There's no way a city like La Paz should be where La Paz is. Squeezed into a gully, red-brick houses tumble down steep slopes, and seem to dangle precariously, half-way between heaven and earth. It's topsy-turvy crazy, with the poor people living on the canyon's lip at 4,000m; ('El Alto' literally means 'the high place'); the city centre about 500m lower, (referred to as 'la hoyada' or the hole, by residents of El Alto) and the richest living 500m lower still, in the desert-like environs of 'Zona Sur'. The buildings may be ugly, but the location is spectacular, and the city is a constant eye-popping joy and strangely photographic. At street level La Paz is frenetic, congested, and dirty. Roads full of traffic, horns blaring, smoke belching. Chunky, brightly painted, old Bluebird school-buses career up and
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