Bolivia 2026
La Paz and Santa Cruz de la Sierra Bolivia
June 2026
Escape from Alca-Paz!
La Paz, Bolivia, was the third stop on my 2026 South America Walkabout. I researched Bolivia and learned that Uyuni is home to a huge train cemetery and sits on the edge of the largest salt flat in the world. I also found out that Tiwanaku is a really old archeology site outside of La Paz. So I booked a tour that included an overnight bus ride to Uyuni from La Paz, a full day tour of the salt flats and train cemetery, and an overnight bus ride back to La Paz. One of the trains in the train cemetery was allegedly robbed by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid after they fled the USA to Bolivia in 1906. Then I booked a second tour for day in Tiwanaku, which is about an hour outside of La Paz. I had read multiple travel warnings to La Paz, but 1) I was planning to be outside of La Paz the entire time and, 2) I probably have some kind of disorder in that once I make firm plans I absolutely won’t change them for man or nature.
For those of you unfamiliar with La Paz and Bolivia, let me enlighten you with my days of experience. Bolivia’s main industries are political protests, political riots, and roadblocks. My first clue of trouble was when I woke up in Cusco, Peru the morning I was to fly to La Paz and I had an email notifying me that my tour to Uyuni was cancelled. I didn’t have a hotel the next two nights because of the overnight bus rides, so in addition to no tour, I now had no lodging. So I jumped on the internet and found another tour still accepting participants. The description said the entire tour was in Spanish. Which I still hadn’t managed to learn during my preceding week in South America. But the tour got me to Uyuni and provided two nights’ sleeping quarters on a bus. I figured I’d wing it on the Spanish. I then had to rush to get packed and to the airport since I didn’t have the foresight to budget the extra time in morning for researching tours.
My second clue of trouble was upon my arrival at the airport in La Paz. I absolutely love Uber, but Uber was unable to find a driver willing to take me to my hotel. It was about 2:00 pm and I had several hours to kill before my 8:30 pm bus to Uyuni. I wanted to go by the hotel I would stay at in two days, drop my carry-on bag and just have my backpack for the tour. I had researched Uber in Bolivia prior to my trip and learned they prefer an app called InDrive. InDrive is a little different from Uber in that you bid what you’ll pay and you can up the amount to attract drivers. I switched to InDrive, made a bid and accepted a driver, but the app notified me that I needed to walk around the corner to the Domestic Arrivals door to wait for pickup. Standing in front of the Domestic Arrivals, I noticed everyone, and I mean everyone, was exiting carry a large Styrofoam container averaging 2’x2’x3’. I later found out that due to all the roadblocks around La Paz, businesses were sending anyone they could to surrounding cities by plane for supplies. These were the passengers returning with the Styrofoam containers and frozen chickens to assist the police and military.
Finally, my third clue of trouble was when I arrived at the Panamerican Hotel to drop off my luggage and the very helpful clerk inquired why I was dropping it two days before my stay. His eyes grew wide with concern when I told him my plans. “There are no roads out of La Paz open!” he exclaimed. “You better check with your tour guide because he must have bad information.” I sat in the lobby - well one of the two chairs in front of the check-in desk that functioned as the lobby - and tried to reach the tour contact. The other point of concern was that the tour information only gave a pin on a map for the meeting point at 8:30 pm and no address. I could never get any response from the tour operator, so I finally sent a heated email that I was canceling and they better not keep my money or I would be so peeved. Like bad-review-level peeved. (I may have used stronger words than peeved. And I could have threatened more than a bad review.) Fast forward - they canceled the tour and issued a refund around 8:00 pm. Which means had I not decided to forego the tour in advance, I probably would have been standing in a field, probably with no iPhone connectivity, wondering where in the $%#&$ the bus was at 8:30 pm.
While I was struggling with all this, Paranair, the official airlines of Paraguay, thoughtfully sent an email that they had canceled my flight in four days from Santa Cruz, Bolivia to Asuncion, Paraguay. Because I didn’t have enough on my plate at that that moment.
