El Alto

We arrived at 6am in La Paz on Tuesday, after a 10 hour drive from Uyuni (the south of Bolvia, where we were on the border with Chile). Nacho and Iris didn't sleep much, because they were used to better buses (and Iris had to pee but the toiletdoor couldn't open haha). Roos and Juul slept good because their previous bus was even worse than this one. So when we came to the Wild Rover Hostel (which is a crazy party hostel), we decided to sleep some hours. We rested and felt ready for the day.

We already did a free tour in La Paz, so we decided to make one in El Alto, which is a city next to (almost connected to) La Paz. It has 2 million people (La Paz only 1 even though it looks huuuge). It is really high, therefore called, El Alto.

We went to the witch market, where they sell dead baby lamas for sacrifices, they read your life by coca leaves and many more creapy stuff.
They really believe in a lot of things. When you "destroy" pachamama (mother earth in Quechua language), you need to sacrifice something. Small houses, animals. What do you think they do for skyscrapers? Yess, a human. Freaky right? They intoxicate a homeless person and when he is so drunk, they will burn him alive and put his ashes under the ground of the building, that is going to be built. It is so scary, but true. Superstitious in Bolivia! Pachamama.

We took the telecabine up to this city. There are 5 in the entire city and transfers thousands of people daily. It is their way of transport, a metro is not possible to built in this city that is built in a valley.
The telecabine is a present from the government and offcourse built by an Austrian company. Sometimes bit scary for Iris, but in general really cool.

The cemetery is in La Paz, it is the biggest in Bolivia.Read more