Reprise: La Paz

Last February we spent a week in La Paz over two visits. We loved running on the Malecon, and we spent a fun evening at the Carnaval parade and celebration, but overall came away with a pretty negative perception of the place for two reasons: Bob lost his wallet there, leading to a couple weeks of hassles with Mexican and Washington bureaucrats (which of course had nothing to do with La Paz); and secondly Cathryn got stopped and extorted by a couple of traffic cops, an experience which left a really bad taste in her mouth.

Having now spent two full weeks in La Paz while attending school, we’ve had the chance to reappraise our feelings about the city. This time we came away enormously positive feelings. First, the city is an authentic middle-class, cosmopolitan Mexican city of about 250,000 residents. We walked through El Centro (the downtown area) and saw hundreds of little shops that had nothing to do with tourists or gringos and everything to do with meeting the needs of the local population. We went to restaurants where everyone (except us) was Mexican, and we were able to have tamales and empenadas for less than a dollar from sidewalk carts. We felt completely safe there, and people were polite and helpful. Overall a great place we’d be happy to have the opportunity to visit again.