I feel you shed a really unfair light on La Paz. La Paz was definitely one of the most untouched by american cities we’ve been and that was a great experience.
Amazing and glad you made it out. Speak the language of the people, Spanish, get involved and talk to locals. Your Turn: Have you ever accidentally gone to a place more dangerous than you thought? You could also go from Puno to Copacabana and stay there for a day. I was supposed to do that before we went…. Le journaliste John Pilger, dans son film La Guerre contre la démocratie (The War on Democracy), s'est rendu dans cette ville pour enquêter sur des massacres ayant eu lieu durant les évènements de 2003. Everyone has different experiences when they travel and it sounds like you have traveled a lot. Seems you guys are easily frightened. While Meg normally plans the details of most of our day trips, I was in charge of this one to El Alto… so we were of course flying blind with respect to how much danger we could potentially encounter. El Alto is mostly inhabited by Aimara people. la ville de plus de cent mille habitants la plus haute du monde, Apolobamba Integrated Management Natural Area, Pilón Lajas Biosphere Reserve and Communal Lands, https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=El_Alto_(Bolivie)&oldid=174360864, Page avec coordonnées similaires sur Wikidata, Catégorie Commons avec lien local identique sur Wikidata, Article contenant un appel à traduction en anglais, licence Creative Commons attribution, partage dans les mêmes conditions, comment citer les auteurs et mentionner la licence. I would never focus on this aspect of any city though. What a spoilt dumb wanker this Tony is!! This will be my first time in South America so I am trying to make wise decisions. L'accès à la capitale est aisé grâce à l'unique autoroute de Bolivie. Not aggressive. I mean… it also had iphones for sale. Thanks for your comments on this, and hopefully this will warn off anyone who is thinking about going to the market just to “check it out”. The only thing I can believe is you travel like a tourist as I say expensive clothing and expensive things hanging out. The 10th time I just didn’t bring a backpack…. Just walk slowly to the immigration area.

Aerocon mainly provides air links to communities in the Beni Department via their hub Trinidad. Show Prices. All rights reserved. There had been some reports of tourists being kidnapped by fake mini-buses and being held for money. Don’t be a fearful American and break out of your shell, connect with locals and the rest will fall into place. We felt uneasy the entire time there, but didn’t feel in danger until we went back to the hostel and read reviews online. Westerners have forgotten how to be spontaneous and child like and have to have every day planned or they feel lost.. Very nice area. Hey Alex, lighten up dude – all they did was go to a local market.Being the “seasoned” traveller that you are (wow 10 countries and even went to Canada!) From other people’s stories and our own experience, Asia definitely did not feel as dangerous. A moment later, someone came up to me and in broken english said- “you should leave, you can get robbed here”. I’m so happy to be a Spanish-speaking gringo. We were the only non-locals there, and someone did the crumbs-in-my-face pickpocket trick to me (although I instinctively shoved my hands in my pockets as soon as they did this). This is the world's highest international airport; at 13,313 ft/4,058 m above sea level, it's almost half as high as a jetliner's cruising altitude, and takeoffs require a longer runway due to the thin air.

The city of El Alto is spread over a broad area to the west of the canyon of La Paz, on the altiplano. Now it's a big city with a population larger than La Paz. #3 Best Value of 15 places to stay in El Alto. This is a fine line between bravery and stupidity, and this moron put his partner in potentially extreme danger by being completley stupid, and a fly by night dreamer tourist type. They are cheap there. Pickpockets love working where tourists are just strolling around, so i’m sure this led to some of our negative experience. Getting sick from food when traveling is never our concern… in fact, the only time we ever got food poisoning was from the “western” restaurants we visited on travel days when our options were limited. which seemed like a fair deal to me.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying: Sorry we don’t have many of our own pictures! 16 de julio today for the Sunday market. We were the only non-locals there, and someone did the crumbs-in-my-face pickpocket trick to me (although I instinctively shoved my hands in my pockets as soon as they did this). Just to join the conversation about “dangerous rumors”, there seems to be a tendency in La Paz and El Alto to describe places as dangerous, which unfortunately perpetuates a culture of fear, particularly among tourists, but among locals as well. Theft was still a possibility, but armed robbery and aggressive confrontation seemed less likely. Do you know where you are getting in specifically in La Paz? The second was that we did not feel comfortable taking pictures of such poverty. Glad you had a good experience in Bolivia! I would recommend it to anyone. Be always open to new doors and opportunities! How long were there for and where did you stay? And then when we got home and did research, we saw reports of tourists getting robbed 6 months earlier at gunpoint on the minibuses that took us to the market. A lot of it definitely didn’t sell, but the people were so poor that they were just doing what they could. You have to wonder how a place like that survives. Please share below in the Comments section! Armed guards outside an arm, precautionary! La Paz dangerous? Every house in the city is behind locked gates and barb wire.

