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After surviving the World´s most dangerous road unscathed, I decided to visit one of La Paz´s more alternative tourist destinations; San Pedro prison. What makes this prison different is that although the prisoners are locked in, they run the workings of the prison and pay rent for their cells (more like rooms as they seem quite comfortable and prisoners can come and go as they please). One prisoner, who apparently made a lot of money inside by giving legal advice to other prisoners, owns a three story cell with cable TV, internet and a kitchen. Most of the prisoners in the "secure area" are in for drug smuggling, almost all of whom are foreign. They buy the security of this area in renting their rooms off the guards, who apparently make twice as much through the prisoners as they do from their wages. After our tour we talked to a very friendly Portuguese prisoner who took pictures of our visit to put on the prison´s blog. There seemed to be very little animosity between the prisoners and the whole place felt more like a holiday camp than a prison. How this is supposed to deter the prisoners from commiting more crimes is left to be wondered.
The most dangerous moment of La Paz turned out to be the Bolivian wrestling. It had everything you could possible want from wrestling: Men in strange costumes, traditionally dressed chollita women and a midgit. Although I didn´t get dragged up into the ring, which happened to one luckless visitor, I did have a man in a cat costume chucked at me. The whole thing was completly hillarious and finished off a very strange and memorable week in the highest capital city in the World (not just because of it´s altitude, I found out also)
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