Arrival0% in

Mario Alvarez

The lower-town hotel quarter, Calle Illampu

Arrival

The schoolteacher arrives from the provinces and takes a room in a shabby hotel in the poor lower part of the city, and it becomes his base for the whole stranded stay. The district reads as the Illampu and Manco Kapac blocks, La Paz's long-standing warren of budget hotels near the markets and the old railway approach.

Opening chapters

inferredThe novel's Hotel California is fictional; it stands in the real rough lower quarter of cheap hostels around Calle Illampu and Manco Kapac, so this marks that hotel district rather than a single building.

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The lower city20% in

Mario Alvarez

The church of San Francisco

The lower city

The stone church of San Francisco and the crowded plaza in front of it mark the hinge between the old town and the market streets, the kind of public heart the stranded teacher crosses again and again on foot. The basilica was built in the eighteenth century and its tower finished at the end of the nineteenth.

Wanderings through the city

explicitThe colonial church of San Francisco and the plaza that carries its name are named landmarks of the novel's La Paz; coordinates are the basilica itself.

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Mario Alvarez

The Prado

The lower city

The Prado, the broad tree-lined boulevard laid along the old riverbed, is where the city shows its respectable face of cafes and shop windows, a world the drifting outsider watches from its edges. The avenue is the central artery of La Paz, running downhill as the Avenida 16 de Julio and on into the Avenida Mariscal Santa Cruz.

Wanderings through the city

explicitEl Prado, the Avenida 16 de Julio boulevard, is a named thoroughfare of the novel's La Paz; this marks a representative point along the promenade.

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Drift60% in

Mario Alvarez

A pool hall in the lower quarter

Drift

Killing time and money he does not have, the teacher sinks into the pool halls, bars and back-room games of the lower town, the loose economy of the stranded and the small-time. These billiard rooms cluster in the dense central blocks below the church, where the everyday city trades and gambles.

Middle chapters

inferredThe novel's pool hall is not a named or verifiable address; this marks a representative point among the billiard halls and cafes of the lower central streets below San Francisco.

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The upper city80% in

Mario Alvarez

Plaza Murillo

The upper city

Plaza Murillo is the political heart of Bolivia, ringed by the government palace, the legislature and the cathedral, an official grandeur that stands at a deliberate distance from the outsider's grubbier errands below. The square was laid out in the sixteenth-century grid of the city and renamed for a hanged independence leader.

Wanderings through the city

explicitPlaza Murillo, the seat of the Bolivian state, is a named square of the novel's La Paz; coordinates are the plaza itself.

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The visa100% in

Mario Alvarez

The United States embassy, Avenida Arce

The visa

Every scheme in the book bends toward the visa window, the guarded door where a stamp decides whether the teacher can reach his son in Miami. The United States embassy sits downhill on the Avenida Arce, and its queue is the real gate the whole story presses against.

The visa thread, throughout

explicitThe American embassy and its visa queue are the fixed goal of the plot; coordinates are the United States embassy on Avenida Arce.

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