La Paz and the Bolivian Altiplano - a summary (Part 2 of North Chile etc)!

This post is Part 2 of our summary of our travels in North Chile and the Chilean and Bolivian Altiplano. This one focuses on La Paz in Bolivia, a true Altiplano city at around 3660m above sea level. We spent a fantastic few days in and around La Paz, taking in the city itself, the neighbouring El Alto, some of the Bolivian Altiplano, the ancient ruins of Tiwanaka, and saw the awesome Cholitas Wrestling!

While Santiago de Chile (viewed from west to east) has buildings trying to creep up the mountain on one side, La Paz sits surrounded by mountains in a bowl within the Andean Altiplano - with buildings clinging to the mountain side all the way round.

I'd like to make a withdrawal

The indigenous people of Northern Chile, Southern Peru, and Bolivia are the Aymara. There are around 3 million Aymara, most living in Bolivia. La Paz has a large Aymara population though the majority live in El Alto (more on this below). The most visible Aymarans are the women, who spend their days selling produce in the various markets in La Paz. They are truly iconic figures, sporting two long plaits, colourful skirts, dufflebags and shawls, topped off with felt bowler hats - a style of hat picked up from the British and still considered the height of fashion in these parts. 

While La Paz itself sits in a deep bowl, over the past 15 or so years many Aymara have moved to the poorer suburbs of La Paz, particularly up on the "rim" of the bowl, onto the Altiplano surrounding the lower city. These suburbs have become known as El Alto (the Higher or Upper (City)), now the de facto capital of the Aymaran world. Much of the immigration to El Alto comes from the Bolivian mining region around Potosi, a Spanish colonial city in the south of Bolivia which became in the late 1600's one of the wealthiest and largest cities in the world, due to vast silver reserves found in the region. A huge portion of the indigenous population was put to work mining silver and then later tin there by the colonists. Today various ores are still mined there, but it is far from wealthy, and declining foreign and government investment has partly caused a continuing exodus from the Potosi region to El Alto.

While to a large extent El Alto is still a huge construction site, it appears, at least to an outsider, to represent Bolivian President Evo Morales' drive to give poorer indigenous people power to control their own lives, by eradicating slums and providing proper housing.

ongoing construction high above La Paz

El Alto has thriving markets and a very vibrant population.

Some things stay the same though, generally speaking the police don't bother with El Alto, so the locals have to take matters into their own hands. One day we came across the rather alarming mannequin below on the way back down into La Paz. This means: this is what will happen to you if you go thieving in El Alto. You have been warned!

eeek!

Then again, this kind of thing happened in London not so long ago.

another El Alto security measure

Now, back to lighter things...

In Bolivia (and Chile) there are many, many more species of potato than you can shake a stick at, including these strange white ones. All of them available in the markets in La Paz and El Alto. 

Bolivian coca-cola

Before we leave El Alto, we have to mention the wrestling. Every Sunday, at a sports centre in El Alto they have Nacho Libre style wrestling - including women wrestlers ("Cholitas"). So, very briefly, front row seats for Cholitas Wrestling! It was so much fun we'll do a fuller post later.

wahey!

into the crowd!

Grrr!

the women go at it

things get out of hand

Crazy cats. Anyway, back down to La Paz. Bolivia, along with Northern Chile (and we suspect Peru), is the land of the chicken in terms of food. It's generally spit-roasted chicken, and unspeakable parts of cows.  However the Bolivians also do a fine llama steak, excellent salmon from Lake Titicaca, and have their own kind of empanada - a saltena, a nice and spicy tucked, rather than folded, empanada.

...and awesome salad bars

no Nescafe here (alright there probably is some Nescafe)

Struan and his coffee

Saltenas

Struan with a saltena

the best phone booth ever - you use it to call the police you see

speaking of the police, why are they always...

...standing around in groups chatting?

Calle Sagarnaga is the location of La Paz's Witches' Market, where Aymaran women sell all sorts of lucky charms, "herbal remedies", and dried llama foetuses - which are buried in the ground as a sacrifice to Mother Earth (more on her in another post).

llama foetuses

beware the traffic in La Paz

lovely green bus - nice traffic

La Paz and its Beetles

Below are some small super-colourful street markets. The Aymaran women running the stalls are "middlemen", buying the produce from the Altiplano farmers, and bringing it down to the city to sell it.

One thing about La Paz, which might be obvious from the brooding skies, and wet floors, in some of our photos, is that (particularly at this time of year, summer) it rains - hard.

a river in the road - we got wet

We took a daytrip out of the city to visit the archaeological site at Tiwanaku near Lake Titicaca. As we mentioned in our previous post, the Tiwanakan Empire was a PanAndean Empire which dominated the Altiplano long before the Incas. As you can see from the photos we had quite incredible weather for the day. More on Tiwanaku in a future post! 

standing stones

the moon gate in the Temple of the Earth

people and standing stones on the Temple of the Sky

looking towards the town near the site

Apart from seeing some fab archaeology the trip also gave us the chance to see some of the rural Bolivian Altiplano.

heading out of La Paz/ El Alto

brooding Altiplano sky

little farm

back into El Alto - concrete pillars silhouetted against the mountains

A truly spectacular city! To end with, here's some views looking down onto the city at dusk. In our next post, Part 3, we'll be completing the loop by heading back to the coast of North Chile, but this time to Iquique - Chile's premier beach resort and a base from which to explore some more really interesting places in the desert. 

Chao!