La Paz

The city of La Paz is dizzying. Literally. At just over 12,000 feet (3,660 meters), La Paz is known as the highest capital city in the world. Just walking uphill in La Paz is enough to make even the fittest athlete breath heavily.

If the altitude doesn't take your breath away, the sprawling city teeming with people surely will.

Buildings cling to the canyon walls and spill into the valley below. On a clear day, you can glimpse snowy Mount Illimani (21,000 feet) looming in the distance. From the Chulita women – wearing the traditional bowler hats, long braids, and flowing skirts, to business professionals dressed in business suits – you will find people from all walks of life crowding the streets.

You could say La Paz was our “base camp” while in Bolivia. We returned to this metropolis between a trip to the jungle and an excursion to the salt flats. In total, we spent nearly a week and a half in La Paz and got to know the city well.

Walking Tour

During our travels in South America, we have gone on several free walking tours. It has been an amazing way to see cities and learn about the history, culture and people. We heard rave reviews about the walking tour in La Paz, and were not disappointed.

A couple highlights of the tour:

San Pedro Prison: The meeting point of the tour is in a plaza right outside of the prison. After hearing other travelers talk about Marching Powder, an account of one man’s time spent in this bizarre prison, I started reading it for myself. Although I knew most of what the tour guides were saying already from my reading, it was pretty incredible seeing the prison firsthand.

Apparently you aren't supposed to take photos of San Pedro Prison because it will be assumed you are helping the prisoners find an escape route. This isn't the best picture, but I didn't want to risk being thrown in jail myself!

Some facts (just because this place is so INTERESTING!):

1. The prison was built with a capacity of 250 prisoners, but currently there are more than 2,000 inmates and family members residing there.

2. Yes, you read that last bullet point correctly. Prisoners are allowed to have family members live with them – provided they pay.

3. And yes, weirdly enough, prisoners pay for their jail cells. This means that if you are a rich person (ie. big time drug dealer or corrupt politician) you can live luxuriously while serving a sentence. Some “cells” come equipped with private bathrooms, full kitchens and even Jacuzzis. Then there are the poor inmates who aren't able to pay. They sleep on concrete floors and are crammed into a cell with several other convicts.

4. Since everything in the jail revolves around money, the inmates all have jobs ranging from restaurant owner (yes, there are restaurants inside the prison), to artist (their wives sell their handicrafts outside the prison gates), to tour guide… which leads me to my next point…

5. Up until a few years ago, people used to be able to pay for a tour of the prison. If they paid extra, they were even allowed to stay overnight. Because who wouldn't want to spend the night inside a third world prison? For several years, the prison was actually listed as the top tourist attraction in La Paz. 

6. And the last, but possibly most bizarre fact: the tours were strictly forbidden after foreigners were found to be taking cocaine with the inmates. How do they get drugs inside the prison? The purest cocaine in Bolivia is actually produced within the walls of San Pedro Prison. Our tour guides even pointed out a hole in the roof, out of which bags of cocaine are thrown to dealers on the outside. The police turn their heads, of course, because they get a cut of the money.

This just skims the surface of this bizarre place known as San Pedro Prison. Want to know more? Read Marching Powder – seriously, fascinating stuff.

Anyway, this was just the first stop on our tour, and we soon found out there is so much more to La Paz than the infamous penitentiary.

Other tour highlights:

The markets in La Paz were the most fascinating I have seen in all my travels.  For a city with a population of more than 2 million people, there are only 20 supermarkets.

I think there are close to 20 supermarkets in a 5 mile radius of where I grew up.

The people of La Paz get the majority of their food from the open markets – one of which stretches an incredible 46 blocks!

Juice in a bag from the market.

Another remarkable site was the famed Witch Market. Here you can buy dried llama fetuses and love potions. Spooky!

My favorite of the potions was called "follow me, follow me powder". Blow some onto the back of of the person you are eyeing, and they will fall in love with you. Immediately. Though, I wouldn't be quick to travel home from Bolivia with a pouch of unidentified white powder in my backpack.

El Alto

After our tour, we met up with some friends we met earlier on our travels. Together we took a cable car to the top of the valley overlooking La Paz. The cable car system is brand new to the city and was being offered free of charge – so as you can image, the line was quite long.

The Dutch boys made a friend!

Once we reached the top of the canyon, we were met with incredible views of the city below, but that wasn't the best part. Above La Paz lies El Alto – a metropolis home to South America’s largest market, and almost no tourism.

This orange juice was the BEST!

We walked through the market stalls, drank orange juice squeezed before our eyes for 30 cents, and ate lunch alongside the locals. And the whole time, we didn't see one other white face. Something of a rarity in most Latin American cities.

They are too tall for everything!

La Paz Cemetery

After exploring El Alto, we took a collectivo (a taxi van for multiple passengers) back into the city for our last adventure of the day. We stopped at the famous La Paz Cemetery, known for its endless rows of crypts – some four stories tall!

Valley de la Luna

Another interesting site lies just outside of downtown La Paz. With two other friends, we hailed a taxi and rode 40 minutes to the outskirts of the city.

Valle de la Luna, or Valley of the Moon, is said to be named after Neil Armstrong visited and said it reminded him of walking on the moon.

Now, I've never walked on the moon, so I can’t speak to the accuracy of its name… But I will tell you, this place was definitely out of this world.

More photos around La Paz:

It doesn't look like much, but this spicy, cheese-filled pastry was delicious. We went back to that shop at least four times...

A random clown parade

A Dutch meal with our Dutch friends!

Our Journey to La Paz

See, even Bob Marley is even frustrated with transportation in South America.

Some things in South America just don’t work the way you’d think they should. Bus transport is one of them.

Despite having spent nearly three months in this continent, it is still surprising how some companies operate.

In Peru, our buses came equipped with comfortable seats, personal televisions, surprisingly tasty meals, and even BINGO games. We were riding in the lap of luxury by all standards.

The buses in Bolivia, however, are more or less the same as in Colombia and Ecuador, so we should have known what to expect.

After purchasing a last minute ticket to La Paz, we grabbed some food to go and waited inside the travel agency, as to not be late. We scarfed down our food so we would be ready when the bus arrived. Totally unnecessary.

More and more travelers started gathering, and as the departure time approached, we wondered where the bus was.

The local man running the small shop assured us it would be there in uno minuto. His baseball cap, adorned with a large dollar sign, should have been indicative of his priorities. But nevertheless, we all waited patiently.

After a half hour passed, people started to get angry. The shop owner started yelling and then just disappeared.

Another half hour went by and we all stayed in the same place, because well, the man had collected all our bus tickets, and he was the only one who knew we had already paid.

A pack of stray dogs kept us entertained while we waited for the bus we weren't sure was ever going to show up.

Finally, a bus approached with the dollar-sign-hat-wearing shop owner who ushered us aboard. Although this bus was much less luxurious than the picture on our ticket, we were grateful to be on a bus at all.

Our seats weren't locked in, so at the slightest crack in the road we were jerked forward and back. And at each speed bump I was sure the rickety bus would fall apart. But by some miracle, it all stayed intact.

Halfway through our journey, we had to disembark and get on a small boat in order to cross the lake. The bus itself was taken by ferry to the other side where we met it. It was quite a site, seeing several tour buses being ferried to the other side.

That is our bus getting ferried across the lake.

Surely a bridge would be excessive…?

Finally, we made it into La Paz. A city of epic proportions and some notoriety.

La Paz is ENORMOUS!

During our bumpy bus ride, I decided to read up on the city. According to Lonely Planet¸ La Paz is a “city full of scams aimed at tourists”.

We arrived as the sun was setting, and I knew from my research that we should take a legit taxi – as robbery by cab drivers is not an uncommon occurrence.

After hailing what appeared to be a proper taxi we showed the driver the address of our hostel. He nodded and after a fifteen minute drive, he dropped us off of the street to which we had directed him. Only problem? Our hostel was nowhere in sight. Apparently we had the wrong address.

The sun had finally set, and I decided we couldn't just wander around the streets with all our belongings on our backs.

We popped into the nearest business which happened to be a five-star hotel.

If you ever need directions, go to a nice hotel. They were amazing. They let us use their wi-fi to find the correct address, then marked it on a map and called us a taxi.

