We took a drive up to El Alto on Saturday. About 539 switchbacks later, we got to an outlook where we could see the entire city. La Paz is huge. It really is amazingly large. Not to mention the fact that it has molded itself to the ridiculous topography of these mountains. Every valley and every plateau is filled with houses. Neighborhoods creep up the sides of the basin that La Paz sits in. Below you can see the high-rises in the downtown area.
Off in the distance, you can see the largest mountain around, Illimani. I think our neighborhood is somewhere in one of the valleys towards the back of the sprawl. We're outside the downtown area of the city in an area I compare to Georgetown in Washington.
Traffic laws in La Paz are more lax than what we are used to. Last night I saw a public service announcement on tv encouraging drivers to pay attention to red lights. I believe these announcements take the place of traffic tickets.
So, it was no surprise when we were coming down from El Alto that we got to a switchback with a construction vehicle parked in the curve. Just past the curve there was a car parked on either side of the road, leaving only a narrow path for traffic. Just as we came around the curve, a bus going uphill stalled, stopping the uphill traffic. The one passage way quickly filled with upstream traffic. Within 30 seconds we had reached full traffic jam status. This must happen rather often as everyone calmly rolled down their windows and, using polite hand gestures and verbal instruction, maneuvered their cars within inches of one another, clearing the space and relieving the bottleneck. Just normal Saturday afternoon traffic, I suppose.
PS: I think this road would be one lane in either direction back home.
2 comments:
Do you have your car yet? Or was this a rental? It looks scarier than the Beltway in rush hour.
No car yet. But we had a driver, thank goodness.
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