La Paz

My impression of La Paz, at least the pinpoint of the city where I stayed, is that it is like the New York City of Bolivia. The blocks around Plaza San Francisco and Plaza Murillo are busy, fast-paced, and crowded. Wealth and power tower over the poverty made visible in every outstretched hand, again a hand more brown and wrinkled than the hands of the ten thousand other people scurrying this way and that, trying to make something of their lives. As I have felt so often in New York City, especially in Times Square, so in this part of La Paz that is something like a crossroads of Bolivia and South America, I felt like a stranger in a strange land. I felt so on my own. Literally, I was: I had traveled from one city to another in a foreign country all by myself, relying on a second language that lives marginally in my soul. A peculiar vacation option, you might say. What could be relaxing about staying in a city in a different culture on your own where you know nobody, touring without a friend, without a companion? 

Convento San Francisco is grand, majestic, and underpopulated. Four friars live there, but I saw only Padre Ben Hur Soto, the guardian. I had only 15 minutes of his time Monday evening, long enough to be given the keys to the guest room and half a dozen other doors leading to the church and cloister exit. He gave me a breezy tour of the quarters, including the kitchen, dining room, chapel, and exit to the street. He warned me about the dogs that they release at 11 o’clock at night and advised me to return to the convent before that hour. I heard and saw the dogs barking and scampering madly in their cage under the stone stairs leading to the street exit. I swear to Jesus, they put the fear of hell in me. Is La Paz that dangerous a place? 

From my bedroom I could hear ten thousand lives jostling one another. Horns were honking loudly, constantly. Vendors were shouting their wares, continually, sometimes with amplification. All the muffled voices raising a din—were they all coming from the plaza? Were they mingling with voices in the church? I could not tell. The weather was cold compared to Cochabamba, but in New York City it would be just another cold spring day (though here it was a cold autumn day). I did see snow on the peaks of Cordillera Central for the first time during my eight-hour bus trip to La Paz. I arrived that Monday evening tired from travel, not from the altitude. That would not affect me at all except when climbing some of the steeper streets around Plaza Murillo in the oxygen-thin air. Overall, I could breathe. I could walk. And after a very good night of sleep Monday night, I recovered a sense of orientation. 

I had one mishap along the way. I took a terrible fall that Monday night when I returned to the convent. The premises is dark and poorly lit. I made a wrong turn from the small cloister where the chapel and dining room are located to the larger cloister where the friars’ room and guest rooms are. I thought I was entering the corridor linking the two cloisters, but instead my right foot hit air, and I began a slow tumble down a dozen steps more, impacting my shoulder, wrist, and hip, all on the right side. Worst of all, my head made impact with the hard tile step, leaving the right temple a bit swollen. I didn’t lose consciousness or get a headache or nausea, and I didn’t lose any mobility, but I was shook up! You never, never, never want to have your cabeza collide with the corner of a sharp step! But that is what it did. For the rest of the night I was worried about a hematoma. It’s been more than four days since I took a tumble. I feel fine, but I pray that my head is truly all right. 

Tuesday was my day to enjoy the finer things while on my pinpoint in La Paz. After morning payer, Eucharist at the basilica church, and breakfast at the convent, I made an all-too-hurried guided tour of the convent museum, with a look at the cloisters’ ancient foundations; some historic paintings, vestments, and sacred liturgical vessels; the rooms where the friars made sacramental wine; the cell where sculptor Francisco Tito Yupanqui created the celebrated icon of the Virgin of Copacabana; and finally a trip to the roof and the bell tower. I was hungry again quickly, so I had a breezy brunch at a café with facsimiles of centuries-old maps and other items of antiquarian interest. 

Then, a brief moment of rest in God at midday in the chapel of the smaller cloister of this mostly vacant convent. I suppose there is a vocations crisis for the Franciscans in Bolivia, too. From there I left in pursuit of museums. I found Plaza Murillo, named for one of the revolutionaries of La Paz whose valiant efforts won independence from the Spanish crown. And I found Museo Nacional de Arte, except it was siesta, with the re-opening of the museum at three in the afternoon. I was left with an hour and a half, or an hour and forty-five, to kill. I decided to have my third meal in five hours. I found a pizzeria, though I was looking for another café. So I made the impulse decision to have lunch on top of the light breakfast (bread, anise tea, banana) and brunch I had (vegetarian omelette, peach tea, and tres leches cake). So it was one slice of cheese pizza and one slice of chocolate cake. Oh boy! I walked leisurely, at a very slow pace, back to Plaza Murillo, where an army of pigeons was patrolling the park. I’m surprised there was hardly any pigeon poop. I lingered in the plaza, reading all that could be read on the monuments and markers until the museum re-opened. Admission was free for all this week—hooray! I luxuriated in the permanent exhibits for over two hours, soaking it all in, making up for the hurried half-hour at Museo San Francisco. 

By quarter after five I had been saturated, so I left, stopping on the way back to the convent at another church, San Agustín, which reminded me of Templo Santo Domingo and the Metropolitan Cathedral in Cochabamba. I skipped the Metropolitan Cathedral Basilica of Nuestra Señora de La Paz in Plaza Murillo because it is so grand, I would have needed a full hour at least to take in its architecture and iconography. I did at least observe the façade and the wreaths of flowers laid at the cathedral steps in honor of Paraguayan independence that day, May 15. I also caught a glimpse of the tomb of Bolivian patriot Andrés de Santa Cruz; his tomb is under constant guard by two members of the Bolivian Army’s infantry regiment. The solemn soldiers reminded me of the guards at Buckingham Palace! I was tempted to make them break their stoic character. Anyway, I made haste to the convent to say evening prayer before the sun set, and I did. 

I went out at six-thirty to find another restaurant where I could get trucha, and I did, just after almost being tempted to eat in an Italian-style restaurant. I did not come 4,000 miles and an entire day by bus just to eat ravioli! Trucha it was, and trucha I found again, and better than the night before, to my pleasure. Plus, a quinoa brownie as a bonus. Three desserts in one day … no wonder I felt sluggish by the end of Tuesday, stuffed like a Thanksgiving glutton. On Wednesday, the return trip to Cochabamba, I ate lightly, and hardly at all after midday. One day of indulgence was enough for me. It got me through the dull trip back to Cochabamba. The return was marred by a late arrival, which was not really an arrival at all. What do I mean? We entered the Cochabamba city limits around 7 o’clock, eight and a half hours after the 10:30 a.m. scheduled departure from La Paz. Lots of traffic in El Alto outside La Paz; lots of traffic through the mountains, and you can’t pass slow-running trucks and trailers easily when you have continuous curves blocking your vision. The problem was that evening traffic in Cochabamba was so bad, all the buses making intercity arrivals were backed up for at least a mile or more, and they could not enter the bus terminal. So the conductor simply ordered us off the bus about a mile out from the terminal. I was livid. I did not know where I was, so I insisted that the conductor lead me and another passenger to Avenida Ayacucho, where I could find my bearings. I walked the final mile and a half home. Grrr. Next time I will save time instead of money and fly to the next city I wish to visit, be it Santa Cruz or Sucre or Tarija. 

Well, that was La Paz for me. I will tell you about Oruro in a separate post.