The second taxi dropped us right in front of our hostel doors and I felt like it was too good to be true.

And it was.

Our hostel had somehow lost our reservation. So instead of the private room we had been looking forward to during our hectic day, we were placed in separate dorm rooms.

At least we made it though, and the next day we were promised the room we had booked originally. Things were looking up.

Lake Titicaca and Isla del Sol

After a night bus and early morning border crossing, we were seriously in need of some shut eye. In fact, our whole time in Peru had been early morning treks and late nights of partying. We hadn't truly slept in three days, and just keeping our eyes open was a challenge.

Just across the border of Bolivia is the small lake town of Copacabana. Its proximity to Isla del Sol – the island of the sun – makes it a popular stopping point for travelers.

As soon as we stepped foot off the bus, we bought ferry tickets to the island. The next ferry didn't leave until 1:30, so we had a few hours to kill. We grabbed breakfast, bought some snacks (and a couple bottles of cheap Bolivian wine), and wandered down to the lake front.

Waiting (not so patiently) for our ferry.

Finally at 1:30, we boarded the crowded ferry and got the last seats on the top deck. It was a bit windy, but I guess that helped us stay awake.

Our ferry driver was quite the multitasker. At one point, he was steering with his feet and eating his lunch, all while have a conversation on his phone.

Hailing from Minnesota – the land of 10,000 lakes – we wondered if Lake Titicaca would live up to our fellow travelers’ rave reviews.

 It is, in fact, quite an impressive lake.

For starters, at 12,507 feet (3,812 meters) it is the highest lake in the world that’s navigable by large boats (whatever that means…).

And it is massive.

It is no Lake Superior, but it is surrounded by the snow-capped Andes.

The boat ride lasted about an hour and a half, and when we docked, we were immediately surrounded by small boys telling us to follow them to their hotel.

They used basic English words to describe why we should follow them.

“Nice room, lady. Cheap. Hot water. Breakfast too.”

They certainly knew their "hotel lingo".

Usually we try to avoid these situations, but in our tired state, we followed a little boy named Oliver to a hotel we had read about in our Lonely Planet book (known affectionately as the “Backpacker’s Bible”).

Had we known that Oliver would lead us uphill for the next twenty minutes while we carried our increasingly heavy backpacks, we may have chosen to follow another little boy. After climbing up endless stairs during the Inca Trek, then up a mountain in the Colca Canyon, we vowed our hiking days were over for a bit.

Well, we were wrong.

So. Many. Steps.

I don't look nearly as tired as I felt.

Finally, we arrived to Inti Wasi Lodge, sweating, out of breath, and dizzy from the altitude, but nevertheless grateful to finally be there.

View from our room.

Our room had a stunning view of Titcaca and the surrounding mountains, but instead of enjoying it that first afternoon, we decided to take a nap. We shut our eyes at 2:30. At 6:00 that evening, we both stirred, but decided we were too tired to get dinner. We didn't wake up until 8:00 the next morning, 17 hours later.

We slept through lunch and dinner. If you know either of us, you know skipping meals is NOT typical behavior for either Ben or myself.

I guess we really needed to catch up on some sleep!

The next morning after breakfast – our first meal in almost 24 hours – we broke our “no more hiking” rule and made our way from the south end of the island to the north.

The walk itself was nowhere near as challenging as most of our other treks thus far, but we weren't disappointed by its beauty.

We made our way through traditional Bolivian villages and saw the locals going about their daily lives. The view of the lake and mountains all around us was breathtaking. After being around other tourists for so long, it was refreshing to run into only a few other foreigners along the way.

Ben, testing out the temperature of the lake. Waaaay to chilly to swim in!

Although the two and a half hour hike was not difficult, when we reached the north end of the island we opted to take a ferry back to the other side of the island instead of retracing our steps. Lucky for us, we made it just in time for the last ferry of the day.

During the ferry ride, we noticed that despite applying sunscreen we were both burnt. Maybe we should have put on a second layer? It is the Island of the Sun, after all!

After a lunch of the famed Titicaca trout, we went back to our hotel, where we spent the afternoon taking in the incredible view, playing cards, and drinking wine, of course.