Picture a basin, with the centre of the basin as the main centre of the city and thousands of brick coloured houses spiralling around the hills upwards towards the edge of the basin. And beyond those hills are views of snow capped mountains. That is La Paz…
It was never how I imagined it to be and I was amazed at how the city looked and how it had grown, and there is an interesting character and feel to the La Paz city.
Standing at 3,640m above sea level, it is filled with winding narrow roads, walkways and multiple up hill climbs. Due to the altitude, I was caught breathless a number of times just climbing a few steps of stairs. There are quite a fair bit of things to do and see within and outside of La Paz, that can easily keep one occupied for over a week.
Always bustling with activity, with both locals running around doing their day to day activity as well as tourists walking around the numerous shops selling souvenirs and alpacas, and possibly the odd sale of llama foetus.
Numerous markets are scattered around the city, and it was really interesting just walking around the rows and rows of shops, that seemed to be grouped by the type of merchandise they were selling e.g.. lighting, cutlery & crockery, clothing, shoes etc.
I didn’t encounter any problems while at the local market, but one of the guys from my death road cycling group apparently got thrown with something on the face as a form of distraction, while someone tried to pick something out from his pocket. Luckily the attempt failed and nothing was lost.
I was also surprised by the level of English of the locals. On a couple of occasions I had to asked for directions, and even though I asked in Spanish, they were eager to help and responded in English just to get the opportunity to practice their English which they had learnt back at school (or perhaps my Spanish was so bad that they felt it is better that they use English!). Even young kids of primary school age could speak some form of English. Not something which I had expected from Bolivia!
All in all, this is one city which had pleasantly surprised me and I had good experience here despite all the odd tales of dangers I have heard from many other travellers I had met along the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment