I broke my own little rule on my birthday. Over the years I’ve built a preference towards staying in one place longer rather than going to a new country for a very short time. Of course what makes time short varies by place and purpose, rendering this rule closer to a guideline than an actual rule. So few days before my birthday I had decided to swap Chile for Bolivia and flew north.
La Paz is like no other place. At first it appears similar to the same sized cities in developing economies around the world. But with a bit more time it’s easy to see it’s like no other (I’ve been to) with its geography, culture, civil society etc. You can ask 10 different people what they think of La Paz and chances are you’ll get close to 10 different answers. Primarily because it’s a city of extreme contrasts. It’s a city that is very hot and very cold (sometimes from second to second), big and in many ways very small, rich and poor, ugly and beautiful, boring and entertaining, modern and old fashioned. It’s all those things at the same time and it’s not very obvious why. La Paz (and Bolivia in general) is a very complicated place in terms of governance, economics, culture. In the short time I’ve spent there I’ve only scratched the surface leaving with more questions than answers. And looking through this perspective maybe the short trip was worth bending the guideline.
You can see a lot of the houses in the city aren’t painted and look like they’re in the middle of a construction with plain bricks covering the façade. I’ve been told that painted houses are faced with higher tax so many choose not to paint their houses. The view is plain incredible, the city carved itself onto every hill and slope. A number of these houses will be washed down from hills during the rainy season.
