Days 202 & 203 - Sunday & Monday 9th & 10th April 2006

After the coldest overnight bus in the world we arrived in La Paz shivering and in need of some food, a hotel and cup of coffee. It took a while but we eventually managed to acquire all three and we could get on with the day, which was spent organising odds and ends and booking our bike ride down the worlds most dangerous road. After accomplishing most of what we set out to do we treated ourselves to Burger King!

My guidebook is The Rough Guide to South America. In it, there is a selection of 36 things ‘not to miss’ in the whole continent. On of these so called unmissable things is known as the Witches Market in a touristy part of La Paz. What with all the hype we went along to look at a sprawling market selling some really weird stuff, but what we actually saw was about five stalls selling some herbs. And of course baby llama foetuses. Which is about as weird as I would expect, but it was on such a small scale it was hardly worth a mention in the Rough Guide, let alone making it one of their highlights of the whole continent.

Most of the shops in the area had given over to selling Jewish Pants, which is probably not what they are actually called but as every Isreali in South America wears them every day, its is what I have affectionately come to know them as. They are these stripey pajama-like trousers that frankly look ridiculous. If anyone wants a pair put your order in now, and I will bring you home some!

To overcome our disappointment we made our way to the self proclaimed 5th best bar in La Paz (4th on Sundays when the usual 4th best is closed) Olivers Travels where we had an impromtu drink. Using some decent judgement we decided to stop in the early evening as it probably wasn’t a good idea to hurtle down the worlds most dangerous road on bike with a hangover!