In the southwest area of Bolivia lies area called Lipez. It is home to arid deserts, salt plains and a wealth of mineral deposits.When one of the largest, and maybe the largest ever found, silver mines was discovered just above a small town called San Cristobal and the concession was purchased by the Canadian mining consortium Apex Silver the problem arose - what should we do with the town below?

This little museum is hidden away up an alley off Calle Linares aka ‘Gringo Street’ due to all the travel agencies and clothing or crafts shops. 
Whilst tiny in size it is bursting with information about the little green leaf that has been held sacred in the Andes for centuries. The displays themselve look a little worn and the whole setup can seem a little amateur, but if your patient enough to follow the self guided tour whilst reading the provided infomation in your own language (available in many languages) you will no doubt learn plenty of facts you didnt know about the coca plant.

One of the things that sticks in the mind of most visitors to La Paz is the traditional dress of many of the local women - a bowler hat worn slanted on the head and a long decorative skirt called a pollera or often 2,3 or more of them! These distinctive looking residents of the capital city are known as cholas or cholitas and have been wearing this traditional dress for many years.

The witches market or ‘mercado de las brujas’ in La Paz is surely on every tourist’s must see list when visiting the capital. On Calle Linares, just off Calle Sagarnaga (aka Gringo Street), it seems more touristy than mystical nowadays as the artesian stores make up the majority of the area. At the Calle Santa Cruz end of Linares however there are still a few genuine stalls selling all sorts of weird and wonderful, well wonderfully disgusting, things. Dried Llama fetuses, dried toads...

Fans of the football team "La Paz FC" took it upon themselves to "kidnapp" their team as an act of protest when it was annouced that the team would start to play their matchs in a different stadium.The team is actually from the city of El Alto , which is situated above La Paz City itself and is considered a city in its own right.

Travellers to Bolivia that witness one of the large street protests are sometimes, unsurprisingly,  shocked and always intrigued if they seeminers letting off dynamite in the streets as part of the protest.  The miners are a strong political force in Bolivia and they will usually be involved in any large scale protest, descending on La Paz in groups numbering tens of thousands to march through the streets to make their collective voice heard.  Along the way they will detonate small amounts of dynamite in the open streets which explode with a thunderess bang that vibrates through the buildings all around.It is very rare anyone is hurt during this noisy display as the miners are well versed in keeping people away and only use small amounts but to the uninitiated it can be quite alarming.

Driving in La Paz is not for the faint hearted. If there are traffic rules then seemingly nobody knows what they are. If a car leaves a couple of inches between itself and another then most likely a bus of taxi will try to enter that space. If they do actually use their indicator lights at all it will most likely be after they have already maneuvered. Amongst this chaos wonders the pedestrian and many from La Paz seem to have developed a suicidal bravery for crossing the roads, walking out in front of mini buses in the hope the drivers highly tuned reactions will serve him well to avoid hitting them. As some drivers are often not so highly tuned or some pedestrians a little too over confident this results in many accidents.