La Paz is remarkable. A place like no other. It is buried in a bowl in the Andes, with the suburbs of the city stretching up into the heights of the mountains. The geography of La Paz is difficult to get to grips with, but there seems to be one central road that runs down its centre, and off that sprout a million different tiny side streets, heading off into the clouds. On these streets are crammed numerous different markets and side stalls, selling anything from saltenas to llama foetuses to toothpaste to digital cameras. My hotel is very well placed, [View Full Entry]

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My last day in sucre, and although sad I am excited. It is el dia de la madre today, because in 1812 or something the mothers rose up when their men had been killed and fought off the spanish. go madres! I woke up this morning at 7 (to set the scene i have been ill for 2 days, and hadnt eaten in 48 hours, because was too scared of the horror!), was forced out of bed by my host family, taken to the grandmothers house (who is a tiny bolivian woman, always laughing, loves to be the centre of everything, [View Full Entry]

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Well, yes, time for more news. Potosi was very eventful. Definately an experience, but have to say we were very pleased to get back to sucre on saturday evening! We left on friday (10 of us) after my afternoon spanish lesson at 4.30, taking a 3 hour taxi drive, in what might be termed a death car with a soundtrack of bolivian salsa music (oh, forgot to say i did salsa lessons last week which were so much fun, latin american men put english men to shame in the dancing stakes im afraid, although they are all about 4 ft [View Full Entry]

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On Sunday Tristan and I returned to Sucre, leaving lisa and galen in puka puka to finish sorting out their toilets! It is frustrating, for both tristan and I, because we do not speak spanish well and all the communication, teaching etc with the villagers is obviously done in spanish. So we got a bus back to Sucre, via tarabuco (a little town). There was a market here, and we bought chuspa (?think thats how you spell it!), little hand woven bags to hold our coca leaves in. Then got in a truffi (shared bus/taxi) for the long, hot, dusty [View Full Entry]

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I have now reached saturday 12th in my summary of the past few days. On the morning of Saturday, I meet lisa, galen, tristan to take a taxi to puka puka. They have been in Sucre to buy 1000 (later to be 3000) trees to plant in the village, and also to buy materials to build male and female urinals (I have been quickly initiated into the gritty details of toliet building, the problems, the different styles and methods. Again, as i am sure you are pleased to hear, i will come back to this later!) So, loaded up with [View Full Entry]

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This shouldnt really be called arrival, since I have been in Bolivia for a while, 5 days, but it seems like forever. But since this is my first entry, it should be called arrival, because that is where I will begin. The flight was fine to Miami, and the 8 hours in miami airport were fabulous because i ate my fill (and more) of american sugary products. Then of course I couldnt sleep so I wandered around in a daze, spending muchos dollars. The begining of the flight to la paz was great, was surrounded by bolivians and feeling very [View Full Entry]

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