What is it?

La Paz is the world's highest administrative capital, a city that spills down the walls of a vast Andean canyon in a chaotic cascade of red-brick houses, colonial churches and glass towers, with the triple-peaked glacier of Illimani standing sentinel at 6,438 metres above it all. Arriving from the airport at El Alto, you look down into a bowl of a million lights and immediately feel the thin air tugging at your lungs. Down in the streets, the sensory assault begins: the hiss of pressure cookers selling salteñas, the honking of minibuses, the smell of woodsmoke and frying api, and the sight of cholitas in bowler hats and layered pollera skirts trading dried llama foetuses and herbal amulets in the Mercado de las Brujas. Above the mayhem glides Mi Teleférico, the largest urban cable-car network on Earth, turning a commuter ride into a silent, panoramic flight over rooftops and ravines. The city is a collision of Aymara spirituality and modern Andean swagger — where you can watch cholita wrestlers body-slam each other on a Sunday afternoon, then sip coca tea in a 16th-century courtyard. Nowhere else on the planet feels quite this vertical, this high, or this gloriously unpolished.

Where is it?

La Paz sits in west-central Bolivia, tucked into the Choqueyapu River canyon on the edge of the Altiplano, roughly 3,250m in the wealthier lower valleys and 4,150m up in neighbouring El Alto. El Alto International Airport connects to Lima, Santiago, Bogotá, São Paulo and Miami, and buses link the city to Lake Titicaca, Copacabana, Sucre and Uyuni. Visit during the dry season from May to October for crisp blue skies and Illimani views; late May and early June bring the spectacular Gran Poder festival, when tens of thousands of dancers take over the streets.

What makes it worth it?

Few cities make you feel so physically and emotionally altered simply by being in them. Travellers routinely describe stepping out of the airport and thinking 'I have never seen anywhere like this' — the geography alone is disorienting, a city built inside a crater with mountains for walls. Ride the red line cable car at dusk as the lights flicker on across El Alto and the sun sets pink on the glaciers, and you'll understand why people call it the most dramatic urban view in South America. There's also the joyous absurdity: bowler-hatted grandmothers hurling each other from wrestling ropes, zebras dancing in the traffic to teach pedestrian safety, shamans reading coca leaves beside internet cafés. La Paz doesn't polish itself for visitors, and that's precisely the gift — you leave with the sense of having genuinely encountered a living, breathing Andean world rather than a curated version of one. Years later, it's the thin cold air, the smell of the markets and that first vertiginous view into the canyon that stay with you.

How accessible is it?

Logistically La Paz is easy — flights are frequent, taxis are cheap, and Bolivia is one of the most affordable countries in South America, with hostel beds from $8–15, decent hotels $30–70, and a filling almuerzo lunch for $2–4. Budget travellers get by on $25–40 a day comfortably. The real challenge is altitude: at 3,600m most visitors feel headaches, breathlessness and fatigue for the first 24–72 hours, so plan a slow arrival, skip alcohol, drink coca tea or mate, and consider acetazolamide from your doctor if you're sensitive. The city's steep streets are genuinely tough on the lungs and knees, and it is not well suited to those with heart or lung conditions or limited mobility. Visa requirements vary — most Europeans enter visa-free, US citizens need a visa (obtainable on arrival for around $160 with the correct documents). Add-ons like mountain biking the Yungas 'Death Road' ($60–100), cholita wrestling nights ($10–15) or a guided city tour are easily booked once you're there, no advance planning required.