Bolivia Guide
La Paz
Museo de la Coca
Address: Calle Linares, south of Sagárnaga Opening time: Daily 10am–7pm 
www.cocamuseum.com Price: $1
The excellent Museo de la Coca dedicates itself to the small green leaf that is both the central religious and cultural sacrament of the Andes and the raw material for the manufacture of cocaine. Crammed into a couple of small rooms, the museum gives a good overview of the history, chemistry, cultivation and uses of this most controversial of plants, imaginatively illustrated and explained in English and Spanish. There are excellent photos showing the cultivation and processing of coca – along with military attempts to eradicate it – and of its manifold uses: as a herbal medicine and ritual sacrament by Andean campesinos; as a means of warding off hunger and exhaustion by Bolivian miners; and, transformed into cocaine, as a recreational stimulant by needle- and pipe-wielding Westerners.