La Paz

The valley was settled long before the Spanish came. The Choqueyapu river carved the canyon, and Aymara farmers and traders used its warmer, sheltered floor as the plateau above was cold and windy. Farther west, at about 3,850 m, lie the ruins of Tiwanaku, the ceremonial centre of a civilisation that flourished about a thousand years ago and shaped later Andean peoples. The Aymara name for the valley is Chuquiago Marka.

The Spanish captain Alonso de Mendoza founded the city on 20 October 1548 as Nuestra Señora de La Paz, the Lady of Peace, to protect the silver road from Potosí to the Pacific coast. The canyon gave shelter from wind and cold, and the town grew around what is now Plaza Murillo. In the 1700s colonial churches and mansions were built in the style called Andean or mestizo baroque, in which local carvers added their own motifs to European forms.

The indigenous leader Túpac Katari, an Aymara, besieged La Paz in 1781 for months and cut off its supplies before the Spanish restored control. In 1809 a revolt led by Pedro Domingo Murillo declared an early break from Spain; the Spanish put it down and hanged Murillo in 1810 in the plaza that now carries his name. Bolivia became independent in 1825, and by the late 1800s La Paz had replaced Sucre as the seat of government.

Modern La Paz grew by climbing. The centre filled, and new residents settled on the slopes and then on the plateau, where the city of El Alto began as a suburb and is now a large city of its own with the airport. Its Aymara majority shapes politics and culture, and the events of the last decades, from strikes to constitutional changes, have taken place in the same plazas that the Spanish built.

A simple way to feel these layers is to walk from Plaza San Francisco up to Plaza Murillo along the streets in between, slowly and with a stop for coffee. In about an hour you pass colonial churches, republican banks and modern shops, and you can feel the slope in your legs.

The centre of La Paz is at about 3,640 m and the airport in El Alto at about 4,050 m, which makes La Paz one of the highest seats of government in the world. At that height the air holds about two-thirds of the oxygen found at sea level. Most healthy visitors notice it as a headache, a fast pulse, breathlessness on stairs, and poor sleep for the first one to three nights.

Locals have their own methods. They walk slowly, eat small meals, drink coca tea, avoid alcohol on the first day and rest after lunch. Many hotels keep oxygen for guests, and pharmacies sell tablets against altitude sickness, but a doctor should decide whether you take them. Severe symptoms, such as confusion, a bad cough or breathlessness at rest, mean you should go down and get medical help.

The canyon shapes the map. The oldest and richest districts sit at the bottom of the canyon and in the south, where it is warmer and the air is thicker, while poorer districts climb the slopes to the rim at 4,000 m. The city thus reverses the usual pattern: the higher you go, the colder and cheaper it is. The Illimani mountain, 6,438 m, closes the view to the south-east and gives the city a landmark on clear days.

To move on such land, La Paz built cable cars. Mi Teleférico opened its first lines in 2014 and now links the canyon floor, the slopes and El Alto with a network of coloured lines. A ride costs a few bolivianos and takes ten to twenty minutes; it is also the best view of the city. Use it for the hills, walk downhill, and take radio taxis for what remains.

Plan the first day around this. Arrive, sleep, drink water, and take a short flat walk on El Prado the next morning. Keep steep streets and climbs for the second or third day, and if you plan to visit Chacaltaya or Lake Titicaca, do it after you have adjusted for at least two nights in the city.

A majority of the people in La Paz and El Alto identify as Aymara, and the language is heard in markets, minibuses and homes. Traditional dress is common: many women wear a bowler hat, a full pleated skirt called a pollera, a shawl and braids, and are called cholitas. Their clothes show region and status, and they are worn by professionals, market traders and, in recent decades, politicians.

Belief mixes Catholic and Andean practice. Pachamama, the earth mother, receives offerings before building, planting and travel. On Calle Linares and Sagárnaga you will see stalls that sell the ingredients: dried herbs, coca leaves, sweets, small figurines and llama fetuses. A yatiri, a ritual specialist, prepares a burnt offering for a new house or a business, and buyers of the fetuses bury them under foundations. This is not a show for tourists but a working market.

Festivals bring the beliefs into the street. In January the Alasitas fair sells miniature houses, cars, notes and diplomas, and people buy a tiny version of what they hope to have in the year. Ekeko, a small god of abundance, is loaded with these goods. Gran Poder, a huge procession of dancers in costume, marks the festival of the Lord of Great Power in late May or June. On 21 June, the Aymara New Year, sunrise ceremonies take place at Tiwanaku and on the hills.

For a visitor, the rule is respect. Ask before you photograph a seller or a woman in traditional dress. Do not touch offerings. Buy a small item if you take time at a stall. If you attend a ceremony, stand at the back and follow what others do. The museum MUSEF explains textiles, masks and festival dress in depth and is a good place to learn before you look at the streets.

If you want to go deeper, visit MUSEF in the morning and the Witches' Market in the afternoon, and then read the notes at the Coca Museum. The order gives context first and colour second, and it stops the market from feeling like a spectacle.

