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La Paz, Bolivia, the highest administrative capital city in the entire world, sitting at 3,650 m. That's 12,000 ft above sea level. But that's not the highest point of the city. The highest point of the city is around 4,200 m. That's almost 14,000 ft. Just for reference, there's parts of this city that are higher than the highest mountain in my home country of New Zealand, Mount Cook, which is around 12,000 ft. So you can understand how the altitude hits you. The locals here have a lot of red blood cells. Today we fly into the capital city and are instantly hit with the effects of altitude sickness. The city has so much going on. In the center there is a prison that is run by the inmates and the government do
not have control over. Cocoa leaves are used all over the city for treating altitude sickness and because cocoa leaves are deep part of the spiritual culture here and Bolivia is one of the biggest players in the global cocaine trade. specifically the third largest producer in the world. The DEA is now coordinating with Bolivia's special force to fight drug trafficking. Bolivia has a history of political unrest and recently there has been some political riots on the streets. What is going on in Bolivia? Violence and chaos in the capital with rising levels of inflation and economic turmoil. Can this government survive?
And is Bolivia now on the brink of collapse? Shamans roll the dice every day, living on huge cliff edges where their houses can fall off the edges any minute. They've seen their neighbors houses fall off cliffs, but they have trust in Patchamama, mother earth, to protect them from this death. It's one of the most unique cities I've been to in the world. Let's dive into it. Welcome to La Paz, Bolivia, the highest capital city in the world. coated mountains with these brick structures as far as the eye can see. One of the most unique capital cities I've ever seen.
Today, we're going to go deep inside the city and see who we can come across and what we can see. A massive thing to look out for here is the altitude sickness, obviously, because you don't acclimatize. You just fly in. The airport, I believe, is at 4,200 m above sea level, and where we are is the same. So although the city is labeled as 3,600 m above sea level, that's down in the town. So up here you're at these huge altitudes. We're going to show you some ways that you can get past the altitude sickness today. Is it comfy? Yeah. So this is the local bus. This is one of the local bus. How much did you pay for us?
Ah, yeah. Uh, two three Olivas. Three. Three each. This bus is seriously struggling up this hill. Here, deep in the heart of Le Paz, sits one of the most unbelievable places on Earth, San Pedro Prison. Built in the 1890s to hold just a few hundred inmates, it now crams thousands. A chaotic, self-governing city where the guards stay outside the walls because they're terrified to go in. Inmates run everything. They buy and rent their own cells, luxury suites with hot tubs and cable TV for the rich drug lords, ratinfested corners for the broke. There are shops, restaurants, billiard halls, a football field, even schools and nurseries where prisoners kids live and play. It's a full-blown society ruled by
gangs right in the center of the city. Drug bosses and murderers call the shots. They tax protection money, enforce their own laws with violence, and flood the place and the streets outside with cocaine cooked right here inside the walls. Lawless, overcrowded. It's absolutely insane. One of the craziest stories is about a man called Thomas McFaten, a British Tanzanian drug smuggler busted in 1996 with kilos of cocaine. Broken homeless on arrival, he started charging tourists for guided tours through the prison. He showed travelers the bizarre normal life inside, introduced them to gang leaders, and even sent them home with samples of prison-made cocaine, and eventually he bribed his way out of prison. And just
to top it off, even a former president of Bolivia has ended up behind the same walls on corruption charges. No one is untouchable. A prison city where the inmates are kings, drugs are currency, San Pedro isn't just a jail, it's a whole another world, and it's absolutely mental. So, I don't know if you could really call this a prison. At this stage, it's basically a huge criminal enterprise right in the center of La Paz, the capital. So, I've seen these kind of fake corpses hanging up on lamp posts. What are those fake corpses supposed to represent? Alpha robbers. If the neighbors here catch someone robbing, they will be there. It's essentially like a threat. So if the people in the community
capture a robber, they're going to hang him up by the lamp post. Exactly. So you've seen a lot of the buildings around here made out of brick and they're not painted. And the reason for that is if they're not painted and not completely finished. So you'll see some rough edges and they're not completely finished. Then you actually get taxed less. So it makes more financial sense to not finish the building and save money. Whereas one like this, this is obviously finished, which is quite actually rare to see. You'll see most of the buildings are just made out of brick. But a building like this is where they have events and weddings and everything. So they'll pay a lot of tax.
And this would cost like $2 million to build. There's actually a helipad on the top of it. And they have weddings and everything here. And this is considered the upper echelon here, but they'll obviously make a lot more money, so they can afford to pay those taxes. They've even got a Statue of Liberty coming out of it. So, there's a tradition here in Bolivia that's quite extreme. I'll go out and say that. There's kind of a unspoken rule that if you're building something grand like a building like this, even like infrastructure or bridges and things like that, then you must give a human sacrifice and often people actually volunteer to be that human sacrifice like homeless people.
