As promised – Tourism Toys!

As I mentioned in a comment below, part of the on-going bicentennial celebrations here include kids’ meal toys at Pollos Copacabana celebrating various “touristic” places around La Paz. Notable is that the “tourists” are little pollitos (the chain’s mascot) and therefore should probably be read as paceños, not foreign tourists. This is important [...]

Voting ends today for Lake Titicaca as one of “New Seven Natural Wonders of the World.”

The campaign to have Lake Titicaca listed as one of the New Seven Natural Wonders of the World is coming to a close.  I’ve written about this here before.  The Bolivian government is taking this campaign very seriously.  Various Bolivian officials (including the Prefect of the Department of La Paz and the Viceminister of Tourism) [...]

La Paz

Some brief thoughts in no particular order:
1. La Paz looks good – lots of construction, new public bathrooms, etc. It is great to be back. Most of the old favorites (cafes, restaurants, etc) are still here and doing well.
2. As Miguel said over at *Pronto, La Paz seems [...]

Travels with Toddler

Despite the awful treatment we received by the AA CS reps, the flights were relatively uneventful even with an active and curious 17 month old. Flight attendants on both the ORD-MIA and MIA-VVI trips smiled and waved at Javi, told us to please ask for more juice, snacks, etc if we needed anything for [...]

Psss, wanna read a dissertation on tourism at Tiwanaku?

I have finished my dissertation, entitled, “Touristic Narratives and Historical Networks: Politics and Authority in Tiwanaku, Bolivia” (Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Ph.D. 2009).  It will soon be available on ProQuest, but if you want the 3.5 MB PDF with COLOR PHOTOS (oooo!  ahhh!) send me an email or leave a comment here with [...]