I’m not naive about that. I love Bolivia and especially La Paz. A Husband and Wife Travel Around the World. Thanks for sharing the other side of the story and I’m glad you feel so safe in La Paz! What is the local population gaining from the market. El Alto once have served as La Paz airport and railway service workers' living area. The best experiences ive had have been when ive had no plans and just set out on a walk and discovered places and people just going with the flow.. What you focus on you attract so if you focus on danger then you attract it! Remember your joy! I would agree that feeling unsafe and actually being unsafe can be two different things, but how a place makes you feel is an important part of what shapes our experiences. So far I have to say that everywhere we have been in Asia has felt very safe and not once have I felt in danger. Our story was just one moment in time while we were in La Paz. We did the opposite trip – coming up through Salar de Uyuni and Potosi and then going to La Paz and on to Puno. I love being crammed into colectivos just like the locals, exploring markets, wandering. Thanks for your different perspective, Harry. Or is is – like it was with me – because of the perception shaped by negative expectations? This was just our experience in La Paz and something repeated to us by others as well. What a nonsense review – nothing about what you said sounds ‘aggressively unsafe’. In recent years, Bolivia’s cholitas have been breaking social barriers, conducting television programs, working in offices, holding public posts, … Yes, you got it right, Kurt! We took a night bus from La Paz to the salt flats (if I remember correctly) and it was fine… the buses in Boliva weren’t as first class as the buses in Chile and Argentina (which were like first class airplane seats) but they were fine. Un quart de sa population n'a pas accès à l'eau courante. When I say the market had everything… it really did! Thank you for linking to our El Alto Market post. Even so, Johannesburg is survivable if you understand the dynamics and take sensible precautions.

El Alto market has reputation for picket pockets and bag slashers as above. The only problem… we had no idea where the exit was. La pluviométrie est très faible (330 mm) et se concentre principalement durant les mois d'été. (2 $ cnd.) People are People.

Although we have definitely found that sharing food with locals in any culture is one of the quickest ways to make friends. Im in La Paz now and my brother lived here for 6 years and he is a tall white guy and he never had any problems so why a tourist visiting for 1 week needs to feel scared i dont know?

I was at the feria on Av. As a very experienced traveller having been to ten countries and numerous cities in the Canada, whoops, really is fucking stupid. The market is an attraction in itself - you can buy stuff, see people, eat local food. The most dangerous thing is rumors that might stop you from exploring. Most international flights will make a stop over in Santa Cruz to pick up or drop off passengers. We’re always looking to share helpful tips about what people should do and see in La Paz as told by people that enjoyed it.

We don’t speak Spanish, so that definitely limits are ability to get immersed in a culture! It’s true we neither felt the safest while visiting the market but we never felt unsafe walking around La Paz or Sucre in general. So much of how you see a city comes down to a few memorable experiences and for whatever reason, La Paz never felt comfortable to us.

Just one experience I dropped several coins on the ground once probaly equally 100 USD and people in downtown La Paz poor most likely and really needing money started picking it up and handing it to me, I got everything I dropped. You can easily reach El Alto from La Paz by shared van ("mini bus").

I have traveled to many places, and I believe La Paz and El Alto are as safe as any other “developing” nation’s cities, if not more so than some other latin american cities.

You would not believe how easy it is to get lost. Joy isnt planned it just happens! L'eau provient des glaciers environnants et est difficile d'accès pour les populations les plus pauvres du fait du manque d'infrastructures d'acheminement de l'eau en ville et de l'insuffisance des retenues d'eau dans les montagnes.
There had also been recent kidnappings and robberies coming from the el alto market in the months before we visited. Elle est la ville de plus de cent mille habitants la plus haute du monde à 4 149 m au-dessus du niveau de la mer. Definitely interesting, but the day became a lot more exciting in hindsight when we got back to our hotel in La Paz and Meg researched where we had just been. This market literally had everything. Violence happens anywhere and you always need to be careful about what neighborhoods you are walking into. People will try and sell you fake iphones on the street and so on but just say “no gracias” and walk on. But we are also aware of how one experience/perspective is not always representative of the entire experience a city can offer. I think it will be fascinating to check out El Alto.

Sorry for the lack of our own photos! Older post: From Paradise To A Blizzard: Weathering Storm “Nemo” At The Hyatt Grand Central New York. Ultimately, it was a unique experience which is one reason why we travel! I have traveled m,any places Bolivia and the El Alto area for the last 8 years. So anyone could sell TRY to sell anything. They also say that la Paz is very anti American and that Americans need to be very careful. In big area at the right side of the road from La Paz (Che Guevara statue is a good starting point). I felt totally safe and enjoyed the time walking around eating food and looking for deals. It was super crowded, so I doubt any sort of violent crime would go down amidst all those people. If you had made yourselves seem like more of a target, things might have ended badly. Awesome! L'aéroport international de La Paz, l'un des plus hauts du monde, se trouve également à El Alto.

People tell you about horrible stories they have heard. To put this in perspective 105 000 people were killed in the USA IN GUN RELATED VIOLENCE in 2010 alone (source: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18319/priorities-for-research-to-reduce-the-threat-of-firearm-related-violence).


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