Thewesternprovinceblog

Hola todos! Been a few days hasn’t it? I’ve been chilling in La Paz, Bolivia 🇧🇴 the highest city in the world! Well technically El Alto right next door is at 4100 meters above sea level but it’s all part of the same place.

Getting here was a little chaotic when I got here since when the bus pulled in my internet was crapping out again and in the middle of Friday rush hour it would have taken ages to get a taxi so I ended up walking to my hostel for about 40 minutes. La Paz is a very busy city and in the centre down towards Sopacachi it’s a giant hill, in fact the entire city is practically vertical though luckily it was all downhill walking to the gaff.

After checking in and having a look round the first night was uneventful.

Second day I do the usual thing of booking the obligatory walking tour around the city. This was a very interesting couple of hours as with this tour we went all around the city’s intricate cable car system, which included taking us up to El Alto.

El Alto is a very interesting place, it is a seperate city from La Paz despite being more or less part of it. It is a city of mostly indigenous who migrated to La Paz who couldn’t afford to live in the main city, El Alto was originally a district of La Paz but it grew too fast for the government to handle so now it is it’s own sperate entity. Walking around up there it is very different, it is full of markets with people selling various things. Also there are ‘Religious Markets’ where you if so inclined can go and get a spiritual hearing, I personally skipped on this one;  already did mine in Cusco but it is interesting.

During this tour we found out that Bolivia is the country with the largest indigenous population in all of Latin America with their population being around 70% indigenous, especially outside of the large cities. In El Alto you will hear a cacophony of indigenous lingo’s being spoken next to Spanish such as Aimara, the main indigenous language of Bolivia, Quechua from Peru and Cusco and even Guarani which is from Paraguay and the Amazonian regions of Bolivia far to the north and east.

After looking round El Alto we were back on the cable cars down to el centro where we seen the Cathedral and parliament among others, here we had a history lesson on Bolivia’s ex presidente, Evo Morales who was in power from 2006 to 2019, this guy is indigenous and when he came to power passed a load of reforms to empower the Indigenous population, though as the years went on he and his party became more and more corrupt. For a long time Bolivia became practically isolated from the outside world and though they are reopened now they are still feeling the effects of this now, especially in the economy. Because of the isolation they had and still do have a shortage of dollars and as such going to money exchanges here you will get a rate above spot for exchanging physical dollars for Bolivianos (25-40% above the official rate).

Back onto Morales, he was ousted in 2019 after he essentially rigged the election and a big series of protests broke out and eventually he was forced to resign and fled on a private jet to Mexico then Argentina. He actually came back a year later and tried to take back power after the his socialist party was re-elected but the party didn’t want him back. In fact they re opened a case against him for paedophilia which there is evidence in his former penthouse that he is guilty that was left behind when he left. He is still wanted today for this among other things he done but he is protected by an indigenous community out by Cochabamba who are still loyal to him for all the things he did for them despite his crimes, he essentially lives in a guarded compound and is untouchable by the law today.

After this we finished the tour at the Witches Market, this was more or less just another glorified touristy market, I didn’t hang around here too long and went back to my hostel.

The next 2 days after were just a mix of rest and Admin days without much to say.

My fourth day here i visited the pre Incan ruins of Tiwanaku, which was very interesting but we will cover that on another post. During this time I also met a new best friend, who is totally not Ed Sheeran 😂😂 me and this fella did some more exploring up in El Alto yesterday and plan to check out a few trails outside the city over the next few days. That pretty much wraps this one up for now.

I will be staying here until Monday or Tuesday then pushing down the Altiplano towards Potosi and Sucre then heading towards Uyuni and planning to cross into Argentina by mid April at the latest.