The stunning Iglesia de San Francisco was built in the 18th century, and sits at the very top of the city's main thoroughfare. After the Metropolitan Cathedral, it's the most important religious building in La Paz, and because of its advantageous position near the tourist hub of Calle Sagárnaga, probably the most well-known.
One of the more famous areas in La Paz is the Mercado de Hechecería, or The Witches' Market, found on Calle Santa Cruz and Linares, near the Iglesia de San Francisco. Here, shops and street vendors sell totems, trinkets and talismans, meant to appease the gods of sun and earth. The sheer number of shops speaks to the stubborn persistence of a religion the Catholics weren't able to uproot, despite their best, bloody efforts.
Basically, any spot in La Paz can be used a makeshift viewing point. Just raise your eyes off the ground and there's the massive Illimani Mountain towering over the southeast. Looking up towards the west provides a view of El Alto, Bolivia's fastest growing city, stretching haphazardly across the cliff. And if you drive into El Alto, the panorama of the city below is unmatched. Though La Paz itself can be grimy, polluted and uninspiring from an architectural standpoint, I doubt any other city in the world provides as many incredible picture-taking opportunities.
We've already written about the our visit to Tiwanaku for the Aymara New Year celebration. But we had so many pictures, we've had to split them up into two posts. Here's our second set of images from this amazing festival... including the sunrise, and the events which followed. Keep your eye out for Evo Morales: this is the second time we've been able to see Bolivia's president!
The pre-Incan ruins of Tiwanaku, just 35 miles west of La Paz, host Bolivia's biggest celebrations in honor of the Aymara New Year. With a belief system rooted heavily in the natural world, the Aymara recognize the winter solstice (June 21st) as the true beginning of the year. We woke up early in the morning to take part in the fun.
I stirred to life as we passed through the satellite Aymara city of El Alto, perched perilously on a hill overlooking La Paz. But though my eyes had opened, I thought perhaps I was still dreaming. Bolivia's largest and most important city was sprawled out across the valley below us, beginning to light up as though preparing for our arrival, surrounded by mountains on all sides.
The refuge for the second night of our Uyuni trip was located high up in the Andes. It was cold. Regardless of my sleeping bag and fourteen layers of clothes, I laid awake half the night shivering and listening to the pattering sound of something against the roof. "Hail", I thought aloud. "Sand", came a voice from the other bed. Jürgen apparently wasn't sleeping either. We were both wrong: it was snow
Soon after entering the Eduardo Abaroa Andean National Reserve, we arrived at the Laguna Colorada. With water that shifts spectacularly between deep blue and dark red, the reason for its name is immediately apparent. Home to bright pink flamingos, the lagoon is bordered with yellow rings of sulfur and highlighted with mounds of pure-white borax, which jut into the water like tiny glaciers and are slowly disappearing. With the gray, snow-capped peaks of the Andes serving as a backdrop, the Laguna Colorada looks like one of Bob Ross's fever dreams.
On the second morning of our trip from Uyuni, we awoke with sore backs and cold toes after having spent the night in a salt hotel. The place was built entirely from the stuff: salt tables, salt floors, salt walls. Instead of sleeping, I spent the night licking my bed. But we loaded our tired bodies dutifully into the jeep and, within no time, had reached the desert of Chiguana. Shrubs, sand and the occasional llama were our only companions as we cut southwest through one of Bolivia's most underdeveloped corners.
A geological marvel, the Salar de Uyuni is one of the most perfectly flat areas on earth. There aren't hills, bumps, shadows, vegetation or depressions of any sort, and given the lack of visual reference points in such an immense area, one's sense of perspective is bound to become skewed.
