La Paz and Cochabamba

Well its all gonna be fun today as we are off to cross the boarder to Bolivia - oh the excitement country number 2!!!! Getting soo many stamps in the passport its great (yes I am still only 5!!!). Its all quite odd though as we are not allowed to go through with Ybone as she does not have a working visa from there - I find that funny as she is working for a pretty big organisation!!! So we are on a bus for about 2hrs to the border where it was all real easy to get across the border as Bolivia and Peru get on real well - ahhh!!!! Hee hee!!!! OK Bolivia is great and I am only just here it is sooo cheap and at Bs10 to the pound we are laughing!!!!! OK a day of buses as we are on another one for about 20mins to take us to the ferry to get us over to the road to La Paz - OK I am never going to moan about our car ferry’s again………….seriously we are on a different boat as the bus is basically on a barge but this barge basically looks like a few bits of wood put together to take the buses and cars over - I did not think it would make it that’s for sure!!! So we finally get into La Paz at 5.30pm not a lot of time to explore and as its Ybones last night with us we all go out to an Asian restaurant that was fab, if you are ever in La Paz I recommend it hee hee!!!! Off to a bar to have a few social beverages and just for Ybone a game of Commando Chickens!!! Was a cool night and met up with 2 of the new girls for the group - Lesley from Canada and Steph from Oz (she studied with Denva).

Dave and I had real good intentions today of heading out and seeing La Paz……we met with Ybone in the morning to give her a tip for the work she has put in over the last few weeks…….it was all a tad odd as she has also been like a mate as well but hey that is the way and all that!!! OK I need to try and book my fight from Rio to Quito and its all coming up real exp not impressed so as we go out to explore I call Adina for her to research for me………well that is what big sisters are for!!! ;-) We head out for some lunch in a place with picturesque views - or so the footprints guide says……..hmmmm not good views and the place we chose seemed to have run out of food as well…….what that all about hey!!! So off we go to see some of the museums, OK so I trust Dave with the map and he is looking up a church and not the place we want to go to so we give up and head back to the hotel as Adina came up trumps and I have booked a flight from Sao Paulo to Quito as its sooo much cheaper and only a 6hr bus ride from Rio!!! Hee hee we then find out the museum we wanted to see was in the same place as lunch - D´oh!!!! ;-) Ok so we have a meeting with new guide at 6.30 so we are being lazy and chill in the room for a few hrs!!!!

Well, Joaquin, has gone up in my estimations as he has 2 bottles of wine and crisps for us all - love it!!! Well it all seems to be pretty cool to get us to Santiago and we have the new itineries!!! Off we go to a Cuban place for dinner - wa spretty good and still loving the cheapness here - it will all change when we go to Chile!!!!

Oh today (6/1/09) we head out in the morning to the San Pedro Prison which we can get a guided tour round with the prisoners!!! Yes its all odd but seriously real interesting as well. We were taken in and introduced to a prisoner that speaks English and a body guard - well at least we were being safe whilst being there!!! It was all pretty interesting to find out how the prison works - to me it seems more like an ikle community. There are basically 7 sections and we went to 6 of them as the 7th one is where the rich prisoners go, mainly the Drug Barons!!! The other 6 are more men that cannot afford the 7th sector!!! It was real interesting as the families can actually live in the prison with the men that are prisoners and the wives and children can come and go through out the day - madness!!! I have to say though after hearing a lot of the stories I did not feel threatened at all. OK so to make up for y´day we then headed onto a tour of the moon valley which is all natural and is fab the way the land has become - it looks like you are walking on the moon - hence the name!!!! Dave and I decided to head out for dinner on our own and found a real nice place all candlelit and everything - who said we can not do romance!!! Hee hee!!! We then headed off to an English pub to meet up with the others………had another bottle of wine and as we were finishing they all turned up - did not stay too much longer as was tired and off to Cochabamba tmw so need some kip as only there for 24hrs!!!

So we leave La Paz at mid day for a 7hr bus to Cochabamba - seriously this was the worst bus trip so far it seemed to go on forever!!! But we did make it and we all went out to dinner to a real nice place that was recommended by Joaquim which was cool, but yes early to bed as lots to do tmw!!! So a few of us all went up in cable cars to see a statue of Christ - well apparently its bigger than the one in Rio so well sort of has to be done!!! It was real nice up there and you get a great panoramic view of the whole city and it’s the 4th (ish) biggest in Bolivia so that was real cool………..Not really a lot else to do and we have to get a great night bus tonight so got a good late lunch and chilled before the bus to Sucre!!!

OK internet in Surce is pants pics will follow!!! ;-/

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