La Paz is a most unlikely city. Over a million people live in this high elevation bowl. Another near million live on the flats above the rim in a new city called El Alto near the highest general aviation airport in the world.
Pedro (leader of the team from Bolivia to our district) joined us on a tour of the city yesterday morning. We rode around in a London-style double-decker bus listening to a recording in English of the city’s founding and most important buildings. We stopped to take photos at an overlook with a great view. Renzo Loza and Nicholas Zalles joined us as well, along with a woman named Joanne who was a host to one of them back home in Virginia. She has come here for a week-long visit.
Few places in the city look to be flat, but the canyon rims surrounding the city are particularly steep. Nevertheless, habitations in brick cling to all but the most precarious slopes. In most cities of similar topography, the richer people live away from the noise and crowds on the surrounding hillsides, but here they live closer to the city center in the lowest elevations. The reason, we’re told, is that the center city is warmer and more temperate.
Doug and I returned to our guest home where we let ourselves in with the pair of keys I’ve been given. One key is for the perimeter wall and the other is for the front door. Virtually all the homes we’ve stayed in have some sort of perimeter wall (The exception was my first in Santa Cruz that was in a gated community.). Most walls are 10 feet high or so, made of masonry and/or steel, with heavy steel doors. Walls are topped with spikes, strings of barbed wire, or broken glass bottle shards to discourage anyone from trying to climb over them. The glass shard topped walls of course glisten with color in the sun. We’re told that unprotected homes can be cleaned out entirely in short order.
Last evening, we hung out with Renzo, as he drove us around his neighborhood in the south part of the city. We stopped at a couple of overlooks, which are numerous due to the rugged topography. He spoke of the antics of his youth, getting in trouble with his mates. Then we joined Nic and two friends at the food court of a shopping mall. It was a clean, modern facility that looked just like those in the States except seemingly everyone had dark hair and spoke Spanish. Renzo and Nic said they had interviewed with a company from Lynchburg during their stay in our district and if offers came through planned to seriously consider accepting them.
I sat up late talking with my host. His English isn’t very good and my Spanish isn’t very good, but we managed to have a nice chat. He has an elaborate bar and has asked me many times to have a whiskey before bedtime, so I drank a glass of bourbon and Sprite. Only after he’d fixed mine did he say that he didn’t drink himself. He had a late snack of left-overs from our lunchtime meal. During the course of the conversation he mentioned that his wife’s father had once been president of Bolivia. Surprises are everywhere.
The lady called Joanne is Joanne White of Nelson County. She is a former club president, past assistant district governor, former member of the district GSE committee, an AVID supporter of GSE/IGE and a perenial host to incoming GSE team members. You are fortunate to have her visiting concurrently with your team and hope you can include her in your activities.
ReplyDelete