of the good things about being in a big city is having a few more food options like sashimi, veggie lasagna and chocolate cheesecake.

The first thing we do is go to Ken-chan. With food between US $5-7 this Japanese restaurant is not cheap for Bolivia, but it can get busy with locals. Also, it is the cheapest Japanese-owned Japanese restaurant and a must-go destination for Japanese travelers. We meet one homesick woman who has eaten there every day in La Paz. We end up going twice and eating Ken-chan's famous trout sashimi fresh from Bolivia's Lake Titicaca.

Set menu with trout

Trout Chirashi - Sushi rice in a bowl with goodies on top including trout sashimi

We find another place built inside an old carriage house that has set lunches for 28 B (US $4). Again, this is quite a lot for Bolivia, but the place is always busy with locals and we have the luxury of thinking in dollars when necessary.

A former carriage house from colonial times

Vegetarian lasagna, soup, salad bar and dessert for $4

Now I would be lying if I have given you the impression that we are wining and dining every day in La Paz because the truth is that our most common meal is fried ispi. Ispi is a little fish that lives in Lake Titicaca. The street on the side of our hotel has a row of ladies selling fish with woks of bubbling oil and always with the bite-sized ispi. The crispy ispi are served with corn, potatoes, chuño (a freeze-dried potato created in a five day process of sitting out in freezing mountain temperatures and then the hot sun) and spicy sauce. The plate costs 10 B (US $1.44).

A fish fry stall

Ispi

Life As Normal
One of the things I love best about the traveling lifestyle/life choice is being free from all the banalities of the real world. We have just two bills to pay every month, our mortgage (which I would happily do without) and a very reasonable credit card bill -  both of which I guess do keep me from completely floating away from society's norms on a bouquet of helium balloons. Yet we have no gas, electric, water, sewage, phone, cellphone, cable and internet bills to think about. Our four big box store credit cards with their endless zero-interest temptations have been rendered useless on in South America. Annoying neighbors, telemarketers,  coworkers and bosses have no place in our life. Neither do car payments, car insurance, car maintenance and fluctuating prices at the pump. We have no weeds to pull, snow to shovel, an empty refrigerator to fill, credit scores to count nor kids that need to be picked up and dropped off. And as much as I do enjoy living without these responsibilities of modern society, being on the road long enough it is inevitable that something will catch up with me. That time is now in La Paz.

Street art

The first thing I need to do is make a doctor's appointment. After a few phone calls I end up going to an office in one of the fanciest parts of the city. When it is time to pay the 150 B (US $21) visit, we find out my credit card/ATM card has expired at the end of July. Uh oh! We are kind of low on cash and I have to arrange the new one to be sent DHL express for US $52. Denver - La Paz only takes 48 hrs, and those two days were spent trying to spend as little cash as possible.

View from our hotel room window

Meanwhile I learn that somehow my website domain name has been hijacked (or also expired and someone else grabbed it) which means that I have been giving people an incorrect website address for who knows how long. To sort out this mess I have to make numerous phone calls to the web host techies to get a new domain name and my website up and running again. Another meanwhile, I head over to La Paz's electronics store street to shop for a new computer since I dropped mine a few weeks ago in Sucre. I learn that the hard drive isn't damaged. I find a guy who can scrounge up the necessary part and replace my cracked screen by if I plop down US $120. Ugh the real world stinks. I miss my helium balloon bouquet.

La Paz Bus

Life As Normal: Bonus

One of the normal things missed while traveling is just being able to meet up with family and friends. Sure on the trail you meet nice people and can have pleasant conversation over drink or dinner and it is quite possible that you'll run into people again. One couple that we met in Sucre, we ran into again on the streets of La Paz and Arequipa, Peru and met up for dinner. This is good fun, but it does not make up for those missed connections with family and old friends and facebook just doesn't always cut it.

While in La Paz a friend of mine who I have known since I was thirteen and have not seen in ages happens to be arriving to Bolivia for his PhD research. It is great timing and we have the opportunity to meet twice to catch up just like we would do back home. It just happens to be La Paz, Bolivia.