La Paz

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As always I am behind on my updates so I am going to try a different approach - write about what I am up to at the moment and fill in the gaps later!

At the moment I am in La Paz, Bolivia which is the highest capital city in the world at 3,400 metres, although constitutionally it isn't actually the capital and it should be in Sucre in the south of the country, where the Judicary still sits.

I arrived at about 5 o'clock in the morning of 6th of May and after grabbing a couple of hours sleep in the apartment of a couple I met on a tour the previous weekend (James is English and his wife, Maughe, is Bolvian) I went to the language school I had been in touch with previously to register and I started classes that afternoon.

My first impression of La Paz was that is was a lot more modern than I was expecting and I was immediately taken by the hustle and bustle of the place, perhaps I am a city person at heart. The centre of the city sits in a valley, hemmed in on 3 sides by steep mountain sides on which houses and buildings seem to be clinging on precariously Terrain Map of La Paz . The city drops away to the south to Zona Sur, which is said to be the posher part of the city, and a few hundred metres above on the west side sits 'El Alto' ahuge expanse of houses and buildings on a flat plain which has built up rapidly over the last few years.

Photo of La Paz

Later on my first day in La Paz I moved into a house that the school had arranged. I wasn't taken by the house initially, the owner seemed a little bit crazy and spoke English really well and for a few days kept speaking to me in English, which wasn't the best for practicing my Spanish. The house also smelt a little of the 3 cats that lived there but after a couple of days I felt happier. It wasn't so much of a homestay (with no people to talk to and practice my Spanish) but that weekend I had my first "Couch Surfing" experiences (for 4 days running from Friday to Monday) and met some great people - locals and foreigners, and I was able to speak lots of Spanish. Here's a description of Couchsurfing from the website: "CouchSurfing is a worldwide network for making connections between travelers and the local communities they visit". Couch Surfing

I took Spanish classes for the next week and a half for 4 hours a day with two different teachers for two hours each, one from Bolivia for grammar and the other for conversational practice. Afternoon classes straight after lunch and at altitude proved to extremely difficult and I felt sleepy for most of the classes! I wasn't helped by the abundance of cheap set lunch menus here, I was paying from around £1.20 ($1.80) to £1.80 ($2.70) for a 3 or 4 course meal every lunchtime.

After the week and a half of classes I felt ready to have a break and found a great 5 day biking and boating trip Bike&Boat - from Sorata (about 3 hours north of La Paz) to Rurrenabaque in the Amazon Basin - more in the next