Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
La Paz, the highest major city in the world, actually sits in a valley surrounded by snow capped mountains and big cliffs. We arrived fairly late in the evening to one of the fanciest hotels we have stayed in on this trip, a little away from the city centre in the fancy Sopocachi district. They had a cheap room cause it had no windows, but it was still lovely!
We met the owner over the amazing breakfast buffet, a guy from the US now living here with his Bolivian wife and son. He was a lovely guy, really helpful and extremely talkative. They also had a travel agent type guy lurking around who helped us organise a walking tour of the city for the day. We had hoped to do the free walking tour, but they had just been shut down by other pesky tour operators, so we were forced to pay for a tour.
We met our guide Jorge in Plaza España near the hotel. First stop was the Mirador Monticulo, with views over the city plus an area dedicated to people who lost their lives during the dictatorship. We then enjoyed a Salteña, a typical Bolivian meat filled pastry that is enjoyed as a mid morning snack. Jorge showed us the correct way to eat it, biting off one end and sucking out the juices before eating the rest.
We took a local bus from there to town. These buses were straight from the 50's and have likely not had any work done on them since. Our disembarkation point was in the plaza outside San Francisco Church. Here we found a crowd of people wishing luck to a Bolivian Dakar Quad entrant, who was flanked by some Miss Bolivia's or some such beauty queens.
Leading uphill from here is the main touristy street of La Paz. It's filled with shops selling knitwear and other souvenirs. We walked up until we hit a market area. Jorge warned us not to take photos here without permission as the ladies are notorious for spitting or throwing things at those who do. We tried some local fruits and bread.
We then arrived in the Witches Market area, a very strange sight indeed! Our first impressions of these shops was the dried llama foetuses of various sizes and at various stages of development hanging in the doorways. What the hell is this place?
Inside one of the shops we were given an explanation of all the bizarre and wonderful knick-knacks surrounding us. The llama foetuses are used as an offering to the goddess Pachamama when building a house, but also for ceremonies usually held by families in August to ask the gods for what you want.
Something that resembles a platter is prepared with the llama, offerings of sweets, and objects to represent what you are asking for (health, a new car, anything really) is ceremoniously burned. The shops also contain talismans of different animals with different meanings. We bought some Condors which represent safe travels.
Next stop was Mercado Lanza, a huge market complex where we had some delicious fresh juice, then Plaza Murillo, filled with pigeons like all good plazas. It is surrounded by some beautiful old buildings including the Presidential Palace, Congress Building and Cathedral and is the site of various political battles. It also contains one of the most important buildings of the modern world. A dilapidated old place that is said to be where the syrup originally used to make Coca Cola was invented, made originally from Coca of course.
Calle Jaen was a nice little stop, a narrow well preserved colonial cobblestone street which boasts a few of La Paz's best museums (and our guides favourite drinking hole), before we made our way to El Alto using the red line of La Paz's shiny new cable car network. El Alto is a second city on the cliff tops above La Paz with 1 million inhabitants, about the same as La Paz city.
As the cable car reached the top of the cliffs Jorge pointed out a car that was wedged in a crevasse just below the cliff top. Apparently a few years prior, the car with 8 drunk passengers had driven off the cliff and found itself squeezed vertically in the narrow gap. Surprisingly 6 of the 8 survived!
Seemingly at least 50% of the population of El Alto runs some kind of street side market stall, or if there is no space on the side of the street they just set up shop in the middle of it. We didn't take any photos of the chaos as this wasn't the safest area. We can't imagine what it's like on an actual market day!
There were hundreds of stalls, most were closed at the time, which Jorge said were Shaman offering ceremonial services to the public. Jorge explained that to become a Shaman, one had to survive a lightening strike. He seemed offended by our scepticism that so many people had actually survived lightening strikes in El Alto alone.
We returned to La Paz via the yellow cable car line back to Sopacachi and our hotel after about 6 or 7 hours of walking and eating our way around La Paz. It wasn't a free tour but it was good value!
The next day we set off to find the infamous San Pedro prison. This prison sits on one side of the San Pedro Plaza and takes up a block. It's enclosed within big stone walls, with the main entrance being a set of doors on the plaza side.
The prison was built to house a few hundred inmates, but currently holds around 1,500 plus their families. Inside is a community within itself, where prisoners have to buy or rent their "cells" in one of about 5 different sectors of different standards. People run shops and restaurants inside, families and visitors can come and go, and apparently the best quality cocaine in Bolivia comes from inside the prison.
A few years back tourists could do tours of the prison, which was started by a British detainee, but this is no longer possible. The book Marching Powder tells his story if anyone wants to know more. It's a completely ludicrous place.
Having read this book we were interested to at least see the outside of the prison since you can no longer tour the inside. Though we kind of expected it we were still really disappointed to find nothing but 4 big boring walls and a surprisingly penetrable looking entrance with a line of people waiting to go in, mostly wives of inmates it seemed, who were perhaps returning from buying groceries, taking the kids to school or some otherwise completely normal errand.
We continued from here to the Centro area and booed ourselves in for The Death Road the next day, got some coffee, wandered the tourist shops and the like before returning to the hotel. Our hotel had a rather fancy French restaurant attached, and we decided to treat ourselves to a meal there. We would be riding the Death Road the next day so we wanted to make our last meal a good one!
LAPFWT
- comments