A few further days in La Paz and I feel a little more at
home. On Saturday we embraced our inner tourist and saw the sights of the city
from two very different points of view: firstly, in the morning we took an
all-too-obvious open top bright red tour bus around the city, driving past La
Paz’s best architecture, around Plaza’s adorned with various monuments and best
of all to a viewing point from which you could see all that the city has to
offer. What made it contrast most starkly, perhaps, with other tour bus rides I
have been on was the warning given at the beginning: remember to duck when you
see the power lines. This became evident fairly quickly as people narrowly
missed limb decapitation from holding cameras above their heads. All part of
the fun!
In the afternoon, those of us who still had the energy took
a walking tour of the main cemetery and markets with some local men who were
all shoe-shiners by trade. All over La
Paz men can be seen in full balaclavas, hats and dark
blue clothes, carrying a small box and pointing at your shoes- these are the
shoe-shiners. The reason that they cover their faces is two fold: firstly shoe
shining involves bending down by the side of the road a lot and the pollution
in the city is appalling, with large trucks pumping out tonnes of black, toxic gas
at every junction and hill (of which there is one or the other or both every 50
yards!). Secondly, shoe shining is considered to be a shameful job that pays
very little and many of the men do not wish to show their faces for fear of
brining shame on their families. Most of the men who showed us around showed
their faces, one even brought his family along.
The cemetery was beautiful and very different to anything I
had seen before. It was made up of ‘blocks’ which even came complete with
street numbers (it was a very big place). The blocks were made up of rows and
columns of what were essentially tombs fronted by glass doors, behind which the
family of the deceased could place fresh flowers, photos and ornaments. Some
people had even placed miniature versions of their loved one’s favourite things
such as tiny bottles of Fanta and Coke, tiny guitars and toys and games. Families
paid a premium price to rent these spaces for between one and five years, so
this was not a burial place for the poor by any means.
Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed the tours and sights, it was
somewhat of a relief to return to being just a gringo and not a fully fledged
tourist.
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