The Fishers in La Paz, Bolivia

Oh, you need a blender? an electric fan?  If your geography is anything like mine was a little more than 3 months ago, you would drive up an exit or two, pull into the local Super Target and locate the correct aisle in which to find your treasure.

While every country – nay, every town – would be a more wonderful place if each had a Super Target (Sorry Wal Mart fans, but once you go Target, you never go back), nothing beats the character-building, life altering… shopping experience that is La Paz’s so called “Black Market”.

It’s not a dangerous place, it’s just, well, big, crowded and rather vertical.  It is nestled in the rather mountainous streets of La Paz’s Centro, the heart of their downtown, if you will, but this is one of the highest downtowns ever built!

Anyway, to get there… well… hmmm… getting there will fill up the rest of this post; I’ll have to save actually shopping there for next time.

So, here I am in Zona Sur (let’s, just to add a little Chicago flair, call it the South Side, which is basically what it is), in Barrio Achumani, where we Fishers live.  It is a lovely October Spring afternoon and I set out for Eloy Salmon to buy my wireless router.

I walk a couple of blocks to the main strip, alternately called Calle 23 in Calacoto and Avenida Garcia Lanza in Achumani.  I go to the nearest taxi, get in and say, “Buenas Tardes”.  He returns my greeting and politely asks where I would like to go.  “La Iglesia San Francisco,” I say, a giant, breathtaking church, that would be the end of my first leg of the trip and serve as a good landmark.

Concerned, the man tells me he can’t go that far.  “No puedo ir al Centro.”  But after a few crocodile tears shed by me, he manages to get me about a mile into Zona Sur to find another taxi who will take me there!  Dig that!  And, better yet, he refuses my money – try and find that in New York!

So, I get in the next taxi.  He warns me that the trip that far will be 15 bs (less, by the way, than $2 US, so hey).  I figured as much, so I get in.  Then he drives me north… and up.

Suffice it to say that traveling in La Paz is the only shopping trip I’ve ever been on in which my ears actually pop from the change in altitude!

I have to get ready to go to work, so I will continue my adventures soon…

Chau for now.