The entry into La Paz is something to behold. When you first come into the city it’s like any outskirts of a South American capital – dirty and full of chaos. You can’t help but wonder if the rest of the city is going to be the same. And for the
most part, La Paz doesn’t change. It’s not until you break through the top of mountains and suddenly the bus continues it’s decent into the valley that is the city of La Paz.

From above its breathtaking, nestled between the mountain ranges lies a giant city, sprawling out as far as the eye can see. As you continue you realise the buildings are all either brick or grey cement. This is La Paz, the ugliest city I’ve seen in my South American travels.

I had a dinner at a restaurant below the hotel I was staying at, and after some banter with the waitress she asked me whether I thought La Paz was beautiful. It’s not really the right thing to tell a local that no, your city is pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to beauty, so I told her I had only just arrived and hadn’t seen any of the city yet. It was a small lie, and in a way I hoped that it wasn’t true. Alas, the days I spent here looking for something that I could call beautiful failed, and the plazas and even the Central Park were lacking photogenic quality.

So I don’t have a lot of photos of La Paz. It’s like any western city, and it’s interesting to note that most of Bolivia is very much like a western country. The Spanish didn’t colonise much of Bolivia, due to its altitude and mountainous terrain, therefore the colonial style architecture is missing and instead the buildings and homes would fit right in to any Australian town. There were times later on when travelling on the bus when I’d watch a village go by and be reminded of home, as though I were travelling through the Australian countryside.

La Paz is an interesting introduction to Bolivia. It’s filled with expensive cars, people wearing the latest fashion, and hip trendy restaurants. But like the rest of
Bolivia, the gulf between the poor and everyone else is huge. You only need to turn a corner and find some poor old lady begging on the street corner, or a blind man singing to the winds while hold a bucket for money.

Bolivia is a country of stark contrasts, and it’s a confusing place at first. The poorest country in South America you’d be forgiven if you refused this to be the case after visiting the major cities. One reasoning for this I heard later on in
Santa Cruz, was because of the drug money. Cocaine production for the most part comes from Bolivia, and the government generally turns a blind eye to it
because of how much money it brings into the country. Sure there’s the token drug busts, but those couple hundred kilos of cocaine that are seized are merely a drop in the white powdery sea.

At first I wasn’t convinced Bolivians spoke Spanish. They’re incredibly difficult to
understand and I swear even when asking for the price of something they’d speak their own strange language. It was only on a few occasions that a vendor would
proudly speak in clear and understandable Spanish when telling me the price of something. For the rest, it was a jumble of murmured words that might as well have been Hungarian.

In La Paz there were a couple of places I wanted to visit, the art museum in particular. Unfortunately I had arrived on a Sunday, and everything closes after midday. The next day was Monday, and every museum in South America pretty much closes on Mondays, so I spent the day visiting the main plazas and finding vast amounts of concrete and no plant life or greenery. Okay, so the next day I’d
visit the museums and head out.

As I discovered later on, it was Labor Day, and once again everything was closed. Setting off to explore the city after the museums had their door firmly shut, I stopped at a café on the main street (the Prado) and had lunch. It was here that I would get my first taste of Bolivian protesting.

The street, normally clogged with traffic stopped. Police in riot gear stood guard outside the Ministry of Health. And soon a group of a few hundred protesters chanted their way down the street and stood their ground at the ministries entrance. The police looked bored. The protesters were dressed in doctors white jackets, and a man with a megaphone rallied the crowd. After half an hour they dispersed and I made my way back to the hotel.

The next morning I woke to the sound of gun fire. Well not real gun fire, but it sure did sound like someone was watching a war movie next door. The couple hundred protesters from the day before had now swelled into a couple thousand. The entire Prado was blocked off (think as though George St in Sydney was completely shut down) and the swarm of protesters marched the street firing off small handheld explosives. It was a crazy sight to behold, but I was still determined to visit the museum and made my way there.

Once again the museum was closed, so I sat in the adjacent plaza contemplating my next move. This plaza was also home to the municipal building, and there were police in riot gear everywhere. I decided to leave only to discover we’d been barricaded in by the police. There wasn’t exactly any danger so I asked if I could leave, to which the cop just pointed to the chained barricade and I let myself out.

Another day went by and the plaza where the museum was was still blocked off by the police. Finally the next day, when I figured I’d give it one last try before leaving, did everything open again and was able to visiting the amazing art museum, were they had a large section of contemporary art that fused western style art with indigenous art. In all, it was worth the wait.

The next day I bid my fare to La Paz. It’s an ugly city, but there is something about this place when the sun goes down and you stroll by the street stalls to feel a
certain vibe and liveliness. On its exterior it’s not much to look at, but it has a heart and I can understand why people love the city.