And You Thought San Francisco Had Hills...

  La Paz, Bolivia, the capital of the country and the location of the the country´s main international airport.  At 11,942 ft above sea level, this sky high city is built onto crazy hills with a difference in height between the rich lower portion around 8,000 feet and the poorer upper section at 12,000 ft.  For scale, the heighest peak in all of Northeastern United States is Mount Washington at a height of 6,900 ft.  Houses are built on hills with enormously sharp decents, to turn off of the main road, one often takes an off ramp underneath the main road as each side street is a story below the previous one.  Often, only the eucalyptus trees with their long roots hold enough soil in place for houses to be saved from land erosion and plummet hundreds of feet.  The rich neighborhoods of the lower areas are placed here because there is a whopping 10 degree Celcius (20 degree F) difference in average temperature between the lower and upper sections of town, and the air is much thicker in the lower sections.  We marveled at how the city was built into these large hills, and were very glad that we had a bus to take us around...walking on the inclines was a full body workout!