Simón Bolívar

Tuesday 19th April 1988

I got up and found a note on my door from Karin Brann, the Swedish girl, and David Moss, a New Zealander. I went to see them in room 6. I went out to try and find a laundry with David but the nearby one given in the South American Handbook 1988 was not there anymore and we could only find Dry Cleaners.

We had breakfast consisting of chicken pasties and coffee in a small place before returning to the hotel. I washed some underpants and socks in the sink and then went out to investigate the market area with Karin.

There were a lot of people and video cameras, plus a huge Policia presence, in the Plaza Murillo where a big crane was replacing the bells in the tower of the huge cathedral. Murillo Square is located in the centre of the city of La Paz, it became the centre of political power in Bolivia after the transfer of the Executive Power to La Paz as a result of the Federal War of 1899.

This space was conceived 10 years after the foundation of the City of Our Lady of La Paz, on 20th October 1548, that is, in 1558 by order of the corregidor Ignacio de Aranda.

This square was designed on the other side of the Choqueyapu River far removed from the main square in Churubamba where Alonso de Mendoza founded the city. The design obeyed the ordinance of the Spanish cities delineated in the form of a checkerboard, with symmetrical, rectangular blocks of equal dimensions.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Plaza Mayor of La Paz was the epicenter of the power of the city and the main stage of public life. Around it were located the buildings of the main institutions, the Cabildo de La Paz was located in the southeast corner (in what is now the Government Palace), the Main Church in the west corner (current cathedral), the Royal Boxes in front of the Cabildo (today the Prefecture), while the Barracks was on the north sidewalk (today the Café París).

The residences of the most notable neighbours were also in this Square, such as the imposing Palace located on the corner of Comercio and Socabaya streets, built in 1775 as the home of D. Francisco Tadeo Diez de Medina. Later known as The Palace of the Counts of Arana and current National Museum of Art. Prominent citizens, merchants and important owners had shops and houses in the immediate vicinity.

We crossed the main avenue at the junction of Mariscal Santa Cruz and 16 de Julio, it’s central reservation dotted with statues, including the obligatory Simón Bolívar. This was fair enough as El Libertador, or Liberator of America, was a Venezuelan military and political leader who led what are currently the countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Bolivia to independence from the Spanish Empire.

We found an expensive touristy market by the plaza in front of the Basilica de San Francisco. The Minor Basilica of San Francisco in the city of La Paz, Bolivia, is a Catholic temple under the invocation of San Francisco de Asís. It is located in the city centre. It is part of the conventual complex that gives its name to the adjacent Plaza Mayor de San Francisco. It was built between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries in the so-called mestizo baroque style. The Franciscan convent is the oldest registered religious house in the city, appearing in 1547, before its foundation in 1548.

We continued up the hill on the other side of the main drag and entered an extensive area of street market stalls selling toiletries, nylon bags, imitation American clothing and all manner of plastic goods. There was also a small witchcraft market where half a dozen old indigenous Indian women sold mysterious coloured powders and dried plant and animal parts.

At 14:30 hrs. we went back to the Hotel Rosario, disenchanted with La Paz market. Here we met Bill Robertson from Scotland and Pen from New Zealand, the two older men that I’d previously met on the boat to Taquile Island on Lake Titicaca.

Together we all walked down to Club Andino Boliviano to find out about skiing at Chacaltaya, the highest ski piste in the world at 5,375m (17,634 feet) metres above sea level. There was a transport strike on in La Paz so it took a while to sort out how we were going to get there.

We sat in the Club’s Board Room while the Club Secretary phoned around. We eventually agreed on paying 20 Bolivianos each for a Toyota without seats plus 28 Bolivianos each for ski hire and petrol for the drag lift. We would leave tomorrow at 08:00 hrs.

We then went out shopping for tomorrow’s day out on the piste, trying in vain to find a supermarket. There was a huge procession with glum music on the main avenue. The base of a golden floral display seemed to be a coffin. If it was a funeral, it must have been for somebody famous.

On the way back I found the well-camouflaged Post Office and bought some postcards and stamps. That evening I went to see “The Living Daylights”, the last James Bond film with the new Bond. The Living Daylights is a 1987 British spy film, the fifteenth entry in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, and the first of two to star Timothy Dalton as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond.

Directed by John Glen, the film's title is taken from Ian Fleming's short story "The Living Daylights", the plot of which also forms the basis of the first act of the film. It was the last film to use the title of an Ian Fleming story until the 2006 instalment Casino Royale. Excellent escapism.

Surprisingly there were only a few other people in the cinema. Most of the La Pazians were queuing for the many liquidation sales along Jiron Junin pedestrian precinct. I had Chinese rice with chicken and a beer in the Catay Restaurant before going back for an early night at 22:00 hrs.