La Paz food tour

LA PAZ FOOD TOUR - La Paz shouldn't really exist here. At more than 3,600 metres above sea level, Bolivia's capital-in-all-but-name spills down the walls of an enormous Andean canyon, surrounded by mountains and watched over by the snow-capped bulk of Illimani. The air is thin, the nights are cold and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the food is built accordingly.

This is a city of serious appetites. Long before the Spanish arrived, highland communities were cultivating potatoes, maize, quinoa and chillies in one of the world's most challenging landscapes. Many of those ingredients still form the backbone of paceño cooking today, worked into steaming soups, thick drinks, pastries and hefty plates served by market cooks and cholitas whose recipes rarely trouble a cookbook.

Our four-hour movable feast dives straight into that world, cutting through the historic centre, Mercado Camacho and the organised chaos of Mercado Lanza in search of the food that keeps La Paz running.

Start with one of Bolivia's most iconic bites - the salteña. Its burnished, slightly sweet pastry shell hides a rich beef stew so gloriously juicy that eating one cleanly requires concentration, technique and probably several attempts. Locals somehow manage it without spilling a drop. We make no promises.

Then disappear into the markets. Behind pyramids of fruit, sacks of potatoes and stalls piled with Andean produce, tiny kitchens send out a relentless stream of lunches. This is where we'll attack humintas, soft parcels of ground maize with a gentle natural sweetness, and blistered pastel fritters hiding molten cheese beneath crisp pastry.

Wash them down with api, a thick purple-corn drink perfumed with cinnamon and cloves. Warm, sweet and almost custard-like, it's exactly the sort of thing people invent when they live three-and-a-half kilometres closer to the clouds.

And then come the cauldrons. Sopa de maní doesn't look like it needs to prove anything. Peanuts are slowly worked into a rich, velvety soup with vegetables, potatoes and herbs, producing one of Bolivia's great comfort foods. It's humble, deeply satisfying and capable of making the chilly Andean air seem considerably less important.

Bolivian cooking gets stranger with falso conejo, "fake rabbit". Despite the name, there's no rabbit involved. Instead, beef is cloaked in a deeply savoury sauce and surrounded by the potatoes and highland staples that anchor so much of the country's cooking. The curious name comes with a story, but we'll save that one for the table.

There are more heavyweight contenders ahead. Fricasé brings tender pork swimming in a chilli-spiked, aromatic broth, a restorative Bolivian favourite with something of a reputation for rescuing people after overly enthusiastic nights out. Then comes lechón, richly seasoned pork with potatoes.

Between tastings, we'll thread through grand plazas, crowded market aisles and streets where cholitas in bowler hats sell produce beside office workers grabbing lunch and minibuses perform acts of traffic manoeuvring that appear to defy several laws of physics.

This isn't Bolivia arranged neatly for visitors. It's everyday La Paz - noisy, crowded, slightly chaotic and fuelled by recipes that have evolved at altitude for generations. There are plenty of ways to understand this extraordinary city. You could start with its museums, its colonial history or the mountains looming above it. We prefer the soup cauldrons.

La Paz is one of the world's highest cities. We highly recommend spending at least a day or two acclimatising before taking any tours to prevent altitude sickness.