Gabo's mom was nice enough to have us over for a lunch of delicious Bolivian food. The meal started off with some saltenas, little meat-filled pastries that Jo is in love with. Jo had eagerly anticipated being able to eat certain Bolivian foods, and this was one of them. They had even found vegetarian ones for me, which was sososo nice. I don't know how the meat filled ones taste (although Jo assured me they were awesome), but the veggie saltenas were delicious.
We also had an awesome corn dish. I didn't take pictures of the rest, but there was a tofu dish (non Bolivian,) a beef dish, and flan for dessert.
After the meal, we opened gifts.
And took the obligatory family photo. In the picture is: Mateo, Gabo, Jo, Rita, and Ricky.
After lunch, Jo and I took off because we wanted to explore the city more. Jo has a closet obsession with doors, and kept remarking whenever he saw an interesting door. Finally I made him take a picture with one. Look how happy it made him; he's in door heaven.
We were uptown, once again. Check out the swank.
Here's a picture of the hills surrounding La Paz. Every available inch had been claimed by someone.
Here is the Iglesia San Francisco. The area around it has lots of places to shop.
We walked past the Iglesia, on our way to the infamous Witches' Market. On the way Jo stopped for some crackers for his stomach, which still wasn't feeling quite right. This little shop was barely bigger than a broom closet. You see these little places all over the city.
Just around this corner is the Witches Market. Dun, dun, duuuuuuunnnn........
Even Jo got a little scared:
The Witches Market is a must-see for any one who visits La Paz. There are all types of weird charms, cure-alls, talismans, powders, and any other type of mystical paraphernalia you might need.
 |
| Llama fetuses. |
 |
| Charms. |
 |
| More charms. |
 |
| Pretty beads. |
 |
| Friendly frog. |
 |
| Beautiful fabric. |
 |
| More beautiful fabric. |
 |
| Bloated frogs. |
 |
| Who knows what. |
 |
| Strange powders and crystals. |
We left the Witches Market with some new charms to safeguard us on our journey. We browsed around the shop in the area for a bit more, looking for souvenirs to take back home. We found a bracelet for our friend Eva, who was nice enough to be watering our plants for us while we were gone. Mostly, it was just fun to browse.
Typical Bolivian street dog.
We had done a lot of walking, and I was hungry, we we stopped at a neat little cafe for a sandwich. I really wanted to try to find something more authentically Bolivian than a sandwich, but it turned out to be rather difficult to find meat-free Bolivian dishes. There are a lot of little restaurants tucked away in various parts of the city, but many of them have a very limited menu, and all the items consisted of meat. Jo was surprised at our difficulty, since he assured me that there are tons of typical Bolivian dishes that are vegetarian.
Normally I'd write a sentence about going home and going to bed, and that would be that, but this night warrants a little more than just a sentence. A sentence can't come close to conveying just what a hassle it was getting home. Jo is an expert trufi flagger-downer, but there was an insane rush for trufis that night, and we had the hardest time ever getting one. We watched trufi after trufi zoom by us, full of passengers. We ended up having to work our way down the street in pieces. We'd catch a trufi that went partially down the street, then get off and walk a bit until we could catch another. We finally managed to catch one that took us all the way down to the neighborhood where we were staying, but, man, it took awhile.
Anyway, that night was gift-giving night. We had brought goodies for the family, so we doled it out before going to bed. We were both exhausted and went to sleep right away.
No comments:
Post a Comment