Things That Decay, Things That Rust

Imagine 10,000 stripped-down used cars, each separate component - wheels, bulbs, starter motors, nuts, bolts, springs, steering wheels, bumpers, floor mats, plugs, crests, carbs - placed together on blankets along a piece of land stretching from the top of Walthamstow High Street to Springfield Marina and back again, then back down a bit more...

In a Barbie World

This is the market at El Alto, La Paz´s twin city in the sky, built around the bowl of the valley.

We´ve reached it via the brand-spanking new teleferico, another cable car system designed to connect the people to the city.

At the moment (being omly a month old) it's so popular with tourists and locals that there's a 40-minute queue just to get on board, and it's he still quicker for commuters to take the bus!

The views are spectacular over the city, of the mountains, the huge cemetery, the thousands upon thousands of redbrick houses perched along the hills all down to the centre.

Yes, we have no bananas

Running parallel with the car parts are mountains of electrical components, new and secondhand clothes, mobile phones, millions of pirate DVDs, food stalls, a sinister pile of naked Barbies, watch menders, haberdashers, household goods, tools, sportswear, toys, the surplus of a hundred armies, timber... you name it, someone can sell you it. I stood still for too long and one bloke offered to buy my camera.

Yeah, it´s a market, but it is ridiculously huge. We have to give up walking the length of it after an hour, to start walking back to the teleferico.

Still, a new watch battery for a quid for Kim, and a new body warmer for me ("North Face", less than a fiver), so no complaints.

Queues...

Views...

A football match

More stuff,  houses, volcanoes and storm clouds

We like La Paz a lot now. It is grubby, busy, cramped, ramshackle and noisy, but great fun. The architecture, when you can see it for the posters and signage seems to span from Victorian to 40s and 50s office blocks, with some 70s horrors and a few precipitously Quixotiesque "penthouses".

Our hostel appears to be in the builders´ supplies neighbourhood, as there are more hardhats, hi-vis vests, pick axes and powertools than you can shake a yardstick at, and all exquisitely modelled by zombie construction workers.

A city walking tour takes us to the walls of a prison city within a city which is 'run' by the inmates, the witches' market for some aphrodisiacs, viagra and more dried llama foetuses, and the huge 45-block fresh produce market.

Our guide is Jill from Lincolnshire, who has been here for 20 years, together with Ariel, a young Bolivian-Californian returnee.

The ladies of La Paz are tough old boots, (some of them Cholitos - female wrestlers). In their big skirts, petticoats and bowler hats they run the business side of the markets with an iron fist. At their stalls twelve hours a day, possessive of their pitch and jealous of their neighbours, whether rich or poor (and there is no way of telling, apart perhaps from their gold teeth 'grills'), they are proud people.

I am too scared to photograph them, which is unfortunate, as they do make the very best pictures!

So yes, we really enjoyed La Paz after all, but after a couple of frantic days we're off to sunny Sucre to hopefully rest up...