La Paz. It’s amazing how an expectation of a city can shape your experience. We were pleasantly surprised by the city of La Paz when we spent two days here. 

A Piece of La Paz

“Go to the witches market, ride the teleferico and wander the city,” suggested a local in Copacabana about what to do in La Paz. This as a good summary as any we’d heard about visiting the city. At best. At worst, people screwed up their noses and described it as dirty, crowded and nasty. Not exactly a glowing recommendation but we felt we should at least give it a chance.

Arriving by bus from Lake Titicaca, the flat antiplano suddenly gives way into a deep canyon of the Amazon Basin, filled to the brim with thousands of tiny buildings crammed together climbing up the slopes in every direction. On the far side of the bowl sits the snow-capped mountain Illimani. Welcome to La Paz. We descend down into the belly of the canyon, first in wide sweeping switchbacks and then via disturbingly steep narrow streets. The airbrakes of the coach huff and puff as we go straight down, down down.

A view of La Paz from El Alto

Pachamama: Mother Earth

People often talk about how the indigenous practices have been melded together with the Incan and colonial ones in South America. Nowhere in our travels does this seem more evident than in old town La Paz.

Across South America, and particularly in these central areas, the concept of Pachamama is a key part of the spiritual beliefs and practices. Pachamama, roughly translated as Mother Nature or Mother Earth, is important to the indigenous people as they believe in giving back to the earth so that she will continue to provide. This is reflected in the motifs of plants and animals in spiritual ceremonies and buildings. This whole area of South America views Pachamama is important. We see it in the animals and plants decorating buildings and churches.

The Iglesia San Francisco, built in 1567, is the main church and meeting point in the old town of La Paz. It reminds us of a Hindu temple with the plant and animal motifs. Not your usual decoration for a Catholic Church.

Note the decidedly non-standard motifs on this Christian church

Behind the church is an area called the Witches Market. We last spoke of witches in Mendoza, when our wine tasting host told us about his grandfather’s visits to the local witch for guidance. These small shops sell a wide range of things, from dried herbs to packaged concoctions, to fix seemingly any ailment you have, or didn’t know you might have. Some are used to help bring good luck or ward off evil spirits.

It seems that interest is waning a little these days, and the lure of tourist dollars is stronger than traditional remedies. Many of the stores have been converted to musical instrument shops or souvenirs.

We have dinner in Sopacachi, which has a much more inner city neighbourhood feel than where we’re staying in San Sebastian. There are quite a few funky restaurants and cafés in this area; a good place to target if you do spend a few days here.

A Piece of La Paz: A Stroll Through the Streets

The next morning the sound of laughter and chatter floats up to our apartment. The streets around us are pedestrian-only and lined with stalls selling clothes, food, and souvenirs. People are scrubbing their stalls and getting ready for the day. At our doorstep a women fries onions and cooks meals all day for passing workers.

We head out to wander the area but quickly realize we need a wander strategy. The very first corner we turn left and see the street fall away from under us. Not only is La Paz one of the highest cities in the world, it looks like it’s also in the running for the steepest streets. At an altitude of between 3,200 and 4,100 metres, it’s not the highest place we’ve stayed, but it’s still up there. We try our best to follow the contour lines, but it’s inevitable that we are going up and down all day.

We make our way across the major road that cuts through the centre of La Paz (the Avenidad Mariscal Santa Cruz) and walk the streets on the eastern side, which is filled with colonial buildings in varying states of repair. We see everything from the beautifully restored to crumbling facades of peeling plaster and haphazard rocks and bricks within the walls.

Ethnography and Folklore Museum

The Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore (MUSEF) is tardis-like museum that seems to have a bit of everything: Weaving and textiles, masks worn for festivals and dances in different parts of the country, ceramics, money, food, birds (this part was closed) and, possibly most importantly, the best public toilets in the entire country. There are all sorts of fascinating nuggets of information in the museum; for example, did you know that there are 4000 varieties of quinoa and 1,500 varieties of potato in Bolivia alone?

The most rudimentary spinning wheel we’ve ever seen

We visit the Mamani Mamani Gallery on Jaen Street in the heart of old town. This Bolivian artist is one of the country’s most famous. His paintings draw heavily from his indigenous traditions, and have been displayed around the world. They are extremely distinctive and evocative. Worth a visit!

We come back across the highway to find the streets brimming with people walking through the stalls, picking up fresh bread for dinner and lining up for a minibus to take them home after work.

Touring La Paz by Teleferico

On this our final day here, we opt to go on a self-tour of the city, via its famous Teleférico system, for a bird’s eye view of this crazy city.

La Paz’ Mi Teleférico is more than just a bunch of gondola lifts like you’d see at a ski resort. The 10 lines that span the length and breadth of the city form the backbone of its public transportation system, relieving the choking congestion of the surface streets. Since the first lines were completed in 2014 (in planning since the 70s), the system has continued to expand and is now easily the largest of its type in the world.

We start at the Red line, which is a great intro as it starts at the old railway station and rises up rapidly to El Alto with the city laid out in front of you. (Well, technically behind you, depending on which way you’re sitting). La Paz is a pretty dense city, with houses that feel like they’re piled on top of one another. We rise over Chualluma, a community that’s revitalising through colourful murals on the walls, and a huge cemetery similar to Recoleta in Buenos Aires but nearly twice as large.

This incredibly steep rise to the top of the El Alto ridge is one of the primary issues that Mi Teleférico set out to solve. El Alto is the second-largest city in Bolivia, second only to Santa Cruz, and growing rapidly. Travel between La Paz and El Alto has always been challenging due to the 400m height differential between the two, with steep and congested winding roads the only connection between them.

We reach the top of the ridge and exit the Red line, but don’t venture past the markets at the top of the Teleférico. Instead we switch to the Silver Line, which takes us south along the ridge of El Alto. Below us the streets of El Alto are filled with market stalls for kilometres in both directions, fun to see from the air. We descend back down the ridge and at the end of the Silver Line we switch to the Yellow Line to take us across the southern end of La Paz.

As the Yellow Line makes its way east, we start to see some street trees and houses with backyards; usually a sign of a more affluent part of town. By the time we switch to the Green line, the Teleférico is sweeping mere metres above some of the swankiest houses we’ve seen in South America, let alone Bolivia. Methinks some homeowners here were less than happy when the cable car went in directly over their pools.

Valle de la Luna

The Green line ends in a very affluent suburb with BMWs and Audis driving around. We walk to Humboldt Square and take a minibus bound for Mallasa, and get off at the Valle de la Luna (The Valley of the Moon). We’d rather arbitrarily used the Valle de Luna as our ‘somewhere to go’ on our traverse of the city, and to be honest it’s a little underwhelming. The (I guess) lunar-like landscape within the park has a distinctly theme-park feel to it, and disappointingly comes fully equipped with safety rails around the entire path. Where’s the fun in that? Anyway we have a quick walk around, take a few photos, hold our breath a few times from the stench of rotting garbage, and then head out.

We flag a minibus and head back to the end of the Yellow Line (skipping the Green Line completely) and buzz back to our ‘hood on the Celeste Line. Pretty good! We only missed out on a few of the lines.

A Piece of La Paz: Final Thoughts

So would we recommend a visit to La Paz? It’s probably not a must-see or worth going out of your way. But if you’re in Bolivia and passing through, then yes a couple of days helps you see a different side of the country.

It’s a gritty city, not a pretty city. The old town feels a little like a grand old dame who’s let herself go a little. But, she hasn’t lost her charm.

La Paz In a Nutshell

We stayed in a small but nice Air BnB apartment in San Sebastien which meant that we had an escape from the hustle and bustle (read: cars and exhaust fumes) of the city proper. From here it’s an easy walk (ha! there are no easy walks) to some nice cafés as well as if you’re looking to do some souvenir shopping. (Go get yourself a No Prob-llama t-shirt).

Sopocachi seems like a nice little neighborhood with quite a few restaurants that looked interesting. We didn’t have a lot of time to explore them but the one we went to was nice…

Mi Teleférico

• The Teleférico is extremely inexpensive. It’s 3B for your first line and 2B’s for every line transfer you do. For our excursion we bought a four-line ticket (9Bs). It’s cash only at the ticket booth.
• I tried to get the app working on my phone but wasn’t able to.
• We’re not sure if you can go out and wander between lines (e.g. get off at the end of the Red Line, go to the markets for a few hours, then get back on the Yellow Line). If you want to do this, it might be safer to buy a ticket to where you want to get out at, and then buy another ticket when you’re ready to get back on.
• You can get a circular ticket if you’re just riding for fun and coming back to the same station. It’s 11Bs and it allows you to do the whole circular tour through 6 of its lines (orange, red, silver, yellow, light blue and white), finishing at the point where you started it.
• Mi Teleférico is very modern and possibly the cleanest public transport we’ve been on anywhere in the world. It feels very safe and there are cameras in every car as well as an emergency button. We were on during the day and not in peak hour. There was a steady stream of people but it wasn’t crowded. We had a max of 5 people in any car we were on and a couple of times it was just us.

We felt quite safe at all times in the city but we were careful.

Valle de la Luna – catch the minibus from Humboldt Square. It should cost 2Bs, tell the driver you want to go to Valle de Luna. People are very friendly and will likely point you in the right direction as you get out of the bus. It’s a 2 minute walk up the hill from the stop.

Other places we could have gone with extra time:

Plaza Metropolitano de Marillo – the old colonial central square with the Government Palace and the Cathedral.

There is a walking tour, but with the hills and Al’s difficulty keeping his breath we decided to go solo.

HB Bronze coffee bar which apparently is run by a guy trying to revitalize the old town. Great idea

El Sendero Que Te Llama – a play on words meaning ‘the path that calls you’, as well as an homage to the beloved llama. The members have created a shopping route on which ethical and Bolivian-made handcrafts can be found (a map is available on its Facebook page).

An interesting article on the textile market here