La Paz

I say it's like a bowler hat not just because it is, but because the women wear them here too! It's mad. Everywhere you look there are round women with long plats under bowler hats perched at odd angles on their heads. Mad angles even, just like the hats. Stan and Ollie still setting the trends for Bolivian women to follow.
The traffic in this sprawling city is unbelievable. You put your life in someone else's hands everytime you cross a street, while the pavements aren't much safer. Cars honk, people shout; there's chaos and confusion all round. Somehow though, it still manages to be quieter than Perú where the only volume is deafening.

The poverty is tangible. Invalids, cripples, down-and-outs, old women sitting on the pavements; their hands are drawn to us as if by magnets. The hands rise towards us everytime we pass, clutching, grabbing, desperate for something. Moaning or crying, some of them are really pitiful. It feels helping them just prolongs their pain. Kids work the streets, shining shoes or selling chewing gum - school don't put food on the table.
Warnings of crime and the need for vigilance are everywhere. A policeman told us to watch our bags and pockets as soon as we arrived, before advising us to take a taxi rather than walk. Restaurants have signs advising diners to guard their bags at all times. The hostel warns of assaults and robberies and tourists, and a woman in the market told us to be extra careful with our money yesterday.

Apart from more than a million people, most of them very friendly (taxi drivers and other motorists excluded of course), the city is home to 74 squillion pigeons if not more, all better fed than a lot of the people. The people actually buy them seeds and feed them in the squares, gathering huge clusters of the feckers flying and fighting around them.
We actually saved one from an over-playful dog this morning. The poor old pigeon was clearly injured and in no mood to play with this big dog, but the dog kept batting him with his paw and jumping on him. The pigeon couldn't fly, but was too stupid to waddle between some railings out of paws reach. He was too stupid to even make his escape while Jenny shooed the dog away. We had to shoo him away too. I'm sure the dog just came back and gobbled him up in the end.

Yes, La Paz is mad. I like it.
More La Paz pictures can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/faheyc/LaPaz#
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