An interesting thing about the artisan market in La Paz is that it is surrounding the witches market. This market caters to people who are looking for various potions or combinations of things to bring them luck, a child, a wife, or even money. I have visited many of these before in South America, but none are quite like this one. Most of them involve eating or drinking tea from different plants, but not here. This one offers powder of a condor beak, candy to appease the Pachamama, silver frogs and best of all, dried llama fetuses. That's right, the street stands are covered with llama fetuses, the most disgusting thing you have ever seen (if you burry them under your house, it brings those who live in it good luck). It will definitely remove any appetite you might have. And for those who don't know what combinations of things they need, not to worry, there are packages that you can buy ... the luck plate or the money plate ... McDonald-ization of the witches market is in full swing.
After we had found everything we were looking for (I still have to go back to find my presents ... but it's good practice for my Spanish, and you can learn a lot from talking to the women in the shops) we headed down the main drag, after stopping in on the Mother's Day service in the San Francisco church (Hey Mom, they don't have to wear a tie to church here, and they are one of the most religious countries in the world ... in fact the most dressed up person was in jeans and a button down shirt). From the church we happened upon a festival celebrating Mother's Day. There were bands, dancing demonstrations, a small traffic driving school for kids (run with zebras) and all the stores had their mascots out in front to celebratw Mother's Day. Sandy and I had to stop at Dumbo's (yes, they have an ice cream joint called Dumbo's) to have my picture taken with Goofy ... remember I am a McCurdy ... what do you expect.In front of Dumbo's we bumped into the rest of the guys in our tour group who had been turned away from the San Pedro Prison. Now, from what they told me, I will not be able to go either, so I might as well tell you about this one-of-a-kind prison. Dead centre in the middle of the city, this prison is mostly filled with people arrested for drug trafficking, and only 20% are serving their time while the rest are waiting for their trial. The interesting thing about this prison is that inside there is a small town. There are no guards inside and the prisoner's run everything including shops, restaurants, a professional soccer league and other services a community would run. You even have to rent your cell, so if you have a lot of money, you can rent a nice one, but if you don't you might have to take in roommates. If this isn't enough, people in the prison live with their families. Their wives and children come into the prison to spend the night, and in the morning they leave to head to their job or to school. Up until recently, one of the largest sources of income was tourism, where you would walk up to the gate, talk to an inmate, determine a price for the tour, bribe the guard to get in and then go for a tour. Surprisingly, this was probably one of the safest things to do in La Paz as they relied so heavily on this source of income, they didn't want anything to happen to prevent the guards from letting the tourists inside. Sadly, because most of the people inside were there for drug trafficing, the tourists began to arrive in search of drugs, so the guards have shut down tourism, only families are still able to come and go.
After lunch with our GAP group, Sandy and I headed down to take the city tour that everyone said was so good, and it was quite well done. We drove through the city to see most of the highlights ... shopping district, rich part of town, slums, presidential palace ... more than I thought La Paz had to offer. I will have to return to most of these places on foot to explore more fully (especially since the phone wires made it impossible to take pictures as they actually fell down into the double-decker bus). They even took us to a lookout over the city, and I kid you not, La Paz looks like it was made all out of Lego. Even though I have said some towns look like they are built out of Lego, I'm pretty sure my godson actually made a replica of La Paz out of Lego without even knowing it.The bus tour was also a source of some great useless facts including.
- Bolivia has had over 100 presidents since it was founded. At one time they had three different presidents and one president only lasted 6 hours
- When Bolivia beat Brazil in a soccer match in La Paz, FIFA baned any games over 3,000m, making La Paz the only soccer stadium that can't host a FIFA match
- The women in Bolivia wear bowler hats that are about 10 sizes too small (picture the fat man from those black and white movies who wore the bowler hat at an angle ... that's the women here). The story goes that some guy from Europe was sent a shipment of hats that were too small, so he brought them to Bolivia and told everyone that they were the fashion all over Europe ... and people bought them and still do ... upwards of $300 for a hat.
Our tour of the city ended in the Valley of the Moon, a landscape of dirt pillars, much like the badlands in Alberta, except these badlands don't have any fossils. By the time we got back from our tour, we had enough time to go for a final dinner with all our friends from GAP, and then Sandy and I spent the rest of the evening hanging out before she had to return to Canada in the morning.
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