The Panamerican hotel had a vacancy and was able to check me in two days early. Actually, based on the other guests I saw in the hotel and the fact that I was the only person on the entire 9th floor, I think they had like a 90% vacancy. Riots and roadblocks are not conducive to the hotel industry. Like the local hotels (ie, “cheap”) encountered earlier in my trip, the Panamerican had its own set of challenges. The hotel was missing some amenities. Like heat or A/C in the room. Zip. It was the start of winter and nights were dipping into the 30’s and 20’s. It was even colder if I converted to Celsius – usually below zero. They sent up a portable electric radiator-type heater at my request that only partially worked if I sat on it. And then only my butt would be slightly warm while the rest of me was a block of ice. I wore my winter coat the entire time I was in my room. At night, I shivered under a sheet, two blankets and a duvet. La Paz is also the highest capital city in the world at 12,000 feet which added to the cold. The city with both an altitude and an attitude.
Sitting in my hotel on the folding luggage stand (no chair provided with the room and the sharp radiator ridges on the space heater discouraged using it as a seat.) typing furiously on my iPad, I managed to move my flight sooner from La Paz to Santa Cruz de la Sierra, add a flight from Santa Cruz to Asuncion a day earlier than planned (no flights on any airlines on the canceled day), get a new hotel in Santa Cruz (previous one couldn’t accommodate an earlier arrival), and add a day to my hotel in Asuncion, all while shivering my arse off. Oh, and I had to cancel my day trip to the ruins at Tiwanaku because those roads were blocked as well. This one was outside the 24-hour notice requirement, so the refund was instant.
The next day started with breakfast, which was included in my $50/night rate. The buffet consist of wheat or white bread, one banana cut up so thin it covered a whole plate, and one honeydew melon cut to cover another plate. No eggs, no meat, no oatmeal, rice or other breakfast amenities. They did have strong coffee. The host was very apologetic and said they couldn’t get supplies due to the road blocks and this was all he could muster up. Perhaps he should look into 2’x2’x3’ styrofoam containers and some domestic flights?
After that filling breakfast, I walked La Paz some, but due to all the political unrest, was very hesitant to venture close to any government buildings, which dominate the old part of town where most of the best sites are located. One feature I was able to explore was the cable cars. Although La Paz occupies the basin, sides, and top of a huge canyon in the Andes the size of the Grand Canyon. When they list the altitude at 12,000 ft, I wonder where exactly they determine that since there must be a variance of 1,000 to 2,000 ft within the city. The public transportation system consists largely of 10 cable car routes of several miles each that cover the entire town. For the equivalent of $1.17, I was able to tour most of the town overhead. The cable car system in La Paz is the largest in the world. Given the rundown view I had of buildings, ancient cars, and decay everywhere, I was concerned about how well maintained the cables were as I scooted by dangerously high overhead! As a kid, I remember one of these falling at the State Fair in Dallas killing passengers and one person on the ground. As a result, they removed them from not only the State Fair, but also from Six Flags in Arlington as well. But they held up OK during my rides. On one of my afternoon walks, I accidentally ventured into a crowd of a hundred or more people making a lot of noise. I panicked thinking a protest or riot was starting, but realized a merchant had arranged four giant TVs in the front of the store facing the street showing a World Cup (soccer) match. So citizens that couldn’t afford to subscribe to a channel broadcasting the game, or didn’t want to buy a meal or drink to watch it, could watch it for free from the sidewalk and street.
On day three in La Paz I woke up at 4:00 am for my 7:30 flight. I had packed the night before, so was out of the hotel in 20 minutes and sitting in my InDrive-chauffeured car. We sped off into the night headed for the airport. And ran into a roadblock. The driver had to turn around and go back down the wrong way on the one-way he had just gone up. He then took a bunch of side streets that had recently been repaired with huge potholes. I was starting to feel good as we approached the airport that we might just make it when, wouldn’t you know, a #$#%@ roadblock!! Again, my driver was resourceful and managed to navigate some streets bordering dangerously close to the edge of the top of the canyon without any guardrails and find a route thru to the airport. I tipped him generously. I might have even doubled the fare. To $10 total. Rides are cheap in La Paz.
