Sat Nam from the very highlands of La Paz!

I landed here Saturday midday, and the moment my feet hit the pavement outside of the airplane, it felt like someone was sitting on my chest! With all of the pranayama, I still could feel the pressure and lack of oxygen! This is not something to be toyed with for sure!  Slowly walking into the airport, I took time to look around and try to focus on what was around me. It is breathtaking in every way! When you land in La Paz, you actually land above the city on an enormous Altiplano, literally another city built above La Paz. The altitude here I believe is something like 13,313 feet, it is HIGH.

La Paz from above

The runways have to be extra long for take off and landing!  The sun was so bright, the sky so blue and the air so crisp, it was stunning.  The drive down from the airport is like something out of a movie, as we traverse through some pretty rough areas, zigzagging our way around children, dogs, venders and cars, and of course hundreds of people.

Here we are (Rosse Mary, my dear spiritual and cultural guide)perched on the side of the road with the entire city behind us!

La Paz sits in a crater like area surrounded by the Andean peaks. The lower you go in the city, the nicer the areas are. Homes are clinging to the sides of the mountains all the way around the city! A long boulevard stretches mostly through the city, which Rosse Mary and I walked the other day, amongst thousands of busy people!

Sunday, my first full day, after a night of wicked headaches from altitude, I went into the city and found my way to Sagarnaga Street, the Witches Market and a nice cafe!

Witches Market

With some help from Diane, who owns the Artesania Sorata store,(thanks Laura Resnick for the tip!) I took a taxi to another area Sopocachi and found a cafe for lunch and people watching! There are SO many people here! Following that, another taxi and back to hotel for rest!

Monday Rosse Mary and I went all over the city and met with her friend who is the head of the archeological department of the museum for Tiwanaku which is housed in a magnificent old house that used to be owned by an Austrian who came here in the 1900′s and is the reason Tiwanaku is preserved at all today! On the house you might be able to see reproductions of the reliefs from the authentic ruins!

Tiwanaku Museo in La Paz

These ancient and very important ruins date back 10,000 years and hold some of the most important relics and information from the ancient peoples. This house/museum is literally covered inside and out with reliefs depicting the ones found in Tiwanaku.  We saw the government house, and yes, Morales was there, the feelings here are very mixed, but they seem more strong that his time is done.

I am staying out in the Zona Sur, the southern zone, which is where the beautiful yoga studio Casa Luna is, where I was happily blessed to be this morning having Kundalini Yoga with Dharma Kaur Khalsa!!! It was amazing, and she created the most blissful class ever! I wished savasana could have gone on forever! We all had tea and cookies afterwards, I thought of our times and missed you all so much as I listened as everyone eagerly chatting in spanish and munching cookies and drinking tea. I could pick up some words, but I do struggle a lot to understand!!! Dharma and I met for lunch later after we took a microbus towards her home and I jumped out to walk around for a while.

Today was very special as Rosse Mary and I went out to Tiwanaku and spent the whole day exploring the ruins. She is very knowledgeable and explained to me the significance of the site.  In a nutshell, this enormous site sits on a very flat area surrounded by the mountains, and it lines up with the constellations, the solstices and the equinoxes.  The largest part of the site is an enormous pyramid, that goes down not up and it is still mostly covered in earth.  They have been able to unearth a bit of it, like the four outermost corners to gain an understanding of its size. It is huge!  I feel like it was buried on purpose by the early builders because there is something pretty amazing under there and they wanted to keep it secret. That theory is shared by some of the archeologists I found out later!  The larger exposed ruin is here in a photo, I am standing on a hill and it is behind me.

These ruins are very important because they hold a great deal of the symbology that we see in cultures that came after these were built.  Unfortunately, a lot of the stones over the years have been ransacked and hauled away and used in construction of other buildings until it was realized the value of the ruins! There is much mystery too surrounding the original construction, like, how did these stones, which are not native to this area, get here? They are huge and weigh tons! Reminds me of the mysteries surrounding Machu Picchu!  I think it is pretty evident that there is a lot more going on than we might understand!

Walking in this sacred site, meditating, lying down on the rocks, and feeling the energy is overwhelming. There is a deep quiet here and it does feel otherworldly.  Of all that we can see, only 7% of the site is excavated right now! We have much left to learn.

Sun Gate

We head to Lago Titicaca Friday, more to come, and thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts! I have been writing back to you all individually, if you don’t see my post on line.  I am so happy to hear from you, and to be in touch!  It is a long way out here, and this week has been very intense, even emotional for me as I experience all of this!

Miss you all and love,

Denise