Mega Bowl (La Paz)

Member Name: becs

Product:	La Paz
Date:	30/06/00 (34 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Loads

Disadvantages: Bit on the cold side

Built within a huge crater, La Paz is an extraordinary city with a great deal of charm. It sprawls the entire area of a crater the size of about quarter of London, and is therefore extremely hilly, views from around the edge/top of the bowl are awesome spanning across and down into the metropolis of little winding streets with predominantly brown houses and buildings, with a cluster of tall modern buildings and large old cathedrals and historical buildings all in the centre. At night this sight is particularly impressive. The city offers several places to stay for the traveller, hostals and hotels varying in range and quality, I think it's preferable and quieter to stay just outside the central plaza area and up one of the hills to the North of the city, we stayed in a hostal called La Luna (which may not even exist anymore). Walking is quite hard work but you get used to the hills after a while and it's good for you after all. The main plaza offers a stunning old cathedral with little alleys leading off it with stalls selling all the tourist tat. The further away you go from the centre of the city the more Bolivian it becomes (the same can be said for most cities in the world) and you can get a real feel for people going around their daily ways. There is a massive market outside the main city up on the flatlands outside the bowl which sells everything including the kitchen sinc, from giant singer sewing machines to fantastic old second hand garments, we had hours of fun trying on wooly hats, because La Paz is of course at a v.high altitude and therefore pretty damn cold, this doesn't seem to mar the spirit of the city. One of the best things for me were the endless juicers, street vendors with juicing machines serving your choice of delicious freshly squeezed juices of any fruit you can dream of. Food is never great in S.America but there is a little market in La Paz set back just up from the main plaza which is covered overhead and there are at least e
ight stalls with seating offering vats of chicken soup which is great with lemon and pepper to spice it up. Of course if you're on a big budget you can probably afford to eat at pizzeria's and more upmarket restaurants which can be found down the hill from the main plaza where all the cinema's and shops are in the commercial area heading towards the righ part of town. I love La Paz and would suggest that anyone in Bolivia would want to spend about a week on and off soaking up the culture. Travelling in Bolivia invariably means returning to La Paz after each place you've been to in order to get another bus to the next place you want to visit, so you often meet the same people over and over as you cross paths on your travels. La Paz is great fun and we even fell upon a fully fledged Bolivian techno pary one night with people dressed in cyber wear which contrasted hugely to the campesinos (farmers) camped out in the main plaza that same day protesting for rights to own the land they live and farm on. By now I guess you can guage that I have very fond memories of La Paz and higly reccomend it but my opinions and suggestions may be somewhat out of date since I spent time there in 1996.

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