Ahmad: We got to the bus station in Sucre with plenty of time to spare (we had heard stories of travellers not being let onto the bus as they didn’t turn up at the correct reporting time and their seats had been sold). We paid the bus terminal tax (you have to pay this for using any bus station in Bolivia) and sat down opposite the berth where our bus was expected.
The bus turned up at around the right time and we were all set to get on, except that nobody had told us that our luggage (big back packs) needed to be weighed. The bus driver kept telling us to go back into the main bus terminal for something but we couldn’t understand what for. Eventually Laura lost the plot a little and ran up to the ticket office where they told us we had to have our luggage weighed. She ran back grabbed me and her bag and eventually we got our luggage tagged. We got onto the bus with literally 2 minutes to spare.
After the drama, the night bus from Sucre to La Paz was what we had expected (neither of us slept on the bus as it was very smelly – think wet dog / sweat). We were sat right at the front of the bus adjacent to some kids that moaned and cried for a lot of the evening.
On arrival in La Paz (very very tired at this point) we checked into our hostel and spent the day getting our bearings and generally milling around. We did visit the Coca museum which was interesting (Coca Cola actually contained cocaine till the 1920’s and is still flavoured with coca leaves today!).
The hostel was almost empty though we met a cool traveller called Michael who had been working / travelling / surfing around South America for 8 months. The hostel beds were ultra comfortable with duvets rather than skanky blankets!
La Paz centre is in the midst of a valley with very steep hills surrounding it. The city is rustic, walking around you often get a wiff of urine though it’s nowhere near as bad as India. The city itself is absolutely huge with loads of hole in the wall restaurants everywhere.
After a good night’s rest we were up bright and early to do our Christmas shopping. All the gift / curio shops in La Paz are dirt cheap (saying this it depends on how poor / dirty you look. A lady that Laura bought a jumper from tried to sell us a scarf for £5, she charged an older English couple £15) so 5 hours later we had our Christmas shopping done. We decided we needed a coffee afterwards and found a nice coffee shop. On arrival the owner told us that he was going out and after bringing us some coffee told us to enjoy or coffee, relax for as long as we wanted and handed over a padlock to the coffee house so that we could lock up when we left! This is actually typical of Bolivians in general, they seem to be very trusting (with tourists at least) and don’t try to rip you off too much.
A girl we met in China had recently contacted us, and after a hard day of shopping we went to her hostel to meet her. We had a few drinks and before we knew it was 1AM. This is really late for us now so we spent the following day bed ridden.
After our day of recovery (I can’t believe we now need a full day to recover from a night of drinking) we set out with Michael to buy some fruit. We walked to the main fruit market, whilst Michael chatted to locals (his Spanish was pretty good) and locals mocked him about the size of his nose. On our way back we stopped at a hole in the wall shop (everything is hole in the wall in La Paz, from laundry to eateries) for a bottle of coke when this random guy started talking to us. It turned out he was a former prisoner and now a guide at La Paz prison (the book ‘Marching powder’ is based on this prison) and he was just hanging out waiting for his friends.
We walked back to our hostel via the presidential square (where President Evo Morales works – not literally in the square). In the evening we went to a locals bar (no smoking signs everywhere and the locals all chain smoking) for a couple of drinks. We got chatting to an elderly Bolivian tourist called Moriano Rowlands who spoke a little English and whose grandfather had been English. It was quite entertaining given that he kept forgetting our names and must have asked us about 15 times! His friend just kept wanting to ching glasses with us, every 5 minutes or so!
We spent the next couple of days eating at some sandwich places in the market where I would order 1 sandwich and Laura would order 2 (on one day Laura had 5 meals consisting of Fruit for breakfast, 2 sandwiches for lunch, fish for dinner, followed by another sandwich!).
Laura: The sandwiches were awesome because the food in Bolivia really is shit. About 50% of the food is fried and although everything comes with salad, that is just a recipe for the shits. On our last day we went to get a fix of more sandwiches and the lady serving us could not take her eyes off Ahmad, she kept saying he was beautiful and eyeing him up! We left pretty quick because Ahmad was feeling uncomfortable – the lady told us we should come back again!
Early the next day we got up and headed to Cocacabana.