Details from La Paz

After living in La Paz for almost two and half months, we are leaving tomorrow. And even though we have been here for a while, we have realised that we haven't got that many pictures of the city of La Paz. But we couldn't leave the city without making a post about this impressive place.

La Paz has a beautiful city center with old Spanish style houses and churches from the colonial time, it is also the most touristic area, where you can buy lots af colourful clothes and other things. They also have colourful buses which are very characteristic of this city.

The traffic of La Paz is awful. It seems that there are no rules and that pedestrians are never right. Therefore you have to be extremely careful when you walk around, because even if you have the right to cross a street, a car can turn a corner at top speed and you will never be right.

Consequently, the government is trying to make the cars at least respect the zebra-crossings, using very enthusiastic zebras. We hope it works.

We couldn't talk about La Paz without talking again about the Teleférico. It is a very good way to get through the steep sides of the valley where La Paz is placed in. Only 3 lines are working now, but 6 more lines are coming, which will help very much the already overcrowded streets of the city.

The government supports the culture very much, so there are often cultural activities in the streets, mostly for free. It is understandable in a country with such a rich cultural heritage they have. There are also many museums, which yesterday were all open for free, so we enjoyed visiting the very interesting Etnographic Museum. 

When you walk in the streets of La Paz, you can often get surprised if you look up and see how high the city reaches in all directions. There is more than 1000 meters difference from the highest point to the lowest, so it makes the city the most impressive we have seen so far.

Apparently, La Paz is the city in the world with most demonstrations. It has in average almost one every day of the year!
Even if the social situation in Bolivia has improved remarkably in the latest years, there are still big differences between rich and poor and a lot of corruption, so demonstrations are understandable. At least now they have the right to do it, and are not killed for it, like with the previous president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who killed 64 persons and injured 228 in demonstrations against his exporting plans for the Bolivian gas. Short after that he got assylum in the U.S.A. where he is giving classes at the University about Latin America and Bolivia, even though he is prosecuted for Crimes Against Humanity. Once again, the U.S.A. and their disgusting politics.

Another detail from La Paz are the thousands of cables connecting every corner of the city, without any plan or order. Sometimes small epifitic plants (bromeliads) grow on them, giving a very tropical feel.

Finally, we couldn't finish this post without mentioning again mount Illimani, which has deep significance in the City and is more than once represented in wall paintings and other graphic representations. It is definitely a beautiful mountain.

Notice Illimani depicted in the street art.

El Alto - The City at the Edge of the Altiplano

Bordering La Paz, at the edge of the Altiplano, there is a city called El Alto (The High) bigger than its sister. And it continously grows. However, this growth has no urban planning, causing lots of traffic chaos. The lack of urban planning is obvious when you find broad avenues that suddently finish in a dirt pile, or every now and then long deep gutters on the street to direct the water when it rains, because they have no sewerage system. Huge street markets block the roads twice a week, where you can buy anything, literally. Fruits, vegetables, clothes, broken dolls, bottle caps, random pieces of anything...

As it is on the Altiplano, it has really awesome views over La Paz and the Cordillera Real mountains, which makes it worth a visit, during the day, because at night it is quite dangerous.

Connecting the two cities there are a couple of roads and two lines of the Teleférico, which is always a nice ride.

Huayna Potosi & Zongo glacier

Last weekend Maria and I went to the base of Huayna Potosi, 6088m high, to look at the Zongo glacier and its glacial lake, so Maria can use it for her project.

As soon as we got to El Alto, we could see the beautiful mountain of Huayna Potosi, as well as an awesome view over La Paz and Illimani in the background. It's only a one and a half hour ride to the base of the mountain, and in the way you can see an old tin mine, where our driver had worked until they closed it. We drove by the mine's cementery, which was full of graves from all the workers that died in the mine. Quite a sad view.

Illimani to the left with a view over La Paz. And Huayna Potosí to the right, seen from El Alto.

Once we arrived we found a place to sleep in one of the several "refugios" and hiked up to the glacial lake and around the glaciar tongue. It is clear to see how the glacier has retreated, but it is still impressive. We hiked up to a height above 5000 meters where the glacier was wider and then decided to go down, so it wouldn't get too late. We also found interesting beautiful alpine plants, which Andrés enjoyed looking and taking pictures at.

Zongo glacier with Huayna Potosí in the background.

The upper part of the glacier.

Glacier lake.

On our way down we took an alternative route towards the Zongo valley and lagoon, which is actually a dam. The wind was getting stronger and the path more and more unclear. We think we took a llama-trail and not a real trail. But we arrived well to the "refugio" and slept quite well, even though it was very cold, about -8ºC outside. Andrés had only his old summer sleeping bag, so his feet didn't warm up until next day's walk.

The next morning we started walking down the road towards La Paz with the hope of stopping a passing car and get a ride. On the way we saw many llama flocks, as well as a mountain caracaras (below to the left) and an Andean condor (below to the right). We felt really blessed.