Can you tell us a bit more about that? Cuz it's kind of crazy, huh? Yeah, it's incredible because it's illegal to kill people, but it's very traditional say don't get drunk with strange because you will finish in one of the new constructions. They take advantage of people who are drunk. Yes. They get drunk, they sleep and buy. No. Really? Yeah. We have some uh illegal clubs or choose houses. People go there to get drunk. They pay for it until die. And the owner says like they have contacts of engineers, architects, workers, and they say, "Hey, we have to here. You have to come." So there's illegal clubs where people pay to go get drunk until they pass out and then the club owners contact architects and engineers or
project managers and say, "Hey, I've got a person to sacrifice for your building site." Exactly. That's insane. I know. A building like this like it's pretty certain that somebody would have been sacrificed. Yes. Well, in the beginning, as you can see, this house next to this one is small. So, we offer a baby llama. Okay. It's baby small. But if it if the building will be like this, we offer something big, something. We use llamas for houses, ps, baby pigs for restaurants because we the tradition is that we ask for permission to the mother earth to the patchamama. Patchamama is mother earth, right?
Exactly. For us, patchamama is everything. So many things. For example, if when we drink, when we share a drink, like a beer, we always put a little bit on the ground for her, then we say, "Cheers, thank you, Pam Mama. Salute." Then we try. Building a building like this, you're giving a homeless person sacrifice to Patchamama, to mother earth in order to ask for the blessing of the new building. Yes. Also for protection. protection for the workers to make sure nothing happens while the construction sites because there's been stories of like maybe there's a big bridge being built and the construction workers say, "Well,
has there been a human sacrifice?" And if they say no, then they say, "Well, we're not going to work there." Right. Yes. They say, "No, no, no. Later, you can call me later. Call me when you've got a dead." Yeah. Wow. This is actually a caterer. So you can if you're having a wedding or something, you can call these people on WhatsApp here. They'll cook your food behind these walls and serve you at your wedding and make sure the dog keeps any unwanted intruders out. Are those testicles? No. What are they? We call chunos. It's a dry potato.
We had a long process. Once it's ready, you can eat right. Eat it. Eat it right now. Or you can wait like 10 years, 11, 100 years. People eat 100 year old potatoes. Yes. Really? Yes. It tastes the same. I've noticed on all the advertisements that the people are often white Europeans. Why is that? Because they look more nicer, like beautiful, handsome. This is where they recycle all kinds of metals. You got aluminium and all different kinds. You got copper up the top. There's a lady breaking it down with a hammer in here, stripping copper out of engines. hard work. The ladies just sit in
there for like 10 hours a day just smashing bits of engine and ripping out the copper. So all over La Paz, they have these cable cars that go to different areas of the city put in by the government. Really good initiative and it's really affordable. It cost the same as public transport like one of these vans and you can get across the city and if there's political you know protest or something then you just go over the top. Really amazing to see a government initiative like that. Incredible help to the citizens. One of the most stressful moments in traveling is when you arrive in a new country without working internet. Like here in Bolivia, when you need internet
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incredible deal. If you're going to a couple countries, you can grab a couple Sims. A huge thank you to Eim.io for sponsoring this video and keeping me connected here in Bolivia. Now, let's get back out there. Easily one of the most unique cities I've been to in the world. It's just like, look at these buildings. Higher high altitude, the unfinished buildings to avoid taxes. The aesthetic of the city is definitely unique with the brick unfinished buildings. I'm unsure why the government would want to give an incentive to people to not finish their buildings because obviously then you have unfinished buildings all over the city and it does look quite unfinished
everywhere you go but you know it is it its own aesthetic but it's you would also think that a government would want the city to be developed. What would be the main religion in La Paz? Cuz I've seen a lot of Catholic churches and everything but then there's also the patch mama side. It's a mix of different religions especially Catholic plus Iara culture. When we talk about culture we talk about mother earth about tatinti which is the sun. We talk about the mountains like Imani the most famous. So it's a combination between culture and Catholic mixing both. People believe in both at the same time.
Yes. So this establishment here, you can see they've offering, you know, the TV, they've got Netflix and YouTube open 24 hours and you can rent by the hour. So I'm sure you can imagine what kind of hotel this is. A lot of Bolivians live with their parents for most of their lives, even up to the ages of 50 and beyond. So when they want to go out with their partner and, you know, do what they have to do, then they'll come to establishments like these. So these are quite popular. It costs about 60 of the local currency per hour. You get the YouTube and Netflix. So, this restaurant serves a very special dish. So, we're going to go in and see what that is. There's the famous soup. We'll go and find out what's inside.
It's a surprise. Do you like surprises? I do. Okay. And this is made right here. Yes. Gracias. Explain to me, Willie. What do we have here? Uh, this is one of the most famous seed. It's called Calo de Cardan. This is for breakfast normally. Yeah, normally. And can you please tell us the special secret ingredient in this soup? The special and the most important ingredient is the bull's dick. Right. Here we have What's Is that the penis? Yeah. Oh, wow. Are you going to eat that?
Yes. I think I'll pass on the penis today. No penis for me today. No penis for you. That's the girl's penis. Buenos. And you were quite hesitant to try that for the first time, right? But then when you tried it, you fell in love. Yeah. In the beginning, I was like, uh, maybe later, maybe not now. But I was like, okay, yeah, why not? I was like, oh, it's tasty. And since that first day that you tried it, you've never been able to get it out of your mind, right? No. Never forget. I like no Oh, this is for fever. So, you're going to make tea out of it. I saw this in videos. Very hard to get it, right? Five.
