High times

The bus left Cochabamba, in the middle of Bolivia, and went up for a long time until it reached the high plateau, the 'altiplano', and finally was on the road to La Paz. Now I have been in this city for 24 hours, getting used to live at 3,800 meters, wandering around the markets, and dealing with so many memories. And also, with very thin and dry air.

There is not much to say about Cochabamba. It is a pleasant city, growing fast. There were quite a few political protests when I was there. It rained all the time. The most remarkable experience: the visit to 'La Cancha' market, an impressive place were many products and services are to be found, from tailors that can make you a suit, to ladies frying fish that has just arrived from the jungle. And of course, the potato sellers, because there are so many varieties, specially now that the crops are being collected.

This Friday morning I took a bus under the rain. Most of the road to La Paz goes through the high plateau. It was quite green because of the rain. But you can always see other colors there: those of the women using colorful colthes, and those of the quinoa plants, that 'sacred' bran, truly fantastic, with colors that go from green to red.

Almost at the end of the road, the bus crosses the city of 'El Alto' (+-4,100 meters), considered one of the fastest growing human settlements in the world (if not the fastest). I used to be a satellite city for La Paz, but now is a city in itself. Very peculiar. The color of raw bricks is the main feature here, and many streets are not paved, so it looks as if it was not finished yet. However, the traffic is a nigthmare.

Then you see La Paz. The feeling is that this city is in a hole, when you look at it from El Alto. On the other side of the hole, the huge mountains of the Andes, and manily mount Illimani, beautiful, white, impossible to imagine this city without it.

I have lived or visited La Paz in the past. Part of my family is from here. So it is not a foreign land. But when you start climbing the steep streets in the back of the church of San Francisco on a Saturday, grasping for air, and finding one market after the other, full of colours, and life, and noise, and people, and the smells of food, and even a witchcraft market, and blue skies, and thin air, and the sound of the flutes of the Andes coming from somewhere, and traditional dresses, and travelers coming from so many different places of the world, and the mount Illimani in the back, it sure looks like another planet. However, it is easy to get used to it.

There is a plan: tomorrow I will take a bus to 'El Alto' in order to visit what is said to be the biggest open air market on this part of the planet, the 'Feria 16 de julio'.

(Luis Córdova from La Paz. Trivia: This is not the capital of Bolivia)