El Alto And Aymara Mansions

It’s something I’ve only experienced in Bolivia. Amazing architecture, great background information & just over the top all around.

While the driver/guide was competent and obliging, the sights did not correspond to what was promised, especially the Whipala complex in El Alto. A different range of more spectacular cholets was expected...

Luis was very knowledgeable and friendly and knew a lot about the culture of building the cholettes. It gave us a few great views of El Alto and we saw a ton of cool buildings!

Very fun and informative tour of El Alto, a visit to several Cholets with their creative and meaningful designs and also a trip to the Whipala Condominiums. Natalia did a great job explaining everything and also providing me many insights into Bolivian life. Many thanks!

The tour operator went beyond and above to provided their exceptional service! The tour was fun, lots to see such colourful and beautiful buildings, awesome street paintings, cable car rides etc.. it was just a great tour. Highly recommended! Thank you so much for a wonderful memory 🙏

Wonderful tour. By far one of the best I have ever taken in my life and I travel a lot for work and leisure. Luis my tour guide was incredible. He had a lot of knowledge about the history of Bolivia and I definitely learn a lot. I felt totally like a local in this tour since we had to take a mini bus full that local use daily. Then we took a cab in el alto to tour around and of course we took different lines of the teleférico. By far one of the best and most surreal tours I have ever done. Highly recommended. FYI the pictures that Luis took me were outstanding. Great photographer included. Thanks a lot !

We wanna thank Luis for the most unique adventure of El alto. He made the trip fun and informational.

We took this tour and the city tour in La Paz with HanaqPacha Travel and both were equally perfect. The guides were knowledgeable, friendly, organized and abaolutely proactive theoughout the tours. The tours even took longer than expected because we asked so much and the guides didn't try to cut us off. I would rate this with 6 stars if possible.

La Paz and El Alto are such fascinating cities! Our guide Luis was so knowledgeable, we really learned a lot in just a few hours. I love when tours involve taking local transportation, as well. We took a short ride in a microbus, and then rode several lines of the teleferico to get from La Paz to El Alto. It was fun to see the cities from so high up. We learned that the teleferico exists because La Paz wasn't originally meant to be as big a city as it has become, but some compromises had to be made between the government and transportation unions. It's all very intriguing. The backstory to many elements of the cities make them far more interesting than you might think. I was very pleased with this tour. Great job, Luis!

On the morning of the tour, around 11 am, we got a message from the tour operator asking whether we could cancel or do the tour another day. We only had less than 48 hours in La Paz, so I said no. The tour operator replied an hour later and said they would have the tour. We showed up at 3pm and were greeted by a guide who confessed that she worked for the tour's office and not as a guide. She really tried her best and we are grateful for that, but her English was very basic and she had little knowledge about the history of El Alto, the Chole5s, etc. The only reason I gave one star, is because Veronica did her best. Otherwise this tour and tour company are not reliable.

Raphael, was great in taking me up to El Alto and explaining the cable car system. We then jumped in a taxi and went around to see the different cholets with him explaining the significance of each one. This is a great trip for any photographer or person that likes taking photos!!! I could have stayed up in that area for the full day.

Cholera are a very unique part of the culture of El Alto. When you have time it is well worth exploring.

It was more than I expected, as we not only saw El Alto from the cablecars, but got to walk around and even go into one of the cholets. Claudia was an awesome guide.

A really interesting tour showing parts of el alto that many tourists just don't see. Maria did a great job showing me around and explaining things. Only criticism is that I didn't get to spend enough time at the wiphala condominiums.

Fernando was a great guide. He was very knowledgeable about his city and the history/culture of Aymara and the artworks. He was careful to make sure we were comfortable and moving at a good pace on the tour. I recommend this tour to get a sense of El Alto and the Altiplano beyond the La Paz city limits. 5 stars!

Excellent trip . Highly Recommended . Our guide Fernando is a highly edicated young man with profound knowledge of Bolivian culture, history and folklore which expanded from ancient centuries to contemporary times. Fernando showed us unique buildings, structures and cholets and we travelled with the most sophisticated cable car public transportation in the world. See La Paz from above to embrace the city!

The tour is very interesting as you visit El Alto take the funicular and visit some special Aymara mansions (we visited two of them). Everything was well organised and I am fully satisfied.

This is an excellent tour and a wonderful way to get a flavour of El Alto and to see some of the incredibly opulent cholets and mansions. Highly recommend. Excellent guide with real local knowledge.

I thoroughly enjoyed my El Alto & Aymara Mansions tour w/Juan. He has a personal interest in the architecture and has visited most of the city's cholets out of his own interest, and his English was impeccable. I had read an article in National Geographic and was thrilled to be able to visit these unique buildings. The highlight of the tour was a visit to the Condominio Wiphala, a public housing project with artwork designed by Mamani Mamani. These were a visual feast - bright colors representing various elements of Aymara culture. This was a truly enjoyable and fitting way to end my trip to Bolivia.

