The biggest market in the world

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I woke up feeling much better this morning after a fairy solid nights sleep on the bottom bunk. The shortness of breath and elevated heart rate seemed to have disappeared overnight, but I was still rather careful when I got up. I felt a lot fresher after I showered, and when I returned to the dorm there were more people moving in. Harrison and Tim had just arrived from the South of Bolivia, and like me were spending Christmas in La Paz. We started chatting and it turned out that they lived just down the road from where I had been staying with Carmen and Lee in Australia. I couldn't help but think what a coincidence it was to run into people from where I had called home for six months. Needless to say, we hit it off straight away and kept chatting and exchanging stories as we headed up to the bar for breakfast.

Like me, the boys hadn't planned to do anything specific today, but we were all keen to take on what the guide books called 'The Worlds Most Dangerous Road'. We decided that we'd hang around the hostel until the tour desk was open and book the excursion before heading out into the city.

Whilst we were chatting, Harrison produced a small bag and began chewing the leaves that were inside. Curious, I asked what the leaves were and Harrison told me it was Coca. I had heard that porters and guides used the Coca leaves to give them energy when scaling mountains, and read that they helped with altitude sickness but this was the first I had seen of them in South America. Harrison offered me some and always keen to experience something new, I took a pinch and began crewing. The leaves were dried, and tasted very sour as I began chew. It wasn't a pleasant taste at all, and I could only imagine that this was how grazing animals felt when eating straw. Amazingly though, I began to feel a lot better and was full of beans for the day ahead.

Once we'd booked the trip to the 'Death Road', we walked down to the San Francisco Cathedral, one of the cities major tourist attractions. It was an ornately carved red stone building with huge wooden doors and typical Spanish style bell towers. Inside, the alter piece was as tall as the building itself, carved out of wood and covered in gold leaf. The cathedral had the same somber, peaceful feeling that many of the other churches and cathedrals I'd visited had given me, with the piped choral music playing throughout the building. Each side of the cathedral had small alcove style chapels, dedicated to a saint or doctor of the church. Sadly the peaceful feeling was short-lived, as the boys wanted to investigate the nearby Witches Market'.

I think it's safe to say that the three of us expected a dark salubrious alleyway, filled with wiry haired old women selling all manor of concoctions and remedies. Sadly all we found when we arrived was a few streets filled with shops selling tourist souvenirs and the occasional mini market. Although we found a couple of shops selling dried llama foetuses, San Pedro cactus and all sorts of leaves we left a little underwhelmed by what we had seen and decided to try and find the biggest market in the world.

Whilst in Salta, I had got chatting to a French guy who was staying at the hostel and he had told me about a market he had visited in La Paz, which was allegedly the largest in the world. Keen to check it out, as well as finding something to eat, we hailed a taxi in hope of getting to our goal. Speaking the most Spanish of all of us, Tim asked the taxi driver if he knew about a large market in the city. Unsure of his exact answer, our driver told Tim that there was a large market at El Alto, and that perhaps this was the one we were looking for. Willing to give it a go, we left the city and began to climb an all too familiar hill. I soon realised that we were headed towards the airport, along the same road I had come down to get to the hostel last night. The return journey was much slower, snaking our way up the mountain side, choking in the fumes of the buses and trucks that chugged slowly up in front of us.

As we hit the heavy traffic in El Alto we all began to get very bored of sitting in an almost stationary taxi, so decided to take our chances and walk from here. Having paid the driver, we were soon walking down a small side street lined with stalls selling everything from clothes to toys. We were all ravenous, so decides to stop at the first street food stall we came across. Now pleasantly reliant on someone elses Spanish, Tim asked what was on offer. Keen to try anything due to the fact we were all so hungry, we were all handed a bowl of rice, vegetables and chicken for just $b 7 (£0.65). It was wonderful to have met two kindred spirits, who were both as keen as me to eat what the locals ate and save money on food.

Sadly the saving money was short lived, as we stopped to sample almost everything we saw, as we meandered through the streets of the market. Perhaps the most interesting though was chicken neck. Deep-fried in oil and entirely boneless, it reminded me of eating chunky pork scratchings with a hint of chicken. It was the first time I'd been able to find street food since leaving Southeast Asia, and it was wonderful to be trying new things at a fraction of the cost of the tourist food! As we ate, we wandered through the vast and sprawling market the just got bigger and bigger at each turn. We wondered past rows of stalls selling everything you could possibly need for you kitchen into a section with nothing but secondhand car parts. The further we got, we began to joke about the fact that if we found a chassis we could actually build ourselves a car to complete our trip!

Having bought a couple of souvenirs and had our fill of aimless wandering we decided it was time to head back to the city centre. This was easier said than done however, as we had been walking through the market for almost four hours. We picked a road and agreed that if we continued down it, we'd end up back on the main road eventually. As much as our theory was bang on, it still took another hour before we emerged from the market, having passed streets filled with hardware stalls and other selling clothes. We were massively relieved to have found our way out, but our next challenge was cracking the bus back to central La Paz.

After asking almost anyone that would give us the time of day, we eventually found a bus that was headed down the hill. It was a bit of a fight to get on, as everyone tried to jostle for position to get a seat on what looked like an already full bus. Thankfully all three of us managed to push our way on and the minivan, complete with conductor, was soon speeding down the hill into La Paz. It was a strange experience, as the conductor would poke his head out intermittently and shout out where the bus was headed, so as to get a full load, before pulling over randomly to let people on and off.

Once back at the hostel, I settled in to watch a movie in the TV room as I felt exhausted from having walked so far. Although my breathing was relatively normal, I had a massive headache which I could only attribute to the altitude sickness. Wanting to be on top form for tomorrow I retired to bed with a couple of paracetamols, hoping I'd be better in the morning.

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