There and Back Again: the World Travels of a Watson Fellow: More Antics in La Paz

For the most part, yesterday was quite lovely. I went on a free, three-hour walking tour of the city with Red Cap Tours in the morning. I would highly recommend this activity to anyone who is passing through La Paz. Although it’s only 8 months old, the company runs on a tips only basis and the guides were awesome, knowledgeable, funny, and spoke wonderful English. The tour itself was a great mix of culture, politics, history, and random facts/urban legends and we went to a variety of spots in the city including the famous Witches’ Market, the 17th floor of a five star hotel for an incredible vista, both the indigenous and colonial sections of the city, and several markets and picturesque plazas. My afternoon, however, was spent in a less than ideal way. I went to the police station to file a report of an attempted robbery, which happened two days ago. Of course, I never wanted to find myself in a police station in a foreign, developing country, never mind looking at dozens of mug shots of criminals, line-up style, trying desperately to remember the faces and physical details of the three criminals involved in the scam. Rewind two days: I was waiting at the stadium in Miraflores neighborhood of La Paz, waiting for a minibus to take me to Plaza Avaroa in Sopocachi neighborhood. A woman comes up to me with a map asking if I know where such and such place is (I can’t remember her exact words). I respond in Spanish that I am a tourist and therefore have no idea and she turned out to be a tourist as well who was also going to Sopocachi. So we took a minibus together and chatted the whole way, about 10-15 minutes. I learned that her name was Maria, a student studying dentistry in Santiago, the capital city of Chile, and had only been in Bolivia for two days as part of vacation. I told her that I was meeting a colleague in Plaza Avaroa for a meeting and that I was in Bolivia studying quinoa. She was so lovely and I really enjoyed practicing my Spanish with someone other than my homestay family. Maria suggested that we go to a nearby park to take some photos together, so we did. I am honestly quite used to this since in India, everyone wanted to take a photo with you because you’re a foreigner. So I put my camera on self-timer mode and ushered her over, “smile!” I said before she could refuse. We sat down on a bench and were about to exchange email addresses so I could send her the photos I had taken, when a well-dressed man donning a suit and slicked back hair came up to us. He quickly flashed a badge, claiming that he was a police officer doing a routine investigation on drug trafficking involving tourists and cocaine in particular. He demanded to see our passports, so without hesitation, the woman showed hers and fortunately, I only had my passport copy. He looked at it and said, “this doesn’t have a stamp. It’s not official. You need a stamp,” implying that perhaps I was in the country illegally or without proper documentation. I had a similar problem in Bhutan at the border when the border police didn’t stamp my passport as they should have, only the paper visa, so I was genuinely worried. “Come with me,” he barked at us. So we start walking with the man who still has our documents in hand, while Maria and I fall back and he charges ahead. I whispered to her in Spanish, “I don’t trust this man. He’s not wearing a uniform. I’ve heard stories of scams involving fake police and this seems very sketchy.” She assured me that it was fine, as we continued to walk from the park onto the main road. All of a sudden, an unmarked gray car drives up and he ushers us to get in, “let’s go!” Uhm no, I don’t think so. I replied in Spanish, “No estoy comoda con esta situacion. No voy a subir en el coche contigo” (I am not comfortable with this situation. I am not going to get in the car with you). I snatched my passport copy out of his hand and began to raise my voice in Spanish, starting to cause a bit of a scene, though no one was really around. At this point, they realized I wasn’t going to cooperate, so they just drove off, the woman in the backseat of the car. I was stunned and immediately worried for her – was she going to be okay? She might be in trouble because she left with them. What should I do? Then it all clicked – this woman was part of the ruse, the “fake Chilean tourist” that pretends to be your friend but who is actually colluding with false police to rob foreigners. Upon this horrid realization, I began to cry. I was unbelievably close to becoming victim to the same terrible crime that affects so many tourists in La Paz (and in other South American cities). I had read about this scam in Lonely Planet and my homestay family told me similar stories of four other guests who had lived with them and were all robbed at one point or another (one was forced into a car with a black plastic bag placed over his head and brought to an ATM to max out his cards – absolutely terrifying). I knew about it, yet in the moment, it was as if everything had escaped me. I trusted this woman because she seemed innocent and friendly, but clearly, she is a professional. They are such elaborate plans – the fact that she rode the bus with me across the city and that the man was practically waiting for us in the park. Moreover, in the U.S., there is an abundance of undercover police and in a foreign country, I didn’t feel like I was in the position to argue with authorities. Yet I was so lucky that they didn’t manage to take anything, since I had a small amount of cash, both my debit cards, and my computer on me, thus it could have ended very badly. So needless to say, I am feeling even more bitter and angry towards Bolivia right now. Obviously, I cannot group the entire country and associate its whole population with the disingenuous intents of a small group, but I am still so eager to get the hell out of La Paz. I was very adamant about reporting the incident though, hoping that the photo I managed to take of the woman might help in the future. I was shocked, however, when I was forced to look at dozens of photos of people involved in similar scams and to know that the same thing had happened this very day in a different plaza. It blows my mind, especially because I didn’t have these problems in any other country.

