La Paz

La Paz: Bolivia’s Canyon City

La Paz sits in a canyon carved into the Bolivian Altiplano at around 3,600 metres, ringed by the satellite city of El Alto at 4,000 metres on the rim above. The combination of altitude, dramatic topography, and the mix of colonial and Aymara architecture makes the city immediately disorienting in a good way. Stand anywhere near the city centre and look up the canyon walls to see El Alto spread across the plateau above – a working-class city of nearly a million people sitting 400 metres higher than the capital below it. The bowl shape means most of La Paz is visible from the rim, which is worth seeing from the cable car before you descend.

The Teleférico

The Mi Teleférico cable car system is the most extensive urban aerial cable network in the world – 11 lines as of 2025, now expanding further, connecting La Paz to El Alto in about 10 minutes and covering much of the city. A single trip costs around 3 bolivianos (well under $0.50 USD); a day pass costs 25 BOB and requires purchase at a staffed kiosk rather than a machine. The system operates between 3,600 metres at La Paz stations and over 4,100 metres at El Alto stations, meaning you gain and lose 500 metres of elevation within a single ride. Newly arrived visitors susceptible to altitude should start with the lower-elevation lines (Blue, Green, Yellow) before ascending to El Alto via the Red or Orange lines.

Riding the Teleférico is both practical transport and the best way to get a spatial sense of how the city fits into its canyon. The Yellow Line offers particularly good views of the city and the Ilimani volcano. These are not tourist gondolas; you share the cabins with commuters, market vendors, and schoolchildren. This is La Paz getting to work.

Witches’ Market

The Mercado de las Brujas (Witches’ Market) on Calle Linares is a section of shops selling ritual items for Aymara spiritual practice: dried herbs, incense, amulets, and dried llama foetuses, which are buried beneath the foundations of new buildings as offerings to Pachamama. The market is a genuine commercial operation rather than a tourist performance; vendors sell to local practitioners as well as curious visitors. The immediately adjacent streets have the best concentration of colonial architecture in La Paz, including several small museums in restored colonial houses along Calle Jaén.

The Cholitas and El Alto Market

The Aymara women in traditional dress – pollera skirts, bowler hats, elaborate shawls – are called Cholitas, and are a central part of La Paz’s visual identity. You will encounter Cholita market vendors, Cholita taxi drivers, and in El Alto, Cholita wrestlers. The bowler hats arrived in Bolivia in the 1920s, supposedly shipped from England for railway workers but too small to fit European heads; they were sold to local women instead and became a cultural fixture within a generation.

El Alto’s enormous Sunday market (Feria 16 de Julio) is one of the largest in South America by area, selling everything from car parts to produce to second-hand electronics. Getting there is a cable car ride from the city centre.

Cholita wrestling – theatrical sport combining Lucha Libre moves with Cholita costume – takes place in El Alto on Sunday afternoons. The events are community entertainment rather than tourist shows, though visitors attend and are welcomed without formality.

Food and Eating

Salteñas – baked pastries filled with meat, olive, and a slightly sweet sauce – are the morning street food of La Paz. They are sold from around 09:00 to noon at dedicated stalls throughout the city; the queues indicate quality. This is important: salteñas sold after noon are considered an embarrassment. The timing is part of the tradition.

Mercado Lanza in the city centre has a balcony restaurant level where set lunches (almuerzo) cost around 25-35 bolivianos and include soup, a main course, and a drink. Eating almuerzo at a market balcony, watching the floor below, is the most authentic midday experience in the city.

Gustu, in the Calacoto neighbourhood, operates on a social enterprise model that trains disadvantaged youth in Bolivian cuisine using native ingredients from across the country’s diverse ecological zones. It has received significant international attention and is the most ambitious dining option in La Paz – and also the most defensible way to spend money in a city where wealth distribution is heavily unequal.

Practicalities

Altitude sickness at 3,600-4,000 metres affects most visitors in the first 24-48 hours. Take it easy on arrival, drink water, avoid alcohol, and give your body time. The airport is at 4,062 metres in El Alto, one of the highest commercial airports in the world; arriving by overnight bus from Cochabamba or Sucre at lower altitude is kinder to the body than a direct flight from sea level. If you fly in, plan your first day for acclimatisation rather than tourism.