La Paz

Arrived early morning on the night bus, then at 10am did a Walking tour of La Paz:
- very strange: there’s a big Prison right in downtown La Paz, but it only has 10 guards around the outside and none inside. It functions as a weird community/capitalist market for prisoners that pay rent to rent better fancy living conditions, can have their family live with them, have jobs in the prison etc. it’s famous for cocaine dealing apparently. Used to be tourist unofficial tours to go in but it sounds really sketchy and not allowed anymore. Bizarre.
- walked to the witches market, where you can buy powders and potions for healing etc. also can buy llama Fetusses. Tradition to offer a llama Fetus when you build a house. Also a myth/maybe true?? that they do it with live human when building a huge building
- walking through the markets, you see lots of women (cholitas) wearing traditional skirts and bowler hats. Hats are too small because an Italian originally exported a bunch to South America and assumed they have small heads, then it became the traditional style to have a small hat.
- politics: president in 1940s hanged from lamppost, then they felt bad and made a statue for him
- in 1990s president took countries money and fled to US. Lots of political chaos in Bolivia and corruption.

After the tour I rode the City cable cars which was super cool! They built a big network that go all over the city as public transit instead of trains or whatever, and they are really modern and nice and you can see over the whole city! Super cool.

Had some beers and dinner with some guys from the hostel and then bed.Read more