AFAR Magazine

AFAR chooses a destination at random—by literally spinning a globe—and sends David Farley on a spontaneous journey to Bolivia.

God seemed everywhere in La Paz. Many gods, actually. I had just been plopped into this Bolivian metropolis, set in a canyon nearly 12,000 feet up in the Andes Mountains. The city’s crammed-together dwellings blanketed the entire concave landscape, from the base to the vertigo-inducing rim. Near my hotel, a few blocks uphill from the baroque-mestizo church known as Iglesia de San Francisco, shops overflowed with bright-colored Andean backpacks and ponchos marketed to tourists. Next to them stood stalls displaying an entire archeology of pre-Columbian spiritual talismans: amulets of animal deities; jars of magical herbs; dried llama fetuses in various states of development. One of the nearly ubiquitous cholitas in a bowler hat told me these last were for luck—“suerte,” she said, switching to Spanish from the indigenous Aymara. I decided to try my luck with a bag of coca leaves, the chewing of which is said to help alleviate altitude sickness. Then I headed back to my hotel, where the devastating effects of my new oxygen-starved environment would make me swear someone had performed black magic on me.

The next morning, my lungs still desperately gasping for air, I met with a nomadic old friend from my expatriate days in Prague. Scotty, a native of Scotland, was eager to show me the city where he had finally settled. He led me to the Feria de Alasitas, an annual festival celebrating the god Ekeko, a deity of abundance. As Scotty explained, the festival emphasizes material wealth. Locals purchase miniature versions, alasitas, of their wishes for the coming year—tiny houses, cars, passports, dollar and euro bills, babies, pigs, llamas, college diplomas, and even diminutive packages of snack foods— and then have them blessed by a yatiri, an Aymara shaman, conveniently located on the fairgrounds. As we wandered the narrow lanes flanked with booths, I considered buying an alasita, but I couldn’t figure out what I desired. I live in a nice apartment, I’ve earned two university degrees, and I have no need (or space) for a farm animal.

I hadn’t made a decision when we spilled out onto a wide promenade. “¡Hola!” someone yelled in our direction. A dozen or so mostly portly (and mostly female) Bolivians sitting on plastic beer crates next to the curb waved us over. Someone deposited a plastic cup in my hand. Space was cleared on the curb for me, my body snuggled between the woman with a mullet and the woman with the gold teeth (not an uncommon fashion here, I would learn).

But just as I was about to take a sip, one of the women grabbed my wrist. “No, like this,” she said, spilling some beer on the well-spattered pavement. I was told this was an offering to the earth goddess, Pachamama, an obligatory ritual performed before partaking of any alcoholic beverage.

I suddenly remembered a warning from a guidebook at my hotel: “Whatever you do, don’t get caught up drinking with Bolivians.” It sounded ominous, and the rest of the paragraph explained why: The people of this South American country can be voracious and, apparently, aggressive drinkers. Trying to slip out after a beer or two is an exercise in futility.