My Third Day In Tupiza, Bolivia

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May 31st, 2007 | By admin | Category: Travel Journal

My routine in Tupiza has become something like this: wake up in the morning, have breakfast, wander around the town a little, meet up with Lili (who is staying in her aunt’s house), have lunch in her aunt’s house (where I get to try out typical Bolivian food), rest for a while and watch tv, walk around Tupiza as the sun sets looking for interesting things to photograph, then back to Lili’s aunt’s house for a light dinner, coffee, more resting and watching tv until it’s time to come back to my room at the Valle Hermosa hostal.

This afternoon we walked to a neighbourhood called Remedios. There’s a pedestrian bridge that crosses the dried up river bed next to the town, and on the other side is Remedios. We followed the main street until we reached the church. There were some kids playing soccer in front of the church and when they saw me with my camera they immediately wanted their photo taken. When I showed them the results on the camera screen they went wild. Some of them even followed us back up the street and posed again. I’ve since realised that Bolivian kids love having their photos taken.

We walked a little more through the streets of Remedios. There was a stark difference to the main town of Tupiza. The streets were unpaved and very dusty. Most of the houses were simple adobe constructions. The people and the neighbourhood looked very poor. It also had a magical quality, the light of the setting sun bathed everything in a red glow, the dusty streets, the adobe houses, and the red mountains that rose up high behind everything.

Bolivia is a poor country and there are many people here that live on less than $US100 a month. In Remedios, I felt for the first time since arriving in Bolivia that I was in a world that belonged to someone else and I was no way part of. I didn’t feel unsafe, but I was seeing the reality of third world poverty, and I realised that I had very little in common with the people who live here.