Day 1 in La Paz: Lots of Charlie Chaplin hats

I awoke to the sound of children screaming and cars honking. Granted, by the time I went to bed it was 6 a.m., so when I finally stumbled out of a bed, it was 11 a.m. The altitude here literally takes your breath away, which made it even harder to get going. Even walking up a flew steps of stairs makes me feel like I have been smoking a pack of day for the past ten years.

Weather in La Paz today was around 60, but as one woman said, if you do not like the weather, just wait five minutes. One minute it is sunny, then windy, then sprinkling. Strange.

Today I walked around a few major streets in La Paz. When I asked the guy at the front desk for any recommendations, his one recommendation was on what areas to avoid. I was expecting, oh, go and see this museum and grab lunch here. No, it was more like, Don,t get mugged. So, per his recommendation, I did not go south of the cemetery. Instead, I just tried not to get hit by a car, taxi or minibus and walked around the cobble streets to a few popular plazas with pigeons and armed guards everywhere. I also headed to Witches Market, where they sell random things like baby llama fetuses and dried alpaca = yes, they smelled = and then had a two dollar dinner of a fried piece of chicken, french fries, chow mein and rice. Any place that has three starches on one plate is a special place. And it was all washed down with a coke out of the bottle.

So, all in all today was pretty laidback as I was kind of getting acclimatized and acclimated to the new surroundings. The highlights was watching some little girl shove toilet paper up her sleeping brother,s nose, and seeing all the street vendors selling slices of watermelon, some tea looking thing, peanuts, random nick knacks. They are everywhere.  Not pushy, but everywhere.And seem to sell everything.

Oh, and there is not one Starbucks. But Burger King is popular.

But the most noticeable thing so far are all these indigenous ladies wearing Charlie Chaplin hats with braided hair, shiny, knee length skirts with shawls. I love them. I was lucky enough today to see about 100 of them at a time because they were protesting something.

Here's what the Lonely Planet has to say.

Para manana, I'm going to tour La Paz in the morning then head to the Bolivian side of the Amazon, in Rurrenbaque.

Hasta luego.