“What time do you think it is?” The sun breaking through the curtains stained the room in pale light
“The sun’s out and there are noises from the streets. It’s definitely past 5am!”
“I’m going to check…”
Downstairs, the clock showed 10minutes to 7am. It was 10minutes to the time of departure for our bus to Arica.
“Excuse me. Why did you not wake us up at 5am?” We had a request for a wake up call. And do you know what time it is now? Our bus leaves at 7am this morning. There is no way we’ll make it!”
“Huh? Oh? No. No. No here”
“What do you mean not here? We wrote it ourselves last night to the girl here. Anyway, point is we’re not going to make it. So we have to stay here another night.” And after a good 15minutes of ranting…
“Excuse us! So sorry! You stay free. Taxi also free to terminal. So sorry!”
And thus with the gesture in kind (which we were truly impressed with), we spent another day in La Paz, dashing to change our travel plans, buy new tickets and further explore the steep streets. We went back to the Witches Market filled with a strange assortment of items; dried llama fetuses, armadillos, roots, herbs, carvings and colourful gifts for the Gods. Themostly elderly women selling the wares were also Aymaras: Witch Doctors who peer with their beady eyes from wrinkly leather faces to read the destiny spelled out by the coca leaves.
“Miss. Come come! For love and money this”
“Love and money?”
“Si. Love and money. This good amulet for you”
“Love and money? Who can argue with that?! Sure, I’ll have one!”
We continued on in the afternoon to the black market and purchased a few ‘legal’ goods and in the night, went back to the pizzeria for the 3rd night in a row.
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