When you first see La Paz, your breath, should you have any left, is literally taken away. Arriving from the Altiplano, you first climb to over 13,000 feet. The city/slum of El Alto (literally, the Tall) sprawls for about 10k of crowded, smelly streets. After an incredibly long time on a straight, busy, highway like road, you pass a toll booth, go past the sign that says “No bikes” (just like the other bike tourists told us), and you see the city spread out before you.

The red adobe buildings spill from the top of the deep canyon to the bottom, like a river flowing down. Surrounding the entire valley are the majestic, glaciated peaks of the Cordillera Real, soaring above us at 6000-6500 meters. The city itself sits at less than 12,000 feet, but instead of feeling like there is more oxygen in the air, there is just more pollution.

Once you are on the autopiste (highway), you decend for almost 20k, and about 400 meters. It´s steep and somewhat hair-raising. There is a breakdown lane, but the closer you get to the bottom of the valley, the more mini-busses and pedestrians there are to condend with.

Finally, at the bottom, you are spit out into a crazy mess of busses, minibusses, more minibusses, still more minibusses, taxis, and some minibusses.

The minibusses are the main form of auto on the streets. They employ kids or women to sit and yell out their destinations. They are like busses in that they are constantly pulling in and out of traffic. They seem to stop whenever they feel like it, and turn right from the left hand lane. Everyone drives with their horn, and between the horns, the racket of the yelled destinations, and the whistles of the (somewhat effective) traffic cops, the streets are incredibly noisy.

I will never consider San Francisco to be a particularly hilly city again. Not after this. These are some seriously steep streets.

There are sidewalks, decent enough, but much of the available space, and much of the space in the street as well is taken up by vendors selling everything you could possible think of.

Scissors, electronics, bras, clothing, hats, shoes, toilet paper, vegetables, pre-cooked food (with stools to sit on), bread, water, candy, baby llama fetuses, magic charms, plugs for sinks, and just about everything else.

Yep. I said baby llama fetuses. See, when you want good luck, and you aren´t the richest Boliviano on the block, but you need some blessing for your new building, you buy a dried baby llama fetus as a gift to Pachamama, and bury it under your building. They look kinda like shrivelled up birds, and are available in all sizes.

We were told by many, many bike tourists that we shouldn´t miss La Paz, that it is beautiful, and an amazing city. They were right. It is an incredible place, not just because we had middle eastern food and espresso to eat.

However, I am ready to get back on the road.