La Paz
24th July to 3rd August
The best way to sum up La Paz: we originally booked 3 nights in our hostel here and ended up staying for 7…
Our bus arrived in La Paz about 11pm so we didn’t see much of it straight away. The next morning, though, we went for a walk and discovered that not only were we staying right in the centre, but there was a huge parade happening with magnificent, colourful costumes, music, dancing, and huge crowds of families, friends, couples, and all their pets coming to watch and be part of the celebrations. At one point the parade walked (danced) straight out onto the main road, and rather surprisingly - given the tendency for horns from drivers we’ve seen so far - all the cars just stopped patiently and waited and watched the parade go past. It was a brilliant introduction to an amazing city.
All we really knew about La Paz before getting here is that it’s the highest capital city in the world. It turns out La Paz is the administrative capital but not the actual capital (Sucre is) - but it is bloody high! La Paz is on, and in, and surrounded by mountains, some of them snow-capped, and it makes for a gorgeous view from everywhere. In the daytime it’s dusty pink, and in the nighttime you just see glittering lights up and down as far as the eyes can see. It’s like a carpet of diamonds.
La Paz is alive. The roads are crazy and there are people everywhere, selling things, and buying things, and shouting things, and performing things. Thanks to the Witches’ Market where god-knows-what is burning - this is where you buy strange and some disgusting ingredients I won’t mention here for potions - and all the different little food stalls, each street smells different. On half the streets in the area we were in there’s so much bunting (or umbrellas or guitars!) strung side to side between the buildings it feels like there’s a ceiling. You can’t walk down these roads without seeing people trying to get that perfect shot for the ‘gram whilst being honked at by a car trying to drive past!
The best views of La Paz are from the most excellent cable cars: just another form of public transport here rather than a tourist attraction, with almost as many different lines and stops as the London Underground. It costs just pennies to ride up from the centre of La Paz to El Alto (an even higher suburb) and take in quite how expansive the city is. From the sky you can really see how the city takes the shape of the mountains, with buildings and roads nestled in the slopes and peaks. It’s beautiful.
After staying in more or less the cheapest places we could find in Peru we decided to splash out on a “boutique” hostel here and I’m so happy we did. For the first time in what feels forever, our room is warm and it’s been such a luxury to just hang out without wearing thermals and coats inside. So we took full advantage of this and spent our first few days here doing absolutely nothing except chilling out and meandering the streets. And eating endless delicious food!
On that note it’s worth mentioning a superb little restaurant that’s been one of my favourite meals of the year, let alone our trip. Only open 12pm to 230pm during the week (and you have no chance of getting on the list unless you arrive before 12pm), Popular Cocina Bolivia takes traditional dishes and ingredients and creates the most beautiful, fresh, and delicious plates of food. They only do a 3 course menu (for just 79BOB which is £9.50!), with just 2 or 3 dishes to choose from for each course, and rotate their menu every Monday. It was deeeeeeeelicious.
A couple of days into our stay here we bumped into new friends Jade and Clarisse who we’d met in our hostel in Cusco, and the day after that we saw Aimee in a coffee shop, who we met on the bus all the way back in Paracas at the beginning of our trip - it turns out all roads lead to La Paz!
After a few days of hanging out locally, we ventured further afield. Together with Jade and Clarisse we did a high altitude climb of 5435m [Jeremy edit: Another new altitude record for me!] and then a tour of the Moon Valley (so called because Neil Armstrong visited and said it looked like the moon).
After this we forgot all common sense and spent a day mountain biking down Death Road… followed by the highest, fastest, and longest zip ride in Bolivia. Death Road is so called because of the number of deaths over the years, as a narrow, winding, rocky track (I wouldn’t call it a “road”) with up to 1km drops with no guardrails down the side. It was closed to most cars many years ago and a new, tarmac road was built to replace it so it’s a tourist attraction now, with traffic consisting of organised mountain bike tours like ours. Definitely one of the scariest things I’ve ever done but a bucket list item I didn’t know I had and a proud achievement for both of us - especially Jeremy who fell off towards the beginning [J: off the bike, not the cliff] and got a bloody elbow and hands, but somehow had the courage [J: /stubbornness] to get straight back on and cycle the rest of it!
[More photos coming when we get them back from the company running the tour]
Today we spent the day in the “English pub” where we had a couple of lovely Bolivian beers and watched the football (Euros final) with all the other Brits in Bolivia (surprisingly few!). Very sweetly the staff then gave everyone in the pub a free shot to celebrate the fact IT’S COME HOME!
I write this as we wait for our next overnight bus of the trip - down to Uyuni to see the salt flats….
