Mom's Homecoming

We recently spent over a week in La Paz, Bolivia with my mom. It was great that she was able to join us for this segment. She was born in Bolivia and lived there till she was 11. Except for a brief visit in the late sixties, she hasn't been back since. Her parents ended up there because that country was one of the few open to taking Jews during the Second World War. Back then, there were thousands of German Jews in La Paz and it was a tight knit community. Now there are less than 200 Jews left there and the number is dwindling. We had lunch with a couple of them and sure enough we discovered that their parents knew my grandparents. My mom even recognized a handful of the names. It was bittersweet.

Of course when my mom was in La Paz last, forty-five years ago, there were no skyscrapers and the city was much smaller. There were a few hundred thousand inhabitants then, and now there are close to two million. We found the house she grew up in (or at least what remains), her elementary school,and her aunt's apartment. We also found the graves of my ancestors. When we attended Shabbat services in the only synagogue, she chatted with some of the old timers and one remembered my Grandpa's clothing factory which he had sold when they left in the early fifties. Pretty amazing.

La Paz probably never stopped being the crazy, frenetic place that seems to function despite itself. There are vendors everywhere selling any random thing they could find cheap, "cholas" in their traditional dress interspersed with teens on smartphones, weaving between "collectivos" yelling their destinations. Adjoining the tourisry shops is the witches market where you can find various potions, talismans, and my fave: dried llama fetuses as an offerring to Pachamamma to make sure she is cool with you building your new house.

There is always so much going on. This moment captures it perfectly: we are standing in the main square when we hear really loud fireworks right near us (they go on through the night too and you never get used to them). We turnaround and see a rally of miners heading down the Prado (main drag) protesting their measly pensions. A minute later we hear music in front of the church as dozens of costumed performers gather to celebrate the saint of something or other. Just as we are trying to photograph these folks, we start noticing groups of people in full zebra costumes congregating. These zebras start appearing from all directions until there is a large group of them in front of us. I asked them what this was all about and they explained that the origin of the zebra costumes was to educate people about the importance of using crosswalks (and they still have a ways to go). They also try to teach pedestrians not to litter, cars not to run red lights, etc. Not sure how effective their campaigns have been,but people do seem to get a kick out of them. 

This is Mom making friends. 

This photo is me repelling down one of the hotels. Now if only our country wasn't the most litigious in the world with crazy insurance premiums, I'm sure this would take off back home too. 

The protests happen daily and they can really inconvenience everyone because they block off whole streets. Our taxis often had to find rather roundabout ways to get us where we were going. A jeweler we were speaking with counted 100days total last year that no one could get to his shop. Some protests are on an even larger. The whole city of Sucre was blocked of a few weeks back.

After La Paz and saying "bye" to Mom, we headed into the jungle, staying at an animal refuge for a few days. This was another highlight. This place takes in animals that have been trafficked and abused, many of whom are now free to roam about in this protected space. My favorites are always the monkeys,but there were a decent variety. Some beautiful Macaws hungout in front of our cabana, and we also got to see an ocelot, brown bear, a cayman, and turtles. The downside was all the bug bites. Those devious beasts were thorough and we were glad to return to our hotel afterwards. 

We are now in Cusco, Peru after enduring a 13hr bus ride with some very loud obnoxious Israelis and back to back episodes of Ice Road Truckers on the TV. I think the driver purposely chose the series called, "IRT: The Most Dangerous Roads -Andes". It wasn't the road we were on though. Apparently the producers plop these truckers down on sketchy roads all over the world and film them dealing with (obviously staged) challenging situations. I honestly have no idea why people watch this show.

Tomorrow we take the train to Machu Picchu. W e found Cuzco to be a strikingly beautiful city but I think that every pound of beauty seems to be matched by a pound of tourists. That's usually how it goes though.