Night and Day

La Paz is a city that sleeps.  Except for Saturday and Sunday and major holidays, the city drifts off after 11pm and doesn’t wake up again until 7:30 the next morning.  Between these hours the normally bustling streets are completely deserted.  An early morning airport run allows you to see this side of the town.  The main street from the wealthy, residential southern zone to downtown is closed to traffic during the wee hours of the morning, before the sun rises, to keep the President safe while he sleeps.  Driving through the empty boulevards you pass the occasional night guard, whistling to announce his presence to the probable thief or vandal, as he walks around the same square block in a perpetual circuit.  A guard outside of the bank is asleep at his post.  Dogs dig through trash left earlier in the day and awaiting tomorrow’s pickup.  A drunkard stumbles down the sidewalk, uncertain of where he is going and oblivious as to where he has been.  A lone taxi passes, surely headed to pick up another airport-goer.  The driver sleepy and reluctant but happy for the work.  Farther down in a plaza, three teenagers are drinking, avoiding their inevitable homecoming and their parents’ reactions to their inebriated state.  Nearby, a middle-aged man has fallen asleep on the sidewalk, no pillow for his head.  It is difficult to distinguish if he is homeless or intoxicated, but it matters little.  The state of the city at this hour makes me feel lonely and sad.

As the sun starts to brighten the horizon, cholitas start to make their way out onto the highway, their backs bent over under heavy packs as they wait for the first buses to take them to the other side of town where they sell fruit and clean the homes of those more fortunate.  The city is shrouded in clouds, as it is every morning—a side effect of being over 12,000 feet above sea level.  As the fog lifts and the sun peaks over the top of Illimani (the 21,000-foot, snow-covered peak that looks over and protects the city of Nuestra Señora de La Paz), two million urban residents begin to stretch and rub their eyes.  Showers are rushed, coffee is made, shoes tied, and the homes empty out into the streets and plazas.  Men dressed in their work suits step over the trash strewn onto the sidewalk by the dogs, the drunk still sleeping on the ground.  The teenagers from the plaza the night before put on zebra costumes and stand at the crosswalks, trying to remind the people what the painted lines on the road are there for.  The sidewalks fill with men selling watches and games, women with babies tied to their backs offering laundry services, fruits and phone cards, beggars playing accordions or with empty hands outstretched.  The streets fill with buses, women hanging out the back window shouting the names of neighborhoods that mark their routes: “Obrajes, Calacoto, San Miguel, Achumani, Obrajes, Achumani, Achumani, Las Lomas” or “Plaza del Estudiante, Seis de Agosto, Sopocachi, Plaza Avaroa, Sopocachi, Plaza España.”  Their shrill chants are unintelligible to the untrained ear.  Car horns sound and police whistles are blown to reinforce stoplights.  In the middle of the chaos and confusion, there appears to be some sort of logic and order.  The city gives off an intense energy in the light of day, in comparison to its eerie nighttime vibe.

During the day, the city is a living, breathing organism, but at night, the giant sleeps.