An interesting few days in La Paz

After our impressive first glimpses of the city on Friday evening, our bus took us down to the city centre. We were slightly disconcerted when the tourist police (no, I'm not making that bit up) got on the bus just before we were due to get off, escorted us off and took details of all the taxi drivers who were picking us up. They also told us to take great care of our belongings, and although reassuring in some ways their presence did seem a little at odds with what appeared to be a bustling but not immediately threatening city. Anyway, we were pleased that we had pre booked the Adventure Brew Hostel (complete with its own micro brewery and a free beer for each night of your stay!) so that we didn´t need to wander round the city with all our belongings.

We dumped our stuff in our very nice room and then spent a good few hours in the bar before heading out with a group for dinner at a highly recommended albeit somewhat unexpected Lebanese restaurant. (Mum, in answer to your question re food will post on this soon I promise, although the short answer is everything from pizza to alpaca!) We had a good evening with tasty food and good wine, and incapable of partying despite our best intentions (yes, it is age) crashed out by midnight. On Saturday morning we enjoyed our first lie in for at least a week - never let it be said that the life of a backpacker is too easy!

Our first stop on Saturday was the Coca museum, which was really interesting as it mapped the use of the coca leaf in the culture of this part of the world, looking of course at its illegal uses but also its health benefits to the generations of people who have always chewed it. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering and quickly realised that La Paz is not really a city with lots of must see sights, but one that you can walk around finding different things round ever corner - not least the weird witches market area!

There are throngs of people around all the time and many markets and street stalls selling everything from fruit juice to safety helmets to huge popcorn to pads of paper. The shoeshine boys are also everywhere, many of then looking more than a little sinister because they tend to have their faces covered with ski masks. Apparently this is to disguise their identity as there is a stigma attached to their work, and they are often just trying to make ends meet to support their families or studies. There is clearly poverty in La Paz, but also a greater degree of wealth than we expected, but I suppose that´s the way it is always going to be in the centre of a large city.

When we headed back to the hostel on Saturday evening we were chatting to a girl we knew, when we realised that the girl sitting next to her was our ex housemate Helen´s friend Tania who we had met in London, proving once and for all that it is a small world! We were up in the bar eating excellent (and well cooked!) BBQ food and chatting to her and several others, but unfortunately Andrew began to feel unwell, followed by Cath on Sunday morning.

The Lebanese food on Friday night was blamed as a couple of other people who ate with us were also sick. It wasn't anything serious and we´re fine again now, just frustrating that we missed out on a few days although it was always going to happen at some point. We also felt that we could have missed out on more if it had happened elsewhere on our trip so far - we had no urge to mountain bike down the world's most dangerous road, which is what everyone else seemed to be doing! In many respects the pollution of La Paz made us feel worse; being a city in a basin isn't necessarily a good thing, especially when you see the aging cars and buses spouting out fumes all day. As we were driving up and out of the city early this morning, the smog was very evident below us.

We´re now in Oruro, south of La Paz and the most northerly town in Bolivia's train network. We arrived this morning on a smelly old bus which went the last half hour seemingly minus one tyre, but can´t complain for 4 quid between us for a 3.5 hour trip! We're now waiting for the train to Uyuni from where we will start our salt plains tour. Really excited not only about the salt flats, but also our train journey which is supposed to be spectacular - we have splurged 6 pounds each on top class Executive class tickets so looking foward to 6 hours of comparative luxury...will let you know how it goes!

Cath (& Andrew)