The older centre is small and follows the Spanish grid where the ground allowed. Plaza Murillo is the ceremonial square, with the cathedral on one side, the Congress on another and the presidential palace, the Palacio Quemado or burnt palace, on a third; the name recalls a fire in the 1800s. A new presidential building, the Casa Grande del Pueblo, stands nearby. Pigeons, guards and vendors give the plaza a slow daily life.

Colonial churches and mansions show the Andean baroque. San Francisco, begun in the 1740s, has a stone front carved with plants, birds and faces that come from the region, not from Europe. Its museum and roof terrace look over the plaza where marches gather. Calle Jaén, a short cobbled street a few blocks from Plaza Murillo, keeps colonial houses with balconies and small museums.

Republican and modern buildings fill the rest. The Prado avenue, the main street of the twentieth-century city, has banks, hotels and the Plaza del Estudiante at its top. Sopocachi, on the west slope, grew in the 1900s as a residential area, with leafy streets, villas and the Plaza Abaroa, named for a hero of the War of the Pacific. Zona Sur, at the bottom of the canyon, has newer houses, malls and embassies.

Look for the mixing. Many buildings combine colonial stone, republican balconies and brick or concrete extensions, and cholet buildings in El Alto use bright colours and Andean motifs on tall, ornamented facades, a new kind of architecture that grew from local wealth. Plan the day by slope: start at the top and walk down, and take a taxi or cable car when you need to go up.

A short walk shows the whole story: begin at the Plaza del Estudiante at the top of the Prado, follow the avenue down to Plaza San Francisco, and turn up to Calle Jaén and Plaza Murillo. Allow half a day with stops, wear flat shoes, and take a taxi back to your bed.

La Paz eats on a clock. Breakfast is api morado, a hot drink of purple corn, cinnamon and clove, with a cheese pastry called pastel or a fried dough disc called buñuelo. Mid-morning is the hour of the salteña, a baked pastry with a juicy, sweet and spicy stew of meat or chicken, peas and potato, sold from bakeries until they run out before noon. You eat it upright, drink the juice first, and then eat the pastry.

Lunch is the main meal, and the almuerzo, a set lunch of soup, a main course and a drink, is the way most people eat it. Soups are heavy and warm: sopa de maní is peanut soup with potato and noodles; chairo is a mountain soup with chuño, the freeze-dried potato of the Altiplano. Mains include silpancho, a breaded beef cutlet with rice, potatoes and an egg, and fricasé, a spicy pork stew with hominy that is a La Paz classic. Trout from Lake Titicaca is grilled or fried.

Ají and llajwa, a fresh sauce of tomato and locoto chilli, sit on the table. Potatoes and corn come in dozens of varieties, and street stalls sell anticuchos, grilled skewers of beef heart. The coffee culture is newer: cafés in Sopocachi serve beans from the Yungas valleys, and chocolate and singani, a grape spirit, show what the lowlands and valleys produce.

For a visitor the rule on the first day is small and hot. Eat soup and cooked food, skip alcohol, and drink bottled water. From day two, salteñas, api and a set lunch cost a few bolivianos each and are among the best values in South America. Ask the price of a set lunch, look for full rooms at midday, and avoid raw salads and street ice until you are settled.

A last tip is to eat at a busy place at the right hour: salteñas before noon, set lunches from 12:30 to 14:30, and coffee in the afternoon. Empty rooms at those times usually mean cold food, and full rooms with local families are a better sign than any menu.

La Paz is the country's stage for protest. Marches head for Plaza Murillo and the Prado; miners with dynamite, teachers, transport unions, students and neighbours from El Alto all use the same streets. The blockade, or bloqueo, is a standard tool: a group closes a road to press for a demand, and the effect can be a closed highway or an airport road for hours or days.

For a visitor the effect is practical. Ask your hotel every morning about marches and blockades, leave a spare day before an international flight, and allow extra time to the airport. If a march is near, walk away from the head and stay off the plaza, and do not photograph police, soldiers or protesters at close range. Most protests are peaceful, but crowds are loud and fireworks or gas can appear without warning.

Daily life is otherwise slow and courteous. People greet shopkeepers and taxi drivers with buenos días; lunch is long; shops close early on Sundays. Cash is used for almost everything, and small notes matter: keep Bs10, 20 and 50 for markets and taxis. Exchange and cash supply have been unstable in recent years, so check the current situation and carry a small reserve of clean US dollars.

Safety comes from routine. Use radio taxis or a booked car at night and from the airport, keep phones out of sight in markets, and treat fake police and unofficial taxis as a known risk. Real police do not check cash or passports on the street. With those habits, and a slow first day, La Paz is easy to enjoy: the coffee is good, the views are memorable, and the city has an energy few others in the region share.

Keep a copy of your passport and insurance, save your hotel address in Spanish on your phone, and share your plans with someone at home. If a blockade delays your departure, stay calm, tell your airline and your hotel early, and use the spare day you built into the trip.