1. The Trip Advisor guarantee on cheapest prices is rubbish. It is cheaper to book and pay with the company direct (20% cheaper in fact) 2. The tour was advertised for 4 hours, when in fact it took 3. 3. The guide (Franklin) was excellent - he spoke a bit fast which meant that some of the group could not keep up, but he knows his stuff. He was supper helpful on logistics too. 4. The buildings we visited are fascinating as a reflection of culture - it is not my favourite achitecture, but interesting none the less.

This was one of the best day tour I have ever taken. First of all, the guide was outstanding. Super nice guy and he really was able to explain the culture. There were long teleferico rides over El Alto, which were spectacular. Everything was incredibly well organized and interesting. This tour gives you an idea about the culture of El Alto, and it really is unique. For me, this was the highlight of a 4 day visit to La Paz.

We did the Aymara mansions tour with Juan. This tour is very nice as it goes beyond the typical tourist routes. First we took the cable car to reach El Alto, then we jumped in a taxi to navigate into this vast district/city. The first stop was beautiful aymaras mansions painted by Mamani Mamani which we could observe and photograph. Then the second and third stops were « cholets » buildings inspired from Freddy Mamani architecture. We could enter and have an overview of the interior design of these buildings. Then our guide brought us back to the starting point by cable car. Throughout the tour, Juan was very informative about the history of El Alto, La Paz and the Mamani art. I highly recommend this tour for anyone who wants to go beyond typical tourist routes and wants to learn more about Aymara culture/art.

We booked the Cholets tour very last minute after seeing it advertised on a poster where we were having lunch on Calle Jaén. Our guide, Mariana, was fantastic - she told us she was a tourism student on a placement at the agency, and we were so impressed with her knowledge of La Paz, Aymara culture, Bolivian politics and much more besides - she had an answer for all our questions! The tour was great, starting with a spectacular cable car up to El Alto then a visit to the Wiphala project and two very different cholets. We were able to see a side of the city that we probably wouldn’t have been brave enough to visit on our own, and we learnt a lot - highly recommended if you’re interested in indigenous culture and architecture in Bolivia!

Ruben was a fantastic guide - his range of knowledge was truly impressive. We had such a fun day touring the amazing Cholets of El Alto city, and he continued to be a helpful contact for the remainder of our stay in La Paz. Thank you!!

There's a lot of experiences that get promoted time and time again in tourist guidebooks about La Paz and Bolivia: The Death Road biking tour, Tiawanaku, The Witches Market, etc. But one of the region's most unique and fascinating features is hardly ever discussed, and that is the abundance of candy-colored Aymaran Mansions (or "Cholets" as they've come to be known) that pepper the city of El Alto. One can be found on almost any street in the city, but the best way to see the most elaborate exteriors and interiors is to go on this expertly curated tour. Our guide, Ruben, was an incredible wealth of local knowledge that contextualized this regional phenomenon in local history, lore, politics, and culture. Ruben was also very generous with ancillary advice about traversing the city in the safest and most fulfilling ways possible. A very friendly guy who I wished was around to answer my questions for the whole duration of my stay in La Paz! You won't regret this introduction to a brilliant new style of architecture!

Fernando was AMAZING. So nice, tons of info, and bi-lingual (spanish/english) if you need it. There were three of us in my group, and we were the only ones on the tour. My husband and brother-in-law both speak spanish, and I’m learning, so the tour was primarily in spanish, but he could tell if/when I didn’t understand something and would stop to explain. We got an amazing experience of the teleferico. Lots of great little facts and just riding over top of the city was incredible. We road over mercados, soccer games, the cemetery. It was really beautiful. Really enjoyed every stop of the trip in El Alto. We went to areas that we’ve never explored on our own and you really get to see parts of El Alto/La Paz that are not touristy at all. We were able to go in to a cholet right as a wedding was starting. We didn’t stay long, but it was so cool to experience. Coming back to in to La Paz, Fernando was so nice to show us good places to purchase various items like hard to find movies or Api (a typical la paz drink)

The tour is really interesting and allows you to discover in depth El Alto and its incredible cholets. Our Guide Luis was great, full of information and exciting anecdotes! We highly recommend

A very original and exciting excursion, thanks to the quality of the explanations given by Fernando, who is an outstanding guide, very attentive and delicate in more than one way.

visite très authentique et originale. on apprend beaucoup de choses sur la culture et le mode de vie bolivien

We made the tour to get to know the Cholets and it was amazing! The tour is not very well known among other tourists, but it should definitely be included in the list of things to be done in La Paz. You know places that would surely be very difficult to see by themselves! Our guide was Fernando, he was very attentive and explained us a lot about the history of the Bolivian people, the differences between El Alto and La Paz. A very smart boy! My expectations with the tour were not very high, but they were surely exceeded!