La Paz - Bolivia
9/23/05
La Paz is the world's highest capital with 3,636 but it spreads up to 4,000 meters. The population is over a million (8,8 millions in entire Bolivia) and mainly composed of native indians.
We spent only one day in La Paz because what we were really looking for in this region of Bolivia was trekking. The first thing we did was to find a travel agency to get information about trekking around La Paz.
We found a nice agency, TravelTracks, owned by a Dutch/Bolivian couple, where
we got all the info we needed and even more. The problem was the amount of choice and the little time we had. The Cordillera Real offers several trek possibilities, then there is the classic El Choro through an ancient Inca path, not to mention a dozen or more peaks to climb.
Not knowing what to chose, we decided to go for a walk in the city and come back after some reflection time. Our first stop was the super interesting Coca Museum, very small, but packed with info.
Here are some facts :
- Angelo Mariani, in France, invented the Vino Mariani in 1863 made with coca leaves. He achieved worldwide success for many years due to the stimulating effect of the drink. Several imitations were launched but the most successful one was from doctor John Pemberton's, pharmacists in Atlanta. He produced a drink called French Wine Coca containing coca, but also extract of a Ghanaian Cola nut which has a higher concentration of caffeine than coffee. With the prohibition in the US, alcoholic beverages were banned, so he had to change to formula to what is today the most recognized product: Coca Cola.
- Coca leaves have been used in South America by indigenous groups for over 4500 years.
- Due to the magical and religious role that coca leaves played, coca was considered satanic at first and an obstacle to Catholicism by the Spanish. Once it was discovered that chewing coca provided the slaves with more energy to work, it was sanctified and its consumption was even made mandatory by mine owners. The indigenous people worked 'days' of 48 continuous hours without adequate breaks or any food other than coca leaves to chew.
- The benefits of coca are used by pharmaceutical companies that discovered its anaesthetic power, by coca cola for the drink and by multi billion-dollar illegal cocaine industry, all controlled by foreigners, but Bolivia has been blamed for the western world's drug addiction problem.
After a cocaine shot (just kidding), we went to visit the Witches' Market, a famous and singular market in La Paz. The place is called like that because you find dried fetus of lamas and other animals...
... herbs, seeds, magical ingredients...
and other strange things supposed to be remedies for any combination of illness that you may be experiencing and protection from the bad spirits which whom according to Aymara beliefs, populate the world. The dried fetus is buried with different offers to Pachamama in front of a new house to protect it from the bad spirits. There are also prepared sets of offers to Pachamama.
The witches market is really small and since locals know that it attracts a lot of tourists, there is a souvenir market right next to it where the natives sell handcrafts and handmade weaving and knitted stuffs.
Before the end of the day we still made a stop to talk to the Clube Andino de Montanhismo, and see what info they had about trekking. It wasn't actually great but somewhat useful. The two people were really nice to us and helped us to buy gas for our trek and showed us the Market Rodrigues where we bought food to take with us during the trek.
Finally we decided to do a 2-day trek in Cordillera Real with TravelTracks (since the trails are not marked there) followed by a 3-day trek by ourselves in El Choro.
La Paz is the world's highest capital with 3,636 but it spreads up to 4,000 meters. The population is over a million (8,8 millions in entire Bolivia) and mainly composed of native indians.
We spent only one day in La Paz because what we were really looking for in this region of Bolivia was trekking. The first thing we did was to find a travel agency to get information about trekking around La Paz.
We found a nice agency, TravelTracks, owned by a Dutch/Bolivian couple, where
we got all the info we needed and even more. The problem was the amount of choice and the little time we had. The Cordillera Real offers several trek possibilities, then there is the classic El Choro through an ancient Inca path, not to mention a dozen or more peaks to climb.
Not knowing what to chose, we decided to go for a walk in the city and come back after some reflection time. Our first stop was the super interesting Coca Museum, very small, but packed with info.
Here are some facts :
- Angelo Mariani, in France, invented the Vino Mariani in 1863 made with coca leaves. He achieved worldwide success for many years due to the stimulating effect of the drink. Several imitations were launched but the most successful one was from doctor John Pemberton's, pharmacists in Atlanta. He produced a drink called French Wine Coca containing coca, but also extract of a Ghanaian Cola nut which has a higher concentration of caffeine than coffee. With the prohibition in the US, alcoholic beverages were banned, so he had to change to formula to what is today the most recognized product: Coca Cola.
- Coca leaves have been used in South America by indigenous groups for over 4500 years.
- Due to the magical and religious role that coca leaves played, coca was considered satanic at first and an obstacle to Catholicism by the Spanish. Once it was discovered that chewing coca provided the slaves with more energy to work, it was sanctified and its consumption was even made mandatory by mine owners. The indigenous people worked 'days' of 48 continuous hours without adequate breaks or any food other than coca leaves to chew.
- The benefits of coca are used by pharmaceutical companies that discovered its anaesthetic power, by coca cola for the drink and by multi billion-dollar illegal cocaine industry, all controlled by foreigners, but Bolivia has been blamed for the western world's drug addiction problem.
After a cocaine shot (just kidding), we went to visit the Witches' Market, a famous and singular market in La Paz. The place is called like that because you find dried fetus of lamas and other animals...
... herbs, seeds, magical ingredients...
and other strange things supposed to be remedies for any combination of illness that you may be experiencing and protection from the bad spirits which whom according to Aymara beliefs, populate the world. The dried fetus is buried with different offers to Pachamama in front of a new house to protect it from the bad spirits. There are also prepared sets of offers to Pachamama.
The witches market is really small and since locals know that it attracts a lot of tourists, there is a souvenir market right next to it where the natives sell handcrafts and handmade weaving and knitted stuffs.
Before the end of the day we still made a stop to talk to the Clube Andino de Montanhismo, and see what info they had about trekking. It wasn't actually great but somewhat useful. The two people were really nice to us and helped us to buy gas for our trek and showed us the Market Rodrigues where we bought food to take with us during the trek.
Finally we decided to do a 2-day trek in Cordillera Real with TravelTracks (since the trails are not marked there) followed by a 3-day trek by ourselves in El Choro.
posted by Adriano and Angie | 8:57 AM
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