The White city, The High city, and that city in Scarface

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Well once leaving the hard to leave La Paz we boldly moved on to see the other attractions of Bolivia. We were unsure of what to expect from the next few places we would visit and were more than pleasantly suprised with what we found.

First stop was Cochabamba, a fairly large city outside La Paz and on the way to Sucre. Reasons to visit this place appeared to be limited, and our main reason was that it was home to the fictional drug lord who hanged his enemies from Helicopters in the film Scarface ( or it was my reason anyway!!) Once there however we found it to be lovely and temperate, a much needed change from the coldness of La Paz. We found a lovely bar run by a Cuban guy (although not Tony Montana), Tom and I drank ourselves silly on 1 pound cocktails whilst Julia stoically drank a litre of Sangria on her own which she paid for later in the evening. The other and more practical reason for a visit to Cochabamba was to see the Christ statue, which is only a foot or so smaller than the one which appears in Rio and looks over the city with a scary kind of presence (which I suppose is the point), and is incredibly impressive even though during the week you cannot enter said statue as you can at weekends which enhances the view no end.

A couple of days there was enough and after yet more purchases in markets for which Tom is now a fully fledged fiend, we moved on to the ´official´ capital of Bolivia dubbed the white city. Sucre is amazing, a gorgeous, warm and relaxed place which boasts a lovely climate and incredible architecture of a colonial type which is almost all white ( hence the name). A perfect place to relax and sit in balcony bars overlooking the Plaza drinking endless beers and doing pretty much nothing, great. Not the height of excitement to be sure but an awesome place to just wander round and buy ( if you wish, and Tom did) more artisan type gifts for yourself and others.

After 2 or 3 days we moved on again to the highest city in the world, Potosi. This place´s main attracton is the opportunity to visit some of the working mines that operate in the area, however, with us all being a little claustrophobic and not wanting to inhale more asbestos than was strictly necessary, we gave that one a miss. Although you are able to throw sticks of dynamite around, which according to the hilarious health and safety laws (or lack there of) in Bolivia was apparently a good laugh. Apart from being in the highest city in the world there is nothing remarkable or even fun about Potosi, and good God is it cold, sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo cold it cannot be described. Not wishing to waste more time freezing we promptly left and headed to Uyuni, from where we would visit one of Bolivia´s best attractions, the vast and seemingly never ending Salt Flats.

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