La Paz's airport is in the altiplano above the city
through customs, the official asked for a form on foreign currency which I had not been given on the plane. He handed me the form and directed me to a small table. I took a deep breathe at the unexpected inconvenience—not as easy as it sounds at 13,300 feet, the altitude of La Paz’s airport—and reached into my front breast pocket to find that my Pilot pen had exploded. This, I later learned, was a common occurrence when pens, whose innards are filled with ink and air from a lower altitude, are taken to high altitudes.
La Paz is a city in three dimensions. As we drive from the airport to my hotel in the city center at 1 am, the city lights spread out in nearly all directions: above you, below you to the right, and far away and below. All of these lights sit on separate swiveling planes, none of which are horizontal. As day broke the next day under the crystal Andean sky, the far slopes marking the edge of the city becomes visible. Below the ridges, I observe repetitive rectilinear buildings, tiny in the distance, all built of the same dark red brick, housing the city’s lowest income residents at the highest altitudes. The cityscape is in deep chiaroscuro as the light carves sharp shadows along the building edges.
The streets in the center are pleasantly sloped and crooked, bordered by small businesses in undistinguished colonial buildings. Along the sidewalks, indigenous women walked about their daily business, oddly unaware of the tiny bowler hat cocked to one side of their head. My first
A snow capped peak is visible from La Paz
honest reaction to this sight was to giggle internally at what first appears to be a bizarre take-off on Laurel and Hardy, then to wonder about the practicality: how does this tiny hat not get blown off by the wind? These people, I later learned, are Bolivia’s Aymara-speaking indigenous. They speak a language that not only sounds nothing like Spanish, but nothing like Quechua either, the language of Bolivia’s other major indigenous group, sounding most like, to an American’s ear, some difficult Asian language. In a few instants, Evo Morales’ take on the world becomes a little clearer. Bolivia, or at least La Paz, is a unique Andean place and its colonial history, which sits conveniently in history books in much of Latin America, is fresh and unresolved.
In my first business meetings the next day, I am faced with minor rebuffs and frustrations. At sea level, this would make me excited and seek some sort of whip-cracking response to get things back on track. Here you must take it a bit slower: I breathe in and out, my mind turning the situation over, but too winded to react. I maintain my calm, out of necessity, and the situation passes of its own absurdness. As my trip proceeds, I am continually aware of my breathing, I take it slower, I speak less, or more strategically at least. I let more things go. The business trip rights itself and I find myself wondering if I need to put myself in a La Paz state of mind when I return to sea level.
