La Paz Days (Bolivia)

After recovering from my bout with malaria and my experience on the “World's Most Dangerous Road” I was ready to leave La Paz. Or so I thought. But, anyone who knows me knows that electronics, and especially computers, hate me. It was only a matter of time and my computer broke down from some nasty virus.

So I missed my bus even though I had my ticket and spent the next few days waiting for hours on end for people who never showed up to fix my computer. But I do think I made the best of it. The staff at the hostel all got to know me and I got to participate in a Bolivian birthday party since I was stuck by the front desk for so long. I shoved a guy's face in his cake, a Bolivian tradition.

I met a local guy who was so nice and made every effort to fix my computer, just for free as a friend, but it didn't work out, but still it was the thought that counted. When the tech guy told me he would come at 9:30 am and didn't show up until around 6 (twice) I made friends at the hostel that turned out to be some of the most interesting people that I met my whole trip

And I learned a lot about changing my attitude. I was bummed about losing my pictures, documents, music and most of all my LSAT study stuff, but I feel like it didn't hit me as hard as it would have before I went to Brazil. I sort of adopted an attitude like I see in Colleen, my sometimes travel buddy, who always inspires me, and just rolled with things. Yeah, it was a bummer to lose everything but I either way I lost it, so I realized I could lose it and be upset or lose it and make the best of it and move on, either way I was going to lose it. And in the end, some of it was recovered, I got to spend more time wandering through La Paz which is one of my favorite cities, and I made all sorts of new friends, two of which I traveled to Peru with.

I love La Paz, I really do. The city has a whole street dedicated to wedding cakes. Seriously, who wouldn't love that. Like a lot of South American streets, La Paz is organized into sections. So you have your wedding cake street, your paint street, your tire street, your dentist street. It is pretty amazing. The city is in a huge bowl surrounded by mountains, houses as far as you can see, backed by snowy mountains and craggy rock above tree-line. It is so high up that it is easy to get winded, being the highest capital city in the world at 3,660 m above sea level.

The street vendors in La Paz are exceptional. There is so much fresh fruit juice. One day I went to a street vendor and ordered a fruit salad. What I got was a fruit-salad-extravaganza-orgasm-in-your-mouth. It was this mound of fruit, some recognizable, others not, drizzled in yogurt, honey and sprinkles. I was flabbergasted.

But the best part about my computer breaking was labor day. I got to see, in person, with my own eyes, Evo Morales speak. He was my first president to see in person. Now, there are differing opinions about this. I was really excited to see that so many people were out for Labor Day. Protesting is a national past-time in Bolivia and I thought it was inspiring that so many people were in the streets peacefully protesting and happily celebrating compared to the complacency that you see in the U.S. My friend who I was with took a different view, he thought is was depressing that they continue to protest and there is no real change. Either way, it was colorful with lots of flags, and Morales looked just like he did on TV, waving his arms and speaking passionately.

Bolivia is definitely one of my favorite countries.