Is it rare? Yeah, very rare. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yummy. What's that? Do you want to try? Gracias. It's like halfway between a fruit and a like a pepper something like a mix. Yeah. It's called in Bolivia. We have two different type of cocka leaves. Okay. Can we get some? Well, like this one we have so many women. Why does it have women there? What does that have to do with cocoa? Is the model just to get people like attention? Yes.
Really? But there's no like women in there, right? It's just cocoa lids. No. Yes. Just women. Yes. It's just a model. Or maybe after chew cocoa lids, you can see a girl like that or the girls looks like parade. Here they come. The good one is from the jungas. It doesn't have kimix. And the other one is from chapari. Chapari is huge. It's big. So that's why they smash it with so many chemics on here. And that's what they make cocaine out of. Yes. Uh-huh. But for chewing, they put some things in it and like flavors, different type of flavors like that one. So we have banana flavor.
There's one that says criminal flavor there. Oh yeah. What does that do? Does it get you stimulated and energy? Well, if you It's like to drink like so many Red Bulls. So, this is the banana. The red. What's the criminal? No. This is for feeling as a criminal. Basically, what do they do is take apocalypse inside of a bag. Then they put so many things like chemics, like flavors to make it chemicals. Chemicals make it to make it stronger like this. Nothing. Then they smash it with a combo like cocaine is made in a way not like that but in a similar way like it's cocaine is if you chew this hours it has the same effect. So you start as a criminal.
See this one. This is like the classic. Also, we've also got to get this. This is like This is bigger. 96% alcohol in like a plastic bottle. Yes. The homeless, they get drunk with this. How much does it cost for one of these? Three bibos. Three. That's the same as the bus ride. Exactly. Do you want to try this? Maybe. Yeah. You choose. Yeah. Oh, just see they put broken glass on the top to stop criminals jumping over the wall.
There's a stream running through the valley here and the locals come and wash all their clothes and then leave it out in the sun to dry. Huge construction site here. Looks like it's going to be one of those shiny buildings. We're going to have to find a hu a few homeless people for this one, probably. How do they kill them? Is it cremation? They get drunk. They normally they have good meals, good food. Sometimes they pay for a prostitute to have their last night and then they get drunk until sleep. Once they are asleep, they put it on the ground and then air on him. Bury them alive.
Yes. Basically, they put alcohol cocoa leaves and then bury them. Yes. They put it like this under the buildings. Yes. Under the Yes. on the really on the foundation. There could be dead people under this building here. And that's what it's going to look like. So, it's going to be a huge World Cup memorial. How many hours does he work every day as a taxi driver? It's your choice. Wow. 16 18 hours. 5:00 a.m. to 10 11 p.m. sleeps and then wakes up and comes straight back.
We're going to ask if he took the soup daily and yes, he said yes. Is he happy with the current state of Bolivia? He said yes. Sometimes it's raining, sometimes not. Sometimes he's lucky, sometimes not. Sometimes he has job, sometimes not. But in general, he's okay because when the locals are not happy, I feel it already. In Bolivia, it seems that people focus very heavily on energies, right? It's a very spiritual place. Exactly. Some tourists, they're like the people from Laas are very rude, very angry. probably because we are shy. But once we open a conversation, we start to talk about so many things.
Okay, let's have the car leaves cuz this is illegal in a few countries, right? But it's legally here. Yeah. In Europe, this is illegal, right? Mhm. You want to try it? Corn. It's very strong flavor. Like Mhm. Tastes kind of like soap. Like it's really strong. Oh, what do they put in there? What's inside? Like chemicals or something? Oh, I don't know. The flavor. Um something to make it uh stronger. Like sugar.
Yeah, definitely sugar. Extremely sweet. Stevia, you know, stevia. Oh, yeah. It's stevia. That's what it is. This is very It's so sweet, man. I think I prefer the natural one more. Maybe tomorrow we're going to try the natural one. Okay, we'll try the natural one another time. Oh, no bueno. Yeah, it's your first time. Has like a really strong artificial sweet flavor. Very. I wonder what the criminal one's like.
Okay, so back at the hotel and this is in the very south of the city. So we came from the top of the city in the cable cars. I cannot believe that cable car network, a Swiss company has made those cable cars. So they're really good quality, safe, comfortable, and smooth. We crossed over basically the entire city because the greater area of La Paz is like 2 to 2.5 million people and it's just an incredible site. It looks like you're on another planet or something. It is so unique. Very impressive to see that they've built that infrastructure with the cable car. It's almost hard to believe. It's like too good to be true considering, you know, the buildings and everything. Down here in the south is
actually where a lot of the rich people live and there's some mansions and things. I'll see you in the next video. We're going to this neighborhood that has a bit of a notorious reputation. So, we'll see how that goes. See who we can meet there. Apparently, it's a bit more frantic and bustling. So, we'll see what we can come across. Thank you so much for watching. And uh in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and
