Arriving at La Paz

La Paz airport is not at La Paz, it is situated on even higher Andean ground in the town of El Alto. The shrunken architecture of El Alto makes no sense from the air when you are looking for a city. A mass of orange brick boxes; an unfinished Lilliputian mass of housing on a hillside appears through the clouds. As the plane lands the houses do not seem to get any bigger, only more clearly defined with rough cement protruding from the roughly laid bricks.
The airport continues the theme of orange, with terracotta walls and linoleum floors. The customs officials appear to be in combat uniforms, deep green with epaulettes and a range of starred buttons on the shoulders to signify chain of command. The men are leathery with fierce stares, off putting until they smile a very white smile and begin to collect the voluminous and useless entrance paperwork all entrants to Bolivia are made to complete on incoming flights.
It is enough to sign the back of one green form to gain an entrance visa. The insignificant and easily lost green paper must be produced on request throughout a Bolivian stay and then returned to be presumably needlessly filed and never looked again. All entrants have it this easy save for those born in the United States, a reciprocal tit for tat of procedural difficulty means to get in US Citizens have to pay. The queues are segregated with the disgruntled heading for a toll booth with todays rate of $135 dollars displayed. The sign removable presumably to allow for increases or reductions  in the rate depending on the political weather between Bolivia and the US.
I was met by a Bolivian friend Gracie. She had woken her small daughter and her father and had them all lined up to meet me at the airport entrance at 6.23am. Pappi, as she called her father had made a flask of tea from coca leaves and brought a red mug for me to drink the tea from. Immediately I was in his jeep I was handed the flask and told to drink the hot brown liquid that tasted the way I imagined mud may taste. Only this and eight hours rest was needed to avoid altitude sickness. The red blood cells in the body need this time to recover. This was explained, globules rojos, Pappi insisted and ocho horas, the only spanish I could understand.
The descent from El Alto to La Paz is indeed made through clouds. Within minutes of drinking my herbal rescue drink I was hanging to the underside of the lowest and the most billowing....