Semana Santa

What Canadians know as the Easter long weekend, Bolivians know as Semana Santa; It is three days of family, religion, food and fun. I was lucky enough to travel to La Paz with my family for the weekend to visit my host dads brothers and sisters. Although there were no Easter eggs nor turkey, it was still a very nice Easter filled with new Bolivian traditions. On friday we all went out and visited 7 churches in the morning, it is tradition to do this but the only catcher is that you must go from Church to church by feet...no cars or taxi's aloud. This wouldnt have been such a big deal if we hadnt been in La Paz, with the super steep hills and the altitude, it was quite a challenge. Saturday I was introduced to another tradition, the seven course lunch. We had the ENTIRE family (more than 40 people) get together for lunch and we ate seven different courses, each course represented something and was accompanied by a prayer, it was also considered rude if you didnt eat/try  one of the courses so it is safe to say that we were all VERY full by the end of lunch. Sunday started off with us attending church and then going home where we removed  a special reef over the front door and replaced it with a new one. The reef is replaced every year on easter sunday as a sign of respect for Jesus's sacrifice and it is said that with the reef in your house, the entire family will be looked after for the whole year.

La Paz is not in fact the capital of Bolivia like many people believe, it is where the government is but it is actually Sucre that is the Capital. La Paz is essentially a bowl, the city part and the down town are in the bottom part but all the houses and other parts climb up the mountains that surround the city. Being in the city is beautiful with all the mountains and the way that houses look but the altitude kills! It is so hard to breathe and you get super tired really easily,to top it all off though, all the streets are hills and in order to get anywhere you either have to hike or pay ridiculous amounts for a taxi!
Being in La Paz made me see that although it is super nice there, I am so lucky to live in Santa Cruz, the weather is always nice, there are no killer hills nor altitude problems, you can walk anywhere, it is not as dangerous and it is way less expensive to live there. La Paz, because there are so many mountains, you have to go around the mountains and it takes you a solid half hour to get anywhere, the taxis are more expensive and there are hardly any buses anywhere, as oppose to Santa Cruz where you can actually get a taxi anywhere in like 10 min and the buses seem to go everywhere!
While I was in the City I got to do some shopping, sight seeing, met some more of my family, learned to play poker and got a nice break from the Santa Cruz heat, I also got to spend some quality time with my host family! All in all it was an amazing Easter long weekend.