La Paz

Rodrigo meets me off my flight from Uyuni to La Paz. He is dapper, with a straw trilby and speaks English, French, German and Spanish fluently. I’m expecting to have a quiet day, with a chance to catch up and rest. However, Rodrigo informs me that I’m touring the city today, as there’s a national protest against President Evo Morales’ proposed fourth term called for tomorrow and all the main roads will be blocked. Rodrigo is more philosophical about Morales than Oswaldo. Yes, he’s gone a little crazy, but he’s done so many good things. The country is much more prosperous and homogenous. And Morales doesn’t mind if people criticise him. Rodrigo says that Bolivia has the world record for presidential coups, 120 of them. There were three presidents in one day in the early twentieth century.

La Paz - in a Nutshell

• La Paz is arguably the capital of Bolivia – the government is located here, but Sucre is the constitutional capital.
• La Paz, The City in the Sky, is also arguably the highest capital city in the world (if it is the capital). Lhasa is 58 metres higher, but Tibet is an ‘autonomous’ region of China.
• Whatever, it’s scenically situated in a steep-sided bowl-shaped canyon on the edge of the Altiplano, with elevations ranging drastically from 3,200 to 4,100 metres above sea level. It is lined with a sprawl of adobe and red-brick buildings and framed by more white tipped mountains. A massive metro area of over two million residents when combined with the neighbouring plateau city of El Alto.
• La Paz has the world’s longest and highest urban cable car system, which acts as the main public transit network and connects the downtown area to the high-altitude sister city of El Alto.
• The city was founded, in 1548, by Spanish conquistadors under the name Nuestra Señora de La Paz (Our Lady of Peace). The name was changed officially to La Paz de Ayacucho, in 1825, to commemorate the decisive republican victory over the Spanish army in the war of independence. but the city's indigenous Aymara name is Chuquiago Marka (Gold Farm Village).
• The city also hosts unique cultural spectacles where indigenous Aymara women wearing traditional layered skirts, bowler hats, and shawls engage in theatrical, high-flying wrestling matches.
• The downtown area contains the infamous San Pedro Prison, which is known globally for its unconventional, self-governed societal structure where inmates live with their families, elect their own leaders, and purchase their own cells.

Exploring La Paz

La Paz is hardly recognizable from the city I visited 18 years ago. The City in the Sky is still a jumble of buildings sprawling scenically across a great canyon, ringed by the snow-capped Andes, and the traffic is still awful. But it’s clean and organised and there are modern buildings spinning up everywhere. Nothing like the dirty ramshackle streets I remember. And some genius has solved the pedestrian transport problem by building a colour coded metro system of cable cars, interlinking and whizzing up and down the valleys. The skyline is dominated by Mount Illimani, a massive, snow-capped three-peaked volcano which towers over the city at 6,438 metres.

The historic centre is focused around Plaza Murillo and Calle Jaén, a preserved eighteenth-century cobblestone street lined with pastel coloured, restored colonial buildings and local museums, most notably the Ethnography Museum.

Then, the Plaza Murillo, the historic, political, and cultural heart of La Paz. Named in honour of independence hero Pedro Domingo Murillo, this bustling public space is defined by towering bronze monuments, manicured trees, and thousands of resident pigeons. The square is flanked by the country’s most important institutional buildings, including the neoclassical Government Palace (historically known as the Palacio Quemado), the modern concrete tower of the Bolivian Parliament (the Plurinational Legislative Assembly) and the towering Metropolitan Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace - a structure built ingeniously into a steep hillside, so its front entrance sits a full 12 metres higher than its back base. The government buildings are guarded by grave soldiers in scarlet uniforms.

Just off the corner of the plaza stands the Casa Grande del Pueblo, a controversial 29-story modern skyscraper infused with indigenous Aymara and Quechua motifs, which opened in 2018, to replace the historic Palacio Quemado as the official presidential palace and seat of executive power.

The Plaza is really lively, a cross-section of Bolivian life sitting on the steps chatting, or in the case of the younger generation, chasing the pigeons. It is also, I have read, a frequent focal point for national political demonstrations, military parades, and civic gatherings. It’s fascinating to see how European dress has become the norm here. Many of the city ladies don skirts with layered petticoats, topped with blouses and woolly cardigans. Atop are bowler hats worn jauntily askew. They adopted the hat wearing habit from the railway workers of the 1930s. Oswaldo takes me into a shop to explain and compels me to try the look. It's not my finest hour.

