Bolivia: llamas, cable cars and wresting Cholitas!

May, 2018

Amigos!

So...we survived the laxative bus ride, finally de-salted ourselves and have been making our way through central and northern Bolivia. Before this trip I can’t say I knew anything about Bolivia (guilty, I wasn’t even 100p sure where it lay on the map) but sometimes the places you know the least about end up being some of your favorites!

Aside from the Bolivian desert (see blog below) we’ve made stops in Sucre, La Paz and Copacabana- each place proving to have its own character and charm. The first thing we do when reaching a new city is hit up the walking tour...so walking tour after walking tour later we have learnt a lot of interesting info about Bolivz. Let’s do this.

1. Bolivia is cheap AF. This one kind of speaks for itself...food is cheap, accommodation is cheap, markets are cheap and public colleges cost a whopping $4 a YEAR. I imagined spending $16 for my four years at the University of Maryland and teared a little.

2. As in most countries, the politics in Bolivia are quite tricky. The current President, Evo Morales, actually changed the constitution in 2009 so that he could run for another term (he has been president now for 14 years). Come 2018, his term limit is almost up again and he tried to do another switcheroo and change the constitution for the second time. This time around the people were not having it and shut his request downnn BUT somehow he got the country’s highest court to overrule the constitution, scrapping term limits altogether which allows him to run for a fourth term in 2019 and for any election after. Imagine Trump changing the constitution and potentially staying president forever....sweet Jesus.

3. Cholitas, the indigenous women of Bolivia, have got it going on. When you walk through the streets of Bolivia there are a mix of people who dress modernly and people who wear traditional Indigenous clothing aka the Cholitas. Bolivia’s Cholitas were once a target for discrimination and abuse but over time their clothing and traditions have become a source of pride for the country and Cholitas have become a Bolivian icon. We learnt that all of their fashion has a functionality, for example, they wear long full skirts so their hips look wider and they seem more child bearing (apparently the men come running), they have long braided hair (the longer, the sexier) and wear bowl hats which is a major trend among the women (we even saw some Cholitas wearing plastic bags over their bowl hats in the rain to protect them #dedication). One day we were walking through a market and saw a Cholita call out to a westerner in ripped jeans, “senhorita, your pants are broken!” Literally made my day. To top it off, Cholitas have recently made it into the WWE wrestling world and are taking their talents to the ring. The days where Cholitas were just market vendors are over and these strong traditional women are paving the way for others. Basically they are BADASS, get in line boys.

4. RITUALS & OFFERINGS are a serious business. Bolivian culture is very superstitious and they have different rituals and offerings for all aspects of their lives, keeping their traditions alive. For example, when building a new home, there is a specific ritual that is followed to ensure that pacha-mama (Mother Nature) blesses your home and watches over you. This ritual entails a casual dehydrated llama fetus, candies and wine (could do without the fetus but candies and wine, sign me up)... which you can pick up at the witches market. We walked through the witches market in La Paz and saw dehydrated llama fetuses galore, hanging like dolls in each store front. Once you have all of these ingredients, you burn them in front of your new home and bury the cremations in the backyard to ensure that pacha-mama has GOTCHUU. See dehydrated llama fetuses bellow.

Another ritual that I found really interesting is car and bus baptisms. In certain churches in Bolivia you can, yes....baptize your automobile! People do this to ensure that pacha-mama is watching over them and will allow them a safe journey. The only irony is that Bolivia is known for drunk drivers so not sure if the baptism will help beat the booze? Who knows.

5. Bolivians RIDE in STYLE. They call it the subway in the sky, and If you want some thrill on your morning commute, I would say MOVE TO LA PAZ. Now. La Paz is one of the biggest cities in Bolivia, built steeply into a mountain range, it is beautifullll but to get to work with the steep inclines and constant traffic, not so pretty. Therefore they recently built a cable car system spanning the whole city which cut peoples commutes down to 10 minutes! Like any subway system there is a red line, blue line, orange line, green line etc. but instead of being underground with mostly just views of sewer rats (yum), you are flying in a glass box with views of the whole city! After one ride on the cable cars we were like kids in a candy store, HOOKED. We immediately bought 11 tickets so we could ride every line there was, there and back, which is pretty much the equivalent of riding the subway back and forth to no particular destination for hours...aka weird. But as I said, we were hooked. We rode the cable cars for 3 hours until it was dark out and locals were lining up during cable car rush hour with their briefcases just trying to get home. Low and behold they found two gringos in their cable car, faces pressed up against the glass, continuously giggling as we flew through the sky.

6. Finally, and this is a weird one...it is freakishly easy to smuggle people across the Bolivian border. Upon leaving Bolivia and crossing by bus into Peru, three people we were traveling with realized that they were never stamped when they got into Bolivia (must have missed a checkpoint) and basically were illegal the whole time in Bolivia. Since they were technically not allowed to be in the country, they couldn't casually cross the border and get stamped into Peru. Instead our bus driver smuggled them across the border in the back of our bus where they paid $100 to have their passports stamped in a sketchy undercover shack. Corruption at its finest.

So there you have it, Bolivia has a TON to offer and if you ever need help crossing borders... we know some people 😉

Next stop Peru!