Our Great Adventure: La Paz Day 258 03/06/2015

We had planned to go on a 'tips for tour' walking tour today and as it didn't start until 1100 we took advantage of a leisurely start to the day. We had breakfast in the 3rd floor restaurant of the hotel which, with it's large glass windows, has great views of La Paz's iconic mountain, Illimani, which is Bolivia's second highest mountain at 6438m. The breakfast was sumptuous and delicious and we took our time enjoying the food and views. The tour, run by Red Cap, started at the Plaza San Pedro, which we had visited briefly yesterday, and there we met our 2 hosts and 8 other people. The guys explained that the square was actually named after the church on the corner, not General Sucre, the founder of La Paz in 1548, who has his statue in the middle. Alongside the plaza is the notorious San Pedro prison. It has a capacity of 400, but at the moment there are over 2400 people in there. The main reason for them being incarcerated is for drug offences, with a average sentence of 8 years. However as Bolivian justice works on the principle of 'guilty until proven innocent' many are in there awaiting trial which can take between 3 to 5 years; some have died in there before ever getting to court. Inmates have to pay for being in prison and as most can't afford to pay this and for their family to live outside, they are joined by their loved ones inside. The costs range from B$50 (£5) per month for a space in a room with 12 other people to B$5000 (£500) for a whole wing, known as penthouses! In order to fund their stay prisoners work in the coffee, carpenters, textile, artisan shops all in the prison and it is apparently like a village in there. Until a few years ago tourists could pay to spend a day or even a couple of nights inside, interacting with prisoners and buying their goods. However after a few rapes and murders of tourists by the felons, the prison authorities understandably put a stop to it. There are also bad ways to fund your stay in there, which usually means buying and selling 'sugar', the local slang for cocaine. Apparently some of this produce is thrown over the prison walls by the convicts, where drug dealers quickly collect it before being nabbed by the police. We were advised that if we were walking near the prison walls not to pick up any strange looking bags or else we would become the 2401 inmate! For more information please read the following link www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/san-pedro-prison-a-very-strange-tourist-attraction-2345166.html. With that said we walked out of the plaza and up a block to Calle Zollo Flores. This actually runs parallel to the street our hotel is on and has a huge market. We were pleased we skipped the meat section (which includes bull's penises) and spent our time in the colours and fragrance of the fruit and vegetable stalls. These are usually brought in each day and the ladies on the stalls spend all the daylight hours selling the goods, gossipping and also acting like local 'agony aunts'. From there we walked a couple more blocks to the famous Witches Market (Mercado de Hechiceria). We were told that the local people believed in a mixture of catholicism and indigenous deities and had strange potions to sell to improve your love life, keeping your man subservient (Di wasn't allowed to buy this) and a local type of viagra (although the doses are meant for horses so it has caused many a heart attack while they are 'on the job' which has meant the local prostitutes aren't happy!). Also for sale are llama foetuses which are meant to be good for mother earth (Pachamama) if buried and we remembered how we had seen a couple of them strung up yesterday when we were here (Simon had tried to convince Di they were toys!). We then strolled to the nearby San Francisco church which was built in 17th century. It was very impressive and alongside was it's museum which we thought we would go along to tomorrow. Across the plaza in front of the cathedral was the food market with hundreds of stalls. We tried the local Ilauchas (which is fried mashed potato with meat and cheese in the centre), a banana and peach smoothie and rounded of with an Api (which was fried batter with cheese inside coated in sugar); all were very fresh and tasty and cost a grand total of B$17 (c£1.50). From there we crossed the main El Prado highway moving from the indigenous area to the old Spanish area, arriving at the Plaza Pedro Murillo. Surrounding this were impressive buildings, including the Presidential Palace, the Justice house and the main city cathedral that took 200 years to build and was only just finished for the 1988 visit of Pope John Paul II. The square has witnessed a lot of the political turbulence that has marked Bolivia's 289 year history including the hanging of President Villarroel in 1946 when the rich people weren't happy with his policy of ending the slave trade here (the spot where the gallows were now has his bust on a plinth) right up to recently in 2003. This was when the locals rose up against the president at the time who had already sold most of the gas rights of the country to Petrogas, a Brazilian company. He pocketed half the proceeds, managed to dodge the riots and bullets when escaping his place in the plaza (all the buildings still have bullet holes) and fled to the USA. His nickname is Goni and as he has dual US and Bolivian nationality they have been unable to extradite him, which means their relationship with the States is sour to say the least. Goni is apparently alive and well living in luxury in Maryland! Not surprisingly the current president, Morales, does not live in the palace on the square living instead in a large house 'somewhere in the south of the city'. He is also a colourful character and speaks before he thinks and has many non PC George W Bush type comments in his speeches including "if you drink coca cola it can make you gay" (later thankfully retracting it!). However he is loved by the local people as he is the first indigenous president and when the constitution of the Republic of Bolivia stated you can only serve 2 terms, he changed the name of the country to the Plurinational State of Bolivia, meaning he can serve another 2 terms if elected, which he was to his third term last November. We left the plaza, crossing the El Prado back to the old city and finished our tour at Oliver's an English style pub. We were treated to a local Bolivian type drink, which was part orange cordial and part alcohol (bit like tequila), which you had to down in one. We said goodbye to our hosts, paid a tip and went next door to the Sol y Luna cafe, recommended by our friends Dan and Dawn for a drink, sussed out the Star of India curry house next door, with plans to go tonight and then walked back to the hotel. After checking out the hotel would charge us B$84 each for the 4 hour bus journey to our next destination Copacabana, we decided to use the local tour operator over the road, who ran their own modern buses but only charged B$30 each. We spent the rest of the afternoon reading and chilling (we also booked to go on Red Caps extended tour of the city tomorrow) before heading out to the curry house for our evening meal. There we enjoyed an excellent couple of curry chicken dishes (Jalfezi amd Tikka Massala) and feeling full and content we strolled back the 10 minutes to our hotel.