The centre of La Paz is one giant street market (pic). Each street specialises in particular things: one is shoes, another pots and pans, another fruit and veg, another speeding buses that threaten to flatten tourists taking photos.
Indigenous Bolivian women dress in a characteristic way: hats two sizes too small perched on their head, long black plaits, shawl, a rainbow-coloured blanket used as a rucksack, and bright full skirts (pic). Oddly, you rarely see anyone with grey hair, and the men don't go bald at all. Never mind the flower market (pic): If someone can isolate that gene, there's a fortune to be made in the hair replacement market.
In the afternoon I went with Mirjam and Tobi on the new teleférico (cable car) that opened this year. It whisks you up from the centre of town, down the bottom, up to the top of poor suburb of El Alto, 400m up on the brow of the hill (pic). It's meant as a commuting option for the workers, but we saw hardly any locals riding – it was mostly tourists. Perhaps the high price (3 bolivianos, about 27p) puts them off.
There are sensational views down to the centre, and of the three peaks of Illimani in the distance. However, they are sometimes spoiled by people getting in the way (pic).
On the way up you can look down into people's houses and yards (pic). No chance of nude sunbathing here any more, then.
You also fly over the Cementario (pic). This isn't a place you can buy cement. Sometimes shop titles are misleading in Spanish. A ferreteria doesn't sell ferrets; it's an ironmonger. You can't buy rope at a tienda de ropa, only clothes. A joyeria doesn't sell joy, but jewellery. And a cementario is a cemetery.
The view from El Alto, at the top, is pretty awesome (pic). Somewhere down there is the hole-in-the-wall restaurant shortly to serve me a hearty three-course lunch for £1.50.
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