Things to Do in La Paz

Teleférico ride over El Alto

From the center you glide uphill in a glass bubble, the roofs of La Paz peeling back like terraced fields until the altiplano opens wide. Below, miniature micros honk, the smell of burning plastic drifts up, and the Cordillera Real cuts a jagged white horizon that makes your phone camera give up.

Witches' Market on Linares and Sagárnaga

Dried llama fetuses swing overhead like dusty marionettes, the air thick with incense, coca leaf, and the sweet trace of beeswax candles. You'll hear Quechua haggling over amulets and, if you linger, a vendor might hand you a cup of mocochinchi to taste - peach and cinnamon boiled down to syrupy comfort.

Cholitas wrestling at Multifuncional de La Paz

Sunday afternoons, pollera-clad wrestlers slap the mat to drums and brass bands. The crowd roars as two braids whip through the air; you'll smell popcorn, feel the wooden bleachers vibrate, and maybe catch a flying confetti streamer in your beer.

Moon Valley scramble

Ten kilometers south, the clay spires look like half-melted candles. Footpaths crunch under volcanic grit. Every step sends up a dry, mineral smell. From the highest ridge you see the city's tin roofs shimmer while the wind whistles through hollow hoodoos.

Coca museum inside the Mercado Rodríguez

A single room stacked with vintage scales and black-and-white photos of miners chewing wads of leaf. The curator lets you handle raw coca - earthy, almost grassy - and explains altitude tricks over the clatter of butchers' cleavers next door.

Sopocachi - low-rise cafés, weekend craft market, and the kind of neighborhood where old men play chess under street lamps

Casco Viejo - 16th-century doorways, nightly serenades from courtyard guitars, and easy stumbling distance to the Witches' Market

San Pedro - prison walls turned mural gallery, budget hostels above bakeries that open at dawn

Miraflores - park benches with Illimani views, mid-range hotels near Sunday street fairs

El Prado - neon cinemas, 3 a.m. salteña stands, and the most consistent Wi-Fi

Calacoto - leafy malls, embassy bars, and a splurge-level hotel zone if you want altitude without the chaos