City in the Sky: La Paz, Bolivia

The greatest thing about travelling is that you never quite know what to expect. No matter how much you prepare, no matter how mnay pictures you see, or guidebooks you read, its impossible to predict what places you`ll like and what places you´ll hate. Sometimes I look forward to a place for months, or years even, and when I get there I wonder what all the fuss is about. However, at other times there are plesant little surprises. Sometimes you had never inteded to go to a place, but when you do, you wonder how its possible that the rest of the world doesn´t even know its there. La Paz was a bit like that.
We had inteded to go there only because we had no choice - it´s on the way to everything. But coming across the deserted mountain plains at 4000m or so, all of a sudden the earth opended up into a huge canyon stuffed solid with civilization. It was like a black hole in the earth in which all the buildings in the country had been sucked and couldn´t escape. With the 6400m+ snowpeaks above, it made for a pretty impressive city.
La Paz is the defacto capital of Bolivia. Sucre in the South handles many governmental responsibilities, but La Paz is generally considered the capital anyway, and at 3660 meteres up in the air, its the highest in the world. It seemed to me like a relatively unknown city on the continent, no doubt overshadowed by Rio, Beunos Aires, and even Lima, but it turned out to be a pretty interesting place.
Our days were spent roaming around the cobblestoned colonial streets featuring heaps of souvenir shops, hand-made guitar shops, catherdrals, and markrts galore. One of the more intersting markets is the ¨Witch´s Market¨,where all sorts of bizzare remedies and potions were being sold. If you are opening a new business, you can pick up a dried llamma fetus to encourage luck to be on your side (see photo).
Another highlight was the coca museum, which gave us the run-down on Bolivia´s most prestigious plant. Legal here and in Peru, coaca leaves are used by the vast majority of the population for chewing, drinking tea, and acting as a social lubricant for many traditional groups. This has been part of the culture for a millenium or two, however, since it is indeed the base of cocaine, there has been international pressure (mostly from the US) to ban it´s production in Bolivia. It seems to me an almost ironic twist of fate that Bolivia has happily used coca for centuries without a problem, until the West came along and turned it into cocaine, thus creating a problem. Now the problem still tends to lie in the States, however, Bolivia and it´s local farmers sipping on coca tea (as they always have) are being handed the blame and the responsibility to fix it. Makes no sense to me.
On top of the markets and cobblestone, La Paz also had a great business district, with all the skyscrappers you would expect in the West - something that surprised me in South America´s poorest and most traditional country. So all in all, it turned out to be a great city, and quite possibly on of the biggest surprises of my travels. How does the world not know about the place....