El Alto
In reality, to be precise, La Paz cannot be dissociated from El Alto ; if the Bolivian capital is cramped at the bottom of its valley, its twin city, which stands on the plain above it, serves as a reservoir of population: half of the population, the most modest, lives there. The two cities, blending indistinctly into each other, meet on the steep slopes (800m of difference in altitude!) that go up to El Alto -or down to La Paz, as you prefer.
La feria d'El Alto, also called Mercado del 16 de julio, occupies every Thursday and Sunday the streets of a very large part of the city, along the main axis. And twice a week, it is Ali Baba's cave; everything, everything, can be found in this gigantic market, from pets, to furniture, clothes, music, fast food stands, cars, electronic devices. A lot of manufactured goods, and also a lot of counterfeit goods. Beware however of pickpockets, the crowd is particularly dense!
Another reason to climb the 800m of vertical drop: every Sunday at 4 pm, the Polifuncionnal de la Ceja stadium is the scene of wrestling fights (lucha libre) between "Cholitas" (women dressed in traditional costumes), of a rare but particularly colorful violence, which has a huge success in the region!
