Daniel in Bolivia

Since my arrival here in La Paz on Wednesday I stayed in a nice hostel and spent the days walking through La Paz. It took me 4 days to get used to the altitude, recover from the 42 hour flight and loose my jetlag. The air is really dry here and one needs to drink constantly, also to avoid headaches.

By chance one of my walks led me to the museum of instruments and music. In the courtyard of the old colonial building I found this here:

This is a paraboilic solar cooker, and one family that lives there told me they use it frequently for cooking. I asked them if there are many people in La Paz using such cookers, which would have surprised me because it’s in the middle of the city and there is probably not enough space for that. And their answeer was no, they seem to be the only ones. Re-newable energy in the courtyard of a music museum, really wired.

The following graphic I found in the museum and it shows the altitude profile of the Andes, in the middle you see Bolivia with altitudes ranging up to 6500 Meters. La Paz is at about 3500 Meters, the Salt Lake Salar de Uyuni where I’ll be at the end of next week is slightly higer.

A poster found in the museum, i like the typo.

A street festival in the centre of La Paz. Live music, tasty sausages and a big gorilla I photographed a thousand times.

I took this photo while some other guests from my hostel and me were on our way to San Pedro Prison. The prison lies in the centre of La Paz and is the biggest prison of the city and seems to be a whole microcosm, a whole small city in itself. They have shops and restaurants there, and the richer the inmates are the bigger their cells and the better their living standard is. Inmates are mostly murderers or drug dealers, but still many men live their together with their children and wifes. So far, so incredible and also dangerous – many inmates get killed by other inmates.

Other tourists had recommended the prison to us, but couldn’t give more information then that tours are only possible on sundays. So we entered the prison surrounded by a lot of police and then were asked to give cameras to the guards as these wouldn’t be allowed inside. Then they told us what we would have to pay, and though I had estimated a decent fee like 15 Dollars or so (which is quite a lot here) they asked for 400 Bolivianos (1 Euro=9 Bolivianos)! Which equals 55 Dollars or 45 Euros. I then decided not to do the tour, because 400 Bolivianos is almost the budget for half a week here…I really found it ridiculous to pay so much money, especially as by bolivian standards 400 Bolivianos must feel like 200 Dollars for them. Anyways, 2 girls made the 2 hours tour and later said that it was really intense, though the best thing happened at the end of the tour: they were asked to tip the guards and were more or less forced to again give some more Bolivianos. The other question would be if one should pay to see other people suffer in a prison.  Probably a good thing that I ended up not doing the tour.

In the meantime I had returned to the hostel and joined thehostel  staff that was making a BBQ on the roof terrace of the hostel.

Most of the people that work here in the hostel are backpackers from around the world, but mostly australian or  irish. They usually work a few weeks here and sleep and eat for free.

Must be an exhausting time because I think most of them either work at night at the hostel bar or they hang out there drinking for free.

But seems to be a  fun job!

I’m waiting for the accreditation to visit the lithium plant in Rio Grande / Salar de Uyuni, thus I will travel to another important mining town first: Potosi.In the 17th century, Potosi used to be one of the biggest cities in the world, comparable to London and Paris. This was because of immense silver deposits which were exploited by the Spanish then. Now it’s a rather poor place, were still very many miners work under bad conditions for low salaries. The next travel update with some more informations on Potosi will come next week.

Hola!

My trip to Bolivia began with a first flight from Duesseldorf to London Heathrow. From the plane window I could see some big off shore wind parks in front of the british coast and even though one knows the pictures of wind parks from the media it is impressive to see it live from the plane.

Arriving in London, I thought I had been to big airports earlier but London Heathrow seems to be really big, at least when you see how much time you need to get from one gate to another.

As i had to go through security in London again I lasked the staff to hand-check my film material, and not letting it go through the scanning machine (which very very rarely seems to damage film material, that’s why). In Duesseldorf they did handcheck, in London the were not willing to do so unless I peeled all my fresh film, which I finally did only with the iso 800 film. So, all the 160 and 400 film went through the machine, let’s hope the securtiy woman was right citing FUJI and KODAK that the machine is perfectly fine with all film material…

Ok, the flight to Sao Paolo was relaxed, I slept most of it. I arrived there early in the morning and the flight to La Paz did go at night, so I spend 14 hrs waiting at Sao Paolo airport (by the way, I sat and slept most of the time on some seats that were in front of a small airport restaurant, called “Eisenbahn”, with german specialties and german-styled beer. So obviously, Germany didn’t want to let me go that soon…).
The flight to La Paz was supposed to stop in Asuncion, Paraguay. Instead, the flight ended “spontanously” in Asuncion and I had to change the plane again. Finally, I arrived at La Paz airport (the highest international airport, at ca. 4000 Meters!) at 2.30am Wednesday morning. Incredible enough, my checked luggage arrived with me and the pick up I had arranged with the hostel was there, too.

Next morning:
I love to step up on hostel roofs, I always do that when possible, so here are some fine views over La Paz from the Loki Hostel’s roof. FYI, the yellow-red-blueish parts in the front of the picture is the actual roof of the hostel. Thank god it’s not raining season.

Settlements / slums at the very steep mountains that surround La Paz. Unbelievable how the bolivianos use every single spot in the La Paz valley.

Just opposite of my hostel, 25 meters away, the police practices on the roof of the police station with the police orchestra / brass band. I know one can hardly see it but they were sitting there for 2 hours or so yesterday and today and played marching music, making sound for the whole neighbourhood.

A curious thing I found in the hostel was this room, where you can sit down and get oxygen for 10 (4 €) or 20 (7,50 €) minutes. I mean it is true that the air here in the Andes at almost 4000 meters is thin, very very thin, but oxygen masks for 10 minutes?

So what I did today and yesterday was mostly organizing things, changing money (impossible to get Bolivianos, that’s the currency here, in Germany), searching and finding some good maps of the salt lake area around Uyuni and some other stuff. It took and takes also some time to really “arrive” here, and though I travelled here in Bolivia in 2003 for some weeks the cultural “shock” between Berlin and Bolivia was there again.

I walked around quiet a bit and took some photos of urban life (I know that could be everything…) and the architecture. I somehow ended up in a small lawyers office where I took some portraits of 2 very friendly, old fashioned lawyers. Beautiful 70s interiour design of their office, wish I had brought a wide angle lens to this place. The reason why I had knocked at their door which was on the 8 th floor of a high rise was just that I wanted to take a pictures of downtown La Paz through their window.

Later today I went to the authority that manages the lithium pilot plant at the Salt Lake. They have their office in this not so modern building, it took me a second to find it…

I spoke to a PR person that now needs a written statement from my professor to give me the accreditation to visit the plant.
Good thing I stay 5 more weeks… I will spend some more time in La Paz, will get used to the altitude and and take photographs in the city.
After that I’ll probably directly travel to the small city of Uyuni, to see the salt lake and visit the pilot plant.
There would be so many more things to write about but for the moment I’ll keep it like that send a lot of Saludos to wherever you read this.
Adios!