Monticulo, the park where we went to "take pictures"

My attempted robber, lolz #LaPazProblems

Rodriguez Market in San Pedro as part of the Red Cap tour

Chunos or freeze dried potatoes - left outside for 1-2 weeks in the cold winter nights to literally zap the water out of, then can be stored for 3-4 years

Witches' Market

Llama fetuses used in many ceremonies

More of the Witches' Market - pieces for ritual offerings

San Francisco Church

Plaza Murillo in La Paz where many of the government offices, including the Presidential Palace, are located

Plaza San Francisco from the 1t7h floor of a nearby hotel

"Urban Rush" - scale down the outside of this hotel, 50 meters

"Without fear, there is future. Without fear, there is democracy." Movimiento Sin Miedo is a relatively new progressive political party in Bolivia (title references the history of dictatorships and totaliarian governments) in opposition to the MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo), Evo Morales' party

"Quinoa: 2013 International Year; a future planted thousands of years ago" - a sign outside of the Ministry of Rural Development and Land

Calle Jaen - a famous touristy street in La Paz with lots of museums and shops; very colonial looking

Doors of La Paz

Plaza Murillo again

View of the of the city and snow-capped Illimani mountain (6,438 m or 21,122 ft), the highest mountain in the Cordillera Range (subrange of the Andeas) from my window in my new house in San Pedro, La Paz :D

Views looking down on La Paz from Feria de 16 de Julio Market in El Alto, the biggest open air market in the country and one of the largest in South America (~5 square km of everything you could imagine from used cars to clothes, shoes, and fruit)

Sun setting in La Paz

Ministry of Rural Development and Land advertising the United Nations' International Year of the Quinoa

My interview with ANAPQUI - the National Association of Quinoa Producers (pictured is the commercial manager who was giving me a presentation on ANAPQUI's structure)

Zebra murals in the city

La Paz cemetery

Largely speaking, bodies are stacked in these structures instead of buried in individual plots...a much better use of sparse land I think

New teleferico (cable car) being constructed by Evo to connect El Alto with La Paz

Some traditional Bolivian dishes:

Fricase is a stew with meat, potatoes, and onions

Thimpu is a spicy stew cooked with vegetables

Sajta is rice, potato, chuno (freeze dried potato), tomatoes and onions

Falso conejo ("false rabbit") is essentially very thin beef but gets its named because it resembles cooked rabbit; served with rice and chili peppers

Aji de lengua is spicy beef tongue stew

People going crazy over this dog with sun glasses while we all waited for the Pepino (clown, not cucumber, who is actually the "king of the local carnival") to emerge at the cemetery to celebrate the start of Carnaval