During our stay in La Paz we took a short trip to Coroico to stay a night at an animal sanctuary. To get to Coroico we hopped on to a local minivan with about ten other people. One of those people was a tiny local lady with about five teeth.
The lady was wearing typical local dress - a blue floral apron over a red woollen jersey and a long green skirt, with a thick grey polarfleece blanket pinned around her shoulders and a brown woollen hat on her head. She had a 2.25 litre bottle of Coca-cola and a little plastic cup with her. Every ten minutes or so she got the man next to her to pour her some coke and she would sip away happily.
After about half an hour of her sipping away happily, we stopped in traffic. The lady leaned out of the window and motioned to one of the street vendors who were selling chicken, rice and potatoes in small plastic bags. (This is the Bolivian version of takeaway food - they just put anything in a plastic bag, including soup and cups of tea).
"Chicken!" she croaked at one of the vendors. He handed her a small bag, which she poked her nose into then all but threw back in his face. "I want wings!" she said. "Don't your chicken have wings?". He scurried away and came back a minute later with another bag, which she checked suspiciously and accepted.
She sat there for a bit, nibbling absently at her chicken. Soon she tucked the bag away at her feet, only to pull out a massive plastic bag full of coca leaves. (I swear, this woman had a picnic hidden under her skirt).
I offered her some peanuts in the hope that she would share her coca with me, but no such luck.
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