Pisagua is empty

Pisagua is the steepest street in La Paz. Okay that’s not a fact. But, it is true that taxis cannot get up it and that when we walk it, we zig-zag back and forth to make it less steep and thus our hindquarters less sore tomorrow. It’s like downhill skiing in reverse. As for the taxis, which also try the zig-zag method, I finally got sick of paying them and still having to climb the two steepest blocks anyway. I now advise, “Look brother, you ain’t getting up Pisagua, can we please take another street up and then turn down Pisagua instead?”

Pisagua is not my normal stomping ground; truth be told I don’t go that far “up”. It only yesterday occurred to me that property values increase, as you get deeper into La Paz’s valley. It then occurred to me that I don’t really leave the valley when I’m in the city.

But climbing, I feel, is an excellent ascetic sacrifice. My yoga studio in DC has what I affectionately call “the stairs of enlightenment”. I loved going to classes there, but you had to go up two very steep flights of very narrow stairs in a very old townhouse to get to class. I thought of it as a “sweating it out”, “leaving all else behind” exercise to both focus and humble me before practice. Equally discomforting, my Aymara teacher lives up a big hill too. It doesn’t hold a candle to Pisagua, but it takes a good 15minutes of high-altitude puffing before you arrive. But again, a small price to pay for a joyful visit with a wise old man.

So what made me trek Pisagua, the steepest street in La Paz, sometimes twice a day for the last 4 months? Simply put: a Frenchwoman who smokes more than she speaks and a buffed up Peruvian who keeps me in stitches. The latter first had the apartment and then past it to the former when he left. Now they’re both gone. A reunion is in the works. But until then...

Where will I climb? To whom will I devote my ascent?