The Witches' Market

The famous Witches' Market is a fascinating (and creepy) hotch-potch of weird items: spell boxes, amulets, lotions and potions, aphrodisiacs, snakes, dried frogs, turtles, feathers, dried llama foetuses and armadillos. Presiding over this hocus pocus are the indigenous Aymara .ladies of La Paz in their scarves and bowler hats. Also wandering the labyrinth of stalls are the distinctively woolly capped Yatiri or witch doctors, who can solve your health problems and tell your fortune.

This area is unrecognisable since my last visit, having been substantially upgraded from the chaotically basic. There are now lines of neat booths, packed with jars, teas, coca leaves, idols of varying sizes, and heaps of lurid coloured rocks. These face (incongruously) a row of football gear shops. In many cases medicament stock has expanded to include souvenirs, as well as items from all continents, such as joss sticks and Chinese lucky cats, to cover all bets. There’s even a brand-new gallery. Not everything has changed though. You can still have a consultation with a shaman or witch or choose from a pungent smelling assortment of herbs and powders and most of the shops still have llama foetuses dangling from the ceiling (essential for the foundations of new buildings) .

My hotel is, conveniently, just around the corner. Llama steak for supper.

Around La Paz

Tiwanaku

Last time I was here, with Elaine, (coming from Peru) we decided to opt out of the cycle ride down the deadliest road in the world, but other excursions were on offer. I met an archaeologist, in a bar, so on his recommendation, we embarked on a half-day tour to the Tiwanaku Archaeological Site, where he was excavating.

The Tiwanaku civilization was a powerful pre-Inca empire flourishing from roughly 200 CE to 1000 CE. At its peak it supported up to 40,000 people. Sophisticated high-altitude farming techniques involving irrigation, extended its cultural and religious influence across parts of modern-day Bolivia, Peru, and Chile, leading to domination of the southern Andes. Ironically, severe drought led to its collapse. They vanished, centuries before the arrival of the Incas.

The architectural remains showcase an extraordinary mastery of engineering, where multi-ton blocks of sandstone and volcanic rock were fitted together with interlocking joints and copper staples. In the central ceremonial zone, the vast Kalasasaya courtyard houses the centrepiece Gate of the Sun, a monolithic stone archway covered in intricate cosmological carvings and the Semi-Subterranean Temple where dozens of unique stone heads protrude from the sunken walls.

The site also includes the Akapana pyramid, a massive seven-tiered stepped structure which served as the city's religious core, and the nearby Puma Punku complex, that contains shattered, interlocking H-shaped blocks. This is some of the most sophisticated stone-cutting precision in the pre-Columbian Americas. Much of the work is still underway and we have to peer at these wonders through barbed wire.

Moon Valley

And a return visit, this time with Rodrigo, to Moon Valley. Valle de la Luna is about 10 kilometres south of downtown La Paz. Here, erosion has worn away the mountainous clay to leave as series of tall pinnacles. There are two walks through the park, with a small amount of scrambling over bridges and boardwalks. The spires are close knit and tower overhead. It's a little reminiscent of Bryce Canyon in the USA , but it's an inferior and smaller version. The mineral content is said to create a variety of hues, but today most of them are literally, plain beige. And sadly, it doesn't compare well with the Chilean version, I've just seen either. But I don't feel too bad writing this - as I've raved about so much of this Bolivian journey.

We then  zip back across town on the green and yellow cable car lines. Here there’s a great view of the new and old, teetering on the cliff tops.

Room 101

My ‘boutique’ hotel is in a traditional converted house, with brick walls and gabled ceilings. I’m in Room 101, which is living up to its name. It faces out onto a central corridor, as does its only window. This is cloth covered and too dark during the day and too bright at night, especially as the passage light comes on every time someone walks past.

I’m not sure that my disturbed night entirely accounts for the racing heart, shivering and dizziness when I finally get up. I peek outside, at the riot police, grouped by the plaza, plastic shields raised. They were absolutely correct about the plaza being the place for demonstrations. But I have to go back to bed. Altitude sickness seems to have set in. The hotel, not missing a trick (well it is next to the witches’ market), has provided Diamox in the room, at two US dollars a pop. The chemist next door sells eight for 45 Boliviano (about £5). And I’m also throwing caution to the winds and adopting driver Wilson’s approach to coca leaves (handfuls at a time).

I can hear chanting and a few firecrackers outside, but nothing that suggests a revolution is taking place.

Bexit

I’ve had an unwelcome message from Rodrigo. We have to leave earlier than planned, at 5 a.m., in case the roads are still difficult. In the event, we have a very smooth passage and I’m at the airport with plenty of time to sit in the café. I’m still not feeling great. And the plane doesn’t take off until three passengers have volunteered (suitably bribed) to disembark and fly tomorrow. Otherwise, we’re overweight and the plane won’t be able to get over the mountains. I’m carefully not making eye contact with the airline officials. Back to Santiago.