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From Uyuni in Bolivia I took an overnight bus to La Paz - the capital city. The first half of the journey was extremely bumpy due to the bad condition of the road - despite travelling on the best bus I could find. La Paz is the highest capital city in the world at nearly 4000m and is set in a great location surrounded by big snow-capped mountains. My first impression of the city was that it seemed to be quite similar in terms of craziness to some of the places I'd visited in south-east Asia with the ridiculously busy streets and the honking of the vehicles. Near where I was staying in the centre of the city, there were lots of narrow streets and passageways that were full of rows and rows of market stalls selling all kinds of stuff. The markets are there every day of the week and are usually busy trading from before dawn until very late in the evening. One of the strangest sections of the market is the witches' market where all sorts of interesting objects and ingredients are sold that are then used for various religious or superstitious purposes. At most of the stalls
Dried llama fetus anyone?
People bury these under their houses to bring them good luck. in the witches' market they sell dried llama fetuses which are meant to be buried under the foundations of a new house before it's built to bring good luck. I read somewhere that apparently 99% of the houses in Bolivia have one of the fetuses buried below it. Also, at the markets you see a lot of Bolivian women in their traditional dress which usually involves a bright, multicoloured outfit and then a hat that is almost like a bowler hat - actually you see a lot of people dressed like this throughout the whole of Bolivia and not just La Paz.
Another noticeable feature of La Paz is the number of buses that you see driving around and blocking up every single section of road. The first type that you see are the big, brightly coloured ones that are the more "official" looking of the two. The second type are basically little minivans that drive around with people shouting destinations out of the window. There are literally thousands of these minivans driving around everywhere and it's complete chaos when you get to a busy section of street and there's a massive group of them congregated. Despite the craziness
of the city, it didn't feel particularly unsafe although it does have a bad reputation for pickpockets, especially in the market areas. I think the biggest danger is the risk that you might have a heart attack walking up the very steep streets - an altitude of nearly 4000m means that walking up even the smallest of hills feels like trying to run whilst holding your breath due to the thin air.
It turned out that the British couple that were in my jeep whilst on the salt flat trip were staying in the same hotel as me in La Paz. One afternoon we thought it'd be a good idea to share the cost of hiring a taxi for a few hours and drive to several of the viewpoints around the city. We got some fantastic views of the streets below and the surrounding mountains and there was no sign of the smog that plagued the air in Santiago. The cemetery turned out to be another interesting place to visit as, rather than the usual rows of gravestones that you normally see in most cemeteries, there are long multi-story streets of small boxes containing the ashes of the people.
The cemetery
Little boxes containing the ashes are stacked on top of each other in long rows. Some of the rows went on for hundreds of metres and there was a huge maze of these passageways covering a very big area.
La Paz was a really interesting and exciting place to visit - I think it's definitely one of the best cities I've been to. As you'd expect of a capital city, there were also a lot of great cafes and restaurants to eat at and Bolivia is so ridiculously cheap that it wasn't uncommon to find a decent three course meal for just a couple of pounds - it was so cheap that I was always felt guilty about how much I was getting for my money and left them a massive tip that was almost the same as the price of the meal. I used La Paz as a base to visit other areas of Bolivia from and actually ended up returning to the city on two other occasions during the trip - it's a great city.
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