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Bolivia
Up in the Air

Laying in a huge valley at an altitude of about 3800 meters above sea level, La Paz is just breathtaking. But it gets even better when you hop on one of the cable cars that have been introduced to the public in 2014. It will lift you up above the roof tops and give you an E.T. bicycle ride experience you will not forget.

Shooting Location: La Paz
Coordinates: 16°29'39.0"S 68°08'51.0"W
Thanks to: Sergio Rivero

It is known that there is an oxygen tent at the airport in La Paz for passengers, who, at 4,100 meters, run out of breath after landing due to the thin air. Fortunately, I was able to get used to this altitude having spent two weeks in the Peruvian Andes, before my bus went over a high plain, grew closer to the edge of a gigantic basin and, with one final bend, brought La Paz into view.

In the evening sun tens of thousands of unrendered, red-brick houses lit up with glistening corrugated-iron roofs, which were permeated by a maze of streets and alleyways. These dwellings spanned across each available stretch of land on the valley floor (at 3,400 meters) up until the steep edges of the basin and the Altiplano.

When we rolled into the city center on the bus, a cable car suddenly flew over us. It looked like the sort of cable car you would find in an alpine ski resort. I was surprised because I hadn’t read anything about a cableway in the travel guide. But I would not have been able to read about it either, which I later discovered upon asking at the hostel, as the facility was, in early 2015, only 6 months old. This technological achievement was celebrated in the city with huge placards and banners, and not without duly thanking president Evo Morales for his gift.

The cableway was built by the Austrian group Doppelmayr and is the first of its kind in Bolivia.

While everyday life in Bolivia was becoming more and more frantic, the operation of the cableway remained well regimented right down to the last detail. Stewardesses helped you on and off the cable cars, cleaning teams sprayed the cabins with an air freshener after each journey and, at each station, the toilet attendants issued receipts for access to the facilities, which were about as large as the little bits of toilet paper they handed to me.

The cableway was an experience for many of the natives that were captured for posterity. It was the same for me. And I floated a few meters over the rooftops and photographed the streets and the alleyways, the front lawns and the backyards, flying past a football stadium, over graveyards and watching military trainees during their physical training at the barracks.

I wanted to round off my tour of the city with a series of portraits of the natives and decided to photograph the Bolivians travelling in the cable cars. They were to look at the camera whilst I was catching the city in the background from an aerial perspective. However, my idea turned out to be an impractical undertaking. I did not realize the situation in which I found myself and which might be best described as having been crammed into a crowded lift. Who would want their photo taken by a stranger in a lift? Besides in my opinion, the Bolivians are one of the more reserved of peoples and my Spanish was not sufficient to break the ice in a situation like this. It simply wasn’t going to work and I had to come up with another tactic.

So I took the cable car back down to the bottom where the more affluent part of the city is found. I took up a position next to the register at the lower station, hung my camera around my neck and smiled pleasantly at every native. Based on their reactions I tried to guess who would be open to having a brief chat with me and having their photo taken. Every time I thought that I had come across a suitable person, I would join them in the queue for the cable cars and tried as best as I could to be put in the same car by the stewardesses. Once it took more than an hour before I made any kind of promising eye contact with anyone. If I managed to be allocated the same cable car as this person, there was a good chance that my plan would work.

In the end, I got the series of portraits together and was happy about the insights that the passengers had given me into their lives.

By now, the stewardesses in the stations also knew who I was and what I was up to. They even threw me a few helpful looks to put me in the right cable car with the right people.