After Copacabana, we spent a few nights at the awesome Adventure Brew Hostel in La Paz. This place is a hostel that is somewhat connected to a local microbrewery, so for each night you stay, you get a free craft beer (a blessing after drinking so much shitty beer). La Paz is the highest seat of government in the world at 3640 metres above sea level and is surrounded by beautiful mountains and the area of El Alto.
Graffiti in the Mercado de los Brujas (Witches' Market) in La Paz showing some of the cultural aspects of the area.
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| Llama foetuses were traditionally used by Bolivians as a sacrifice to Mother Earth - Pachamama - when they building a house or building. As the tradition still lives on today, the foetuses can be purchased from the market and come at different points of gestation, however it is said that all of them have died of natural causes. It is rumoured that for some larger buildings, the shaman requested that a human sacrifice be offered to Pachamama so they would look for homeless people and feed them strong alcohol in order to bury them alive (and to bury a foreigner was even better luck! - believe it if you will). |
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| San Pedro prison, La Paz. The prison is situated on an inner-city block and was built to house 400 inmates. Currently, approximately 2500 people reside inside, including the wives and children of some of the inmates. There are no guards inside the prison, just 13 who guard the exterior. Inmates must pay an entrance fee of $4 when they are admitted and wait inside the prison for their sentence to be handed down, which can take up to 4 years, and once they know their sentence the time already spent in prison is not accounted for. Essentially, an inmate could spend 4 years waiting and then be sentenced to 8 years imprisonment, so spend a total of 12 years in prison. There are 8 suburbs within the walls ranging from the upper-class to inmates sharing a very small cell with 10 people. Inmates must buy or rent their cell and if one cannot afford this, they must live under the stairs or in a cupboard. Most inmates make a living whilst inside, owning restaurants and convenience stores, paper delivery businesses, or creating handicrafts which are collected by their families and sold outside the prison. The prison rose to fame whilst a British inmate, Thomas McFadden was being held there as he started public tours of the prison. Thomas was visited by an Australian backpacker, Rusty Young who wrote about Thomas' experience in the popular book, Marching Powder. |
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| The expanse of La Paz up to El Alto. In order to help the residents of El Alto commute to work and reduce traffic, the government are installing 3 gondolas from La Paz up to El Alto reducing commuting time from 45-60 minutes to 4 minutes. |
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| Local university students started a 'zebra' program helping people cross the road as many drivers were ignoring the red lights and zebra crossings. So the students now make sure drivers stop to allow foot traffic to cross the road - the true version of "zebra crossing". |
Our next adventure was the World's Deadliest Road, also known as the 'Death Road' on push bikes. We started at 4700 metres above sea level and traveled on a paved highway for 21 km watching for black ice and snow, before being driven another 12 km to the beginning of the 'Death Road'. Upon entering the road, we discovered a landslide which held us up for about 15 minutes while the road workers fixed a path wide enough for 1 vehicle. Continuing on, we traversed down through waterfalls, creek crossings and tight corners on the edge of very high cliffs. Some excellent, beautiful scenery and great fun in the mountains.
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Breakfast - Chicharron (pork pieces deep fried) and fried chicken with baked potatoes - a hearty start to the day
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| View from the beginning of our tour at 4700 m. |
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| Our guide Alejandro. |
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| Brett, Cassie's dad ready to go. |
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| The start of the 'Death Road' - to the left you can see the landslide. |
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