Things to Do in La Paz: Free and Cheap
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Things to Do in La Paz: Free and Cheap
La Paz rewards a slow, cheap approach more than most capital cities, mostly because the best sights here, a cable car ride, a living market, a viewpoint over an entire bowl-shaped city, don’t have a real admission fee to begin with. This list covers what’s genuinely worth doing on a budget, organized by how you’ll actually spend a day, plus the one thing to build every day around: the altitude. For hotel-area advice, see our where-to-stay guide .
Ride the cable cars first
Mi Teleferico is the world’s largest urban cable car network, around 3 BOB a ride, and it’s both transport and the best sightseeing in the city. Buy a card before you travel; the turnstiles don’t accept cash. The Yellow Line gives the widest panorama of the bowl; the Red Line climbs from El Alto down into the city with Illimani framed behind you, a view worth doing at golden hour if you can time it.
Walk the Casco Viejo for nothing
Plaza Murillo anchors the old center, ringed by the Palacio Quemado and the Congress building, whose Reloj del Sur clock famously runs backwards, a small, deliberate statement about being a Southern Hemisphere country. From there, Calle Jaen is the best-preserved colonial street in the city, free to wander with a handful of small museums charging only a few bolivianos. Iglesia de San Francisco’s carved mestizo-baroque facade is free to admire from the plaza in front of it, one of the finest pieces of colonial stonework in the Andes.
Visit the Witches’ Market properly
Calle Linares’ Mercado de las Brujas costs nothing to browse and is a living part of Aymara spiritual life, not a novelty stop for tourists. The dried llama fetuses sold here come from natural miscarriages and are buried as offerings to Pachamama, so treat vendors and their goods with the same respect you’d give any place of worship, and ask before photographing anyone or their stall.
Get to El Alto
A short cable car ride up to El Alto, sitting around 4,150m on the rim above the city, gets you to the Feria 16 de Julio, one of South America’s largest open-air markets, running Thursday and Sunday, free to enter. Cholita wrestling happens on Sunday afternoons for a modest ticket price; it grew out of domestic-violence-survivor support circles and is best approached as community sport rather than spectacle.
Walk a market or two
Mercado Rodriguez is a working produce market with cholita-run stalls, good for cheap fruit and a genuine slice of daily life, no entry fee. Mercado Lanza’s upper-floor food court is the cheapest full meal in the city center, a few dollars for soup, a main, and a drink.
See Valle de la Luna on foot
About 10km south of downtown, a modest entry fee gets you a 30-60 minute walk through eroded clay spires and canyons. Combine it with a visit to Muela del Diablo if you have half a day, and remember both sit well above 3,600m.
Do it at the right pace
Everything above assumes you’ve given your body a day to adjust first. El Alto’s airport sits around 4,050-4,150m, higher than the city itself, so soroche (altitude sickness) is common on arrival. Take Day 1 easy, skip alcohol and strenuous walking, drink coca tea, and hydrate; save the busier days, El Alto and the viewpoints especially, for once you’re acclimatized. Get around safely between all of this using registered radio taxis only, never an unmarked street taxi, since the fake-police scam and express-kidnapping risk are concentrated in exactly the tourist areas covered here. Our festivals guide and hidden gems guide round out what’s worth your time beyond this list.
None of this requires a big budget. The most memorable things to do in La Paz, a cable car at sunset, a market older than the mining boom that built the city, a backwards clock in a government square, all cost a few bolivianos or nothing at all.