Boliviana de Aviancion (abbreviated BoA) is the national airline of Bolivia. BoA doesn’t have online check-in or even an app. They barely have planes. Seats are assigned at check-in. The clerk thoughtfully gave me a middle seat. I handed the boarding pass back and requested either a window or aisle, but preferably an aisle. He reluctantly gave me a window. Later on the plane, I observed my row was completely empty and the plane was only about 60% full. The middle seat he originally gave me had passengers on both sides. There were more than 20 vacant window and aisle seats. I think he is wasting his talents as a check-in clerk. He should be doing something more productive. Like setting up roadblocks around La Paz.
I finally arrived at the gate about an hour and a half before my 7:30 am flight and all my troubles are over. Right? Wrong! After a while I realize that there has not been a single plane to take off or land. As each flight on the board approached and passed the departure time, the time would then change a couple of hours into the future. Including my flight multiple times. The sky was clear in both in La Paz and, per the weather app, in Santa Cruz and all other listed destinations I checked. What the heck is going on? My Bride, monitoring my progress, later told me that she Googled and found out that the protestors had managed to set up roadblocks around the airport and not enough workers were getting thru to enable departures or arrivals. The protestors evidently learned about the frozen chickens being smuggled in thru domestic flights and took swift action to ground the birds. Around 10:00 am the first scheduled flight of the day finally boarded and took off from La Paz about five hours late. My flight followed about 30 minutes later.
I will conclude my stay in La Paz Bolivia with two interesting facts. First, the President of Bolivia that is being protested is Rodrigo Paz. So both the city and the President are named Paz. And for those of you not fluent in Spanish, like me, Paz translates to “Peace”. I think this city should be renamed Caca. I’ll leave that to curious readers to translate.
I finally made it to Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Still in Bolivia, but no protests or roadblocks here. It is the largest city in Bolivia, but is not the capital, so the protestors have left it largely alone. I only have the rest of the arrival day and one whole day here before heading to Asuncion, Paraguay. I researched local sites, especially ruins - archeology type ruins, not La Paz city-type ruins - and found out there is a UNESCO site called El Fuerte de Samaipata a couple of hours outside Santa Cruz. So I try to get a tour. The cloud hanging over me, however, has not dissipated. All tours have been canceled. Seems they have had excessive rain and the road is closed due to flooding.
My InDrive driver from the airport to the hotel kept typing into Google Translate trying to get me to use him for sightseeing and wanted to know when I was leaving so he could also take me back to the airport. He was doing all this on his phone while speeding in chaotic traffic. With no working seatbelts in his car. Then the app kept asking me to give him stars. I was thinking he had earned something other than stars
I found a free online walking tour and walked the central city of Santa Cruz on my full free day. It was much cleaner than La Paz and actually had some trees and grass. La Paz was almost entirely brown. The elevation of Santa Cruz is only 1,300 ft, so I was finally able to breath normally again. Well, when I wasn’t in the car with an InDrive driver speeding and either texting or translating on his phone. Early the third day, I headed to the airport around 5:00 am for a 7:30 flight. That was delayed. Multiple times. It finally left for Asuncion, Paraguay around 11:00. This time there were no roadblocks and other planes were taking off and landing. This was simple ineptitude by Paranair, the airline that canceled my originally scheduled flight. I fly these local third world airlines because 1) they’re cheap, 2) major airlines don’t fly these routes, and 3) well over 70% of their flights don’t crash. But there are some drawbacks. At least I’ve hired a car to drive me out of Paraguay and not fly Paranair. Provided Paraguay doesn’t have roadblocks.
These four days in Bolivia have been the longest year of my life! In 93 countries I have visited at this point, Bolivia is competing diligently with India and Ivory Coast to see who can be rated the worst. I really hated missing Uyuni and Tiwanaku, but not enough to return to Bolivia. If you get an opportunity to visit Bolivia, I highly recommend calling in sick that day. Or at least bring your own frozen chickens.
Bolivia no mas,
Keith