FROM the Witches' Market selling love coloured lagoons in the south-west, Bolivia is an extraordinary South American country with many weird and wonderful attractions.

Downtown in La Paz, the administrative capital in western Bolivia, is a dichotomy of contrasts. On its northern side, leafy plazas, office towers, shops, hotels and restaurants flanking its main boulevard of El Prado give it the air of a metropolis.

A few blocks away, towards the south, the city is like a huge bazaar, with steep streets, sidewalks and squares, occupied by a jumble of markets and thronged with crowds of mostly Quechua and Aymara women wearing wide skirts, colourful shawls and bowler hats.

The Quechua and Aymara comprise the majority of about three dozen indigenous groups who make up 60 per cent of the country's four million population.

Read the full story in Tuesday's edition of The Straits Times' Life!