Finally, a car took us down to El Alto, from where we walked to the cable-way and got home. It was a short but intense and great trip.

Gorges, gullies and hoodoos

Around 10 days ago we tried to find something called 'Valle de las Ánimas' (Valley of the souls) in the SE of La Paz, and after asking several people we arrived to this place. We are still not sure we found the right area, but we can say we discovered a beautiful and interesting landscape, full of gorges, gullies and hoodoos. There were quite a few very narrow gorges, which we decided to venture in to. One of them was more than 100 meters long with 10-30 meters vertical walls (maybe higher) and with a width between 0.5-2 meters. Really impressive! 

Restaurant Gustu

A few weeks ago Andrés was invited to dine at Restaurant Gustu along with some Amaranth farmers who were in consideration of selling their crops to the restaurant. Gustu is a restaurant in Zona Sur, the wealthier part of La Paz, and was started by an organisation called Melting Pot Bolivia which was created by Claus Meyer. If you're Danish you'll know who Claus Meyer is - the professional chef and co-founder of Noma, which has been voted best restaurant in the world in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2014. Melting Pot Bolivia is an initiative he started, to train locals to be chefs, using the rich variety of ingredients that are produced in Bolivia, with a main focus on native foods. One of those is amaranth, which was the reason Andrés came along with a group of farmers to Gustu, and ate there for free! He also has interviewed Melting Pot Bolivia in relation to his thesis, as cañahua is one of the ingredients they use in their haute cuisine, mainly for bread making.

Even though it is an expensive restaurant, its philosophy behind it is really interesting. They support only small Bolivian producers, not only in the food ingredients, but also in the decoration, furniture, etc. in the restaurant. Many of their products are organic as well, and they educate underprivileged locals as chefs. The service is the best we have ever experienced in a restaurant, they even served gluten-free food for Maria, but of course you pay for it.

After knowing all this, we had to go there together, as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And we enjoyed it!

The paintings behind the staircase and behind the colourful lamp are actually paintings of Dronning Margrethe (the Danish queen). When she visited Gustu for her birthday, it was arranged for many Bolivian painters to paint her in different versions, many of which she is depicted as a Cholita (Aymara woman) and so on. I think there are perhaps 20 paintings of her standing on the wall. It looked pretty cool.

The pillows have typical colours/patterns used for blankets here. And they're probably alpaca or llama wool.

As you can see, there is a picture of a Cholita for the women's toilet, and fresh little towels for each time you dry your hands.

I'll try to explain what I remember of the dishes. From the top right: 1. alternative menu with pictures of the main ingredients used in each dish. 2. A small appetizer with glazed onions and herbs on top of dehydrated cabbage leaf. 3. gluten-free cañawa buns with homemade quinoa butter, coca butter and regular butter. 4. Caramelised boiled carrots. 5. Trout, probably from Lake Titicaca. 6. Different types of native potatoes with a potato sauce. 7. Amaranth cream with juicy tiny tomatoes and dehydrated crunchy leaves of celery. 8. Racacha root with some kind of a delicious sauce under it, apple sauce next to it and cinnamon on the side (to represent the earth that the root came from). 9. A dessert of goat cheese ice cream with lettuce and sugar crumble on top. There was also one more dessert, a nice pineapple icecream, but we forgot to take a picture of it. All this (with more details) was explained to us by the waiters each time they came in with a new dish - sometimes it was the apprentice chef her-/himself that came out and explained the dish to us. 

The kitchen with an open view for the guests to see what was going on inside. The picture is taken from our table.

Field work in Ingavi

The last two weeks I (Andrés) have been away for a few days interviewing cañahua producers in the Ingavi province. The farmers are mainly subsistence farmers. PROINPA, the foundation I am colaborating with here in Bolivia, is helping the farmers to produce more and better and sell cañahua directly to a company, so they can improve their livelihoods.

PROINPA is distributing seeds from a variety called Illimani (the orange coloured above), but the producers still grow the traditional local varieties, like the red shown above to the right, or the yellow below to the left. Some still grow in the traditional manner, that is with a mixture of varieties (below to the right), in order to assure the harvest, as each variety is more sensitive and more resistant to different factors. So however the weather, soil conditions or plagues are, at least one of the varieties will perform well. Even though this technique is clever enough, it makes it difficult for commercialization and is normally abandoned.

The harvest is manual as well as all the different processes to finally obtain the clean seeds. It is a lot of work that often is not well paid. Therefore many farmers cultivated the plant only for self consumption. However, now more and more farmers are engaging in the cañahua production as the price is increasing and they are getting organically certified, thanks to PROINPA, so they can sell directly to a company and obtain a better price.

Until now the little but main income of these communities was livestock, though maybe in a few years cañahua will become an important income of these farmers, so they can improve their livelihoods. The Aymara people are very nice and hospitable, and they will often share their food with you.

In the fallow lands you can sometimes find these cactus with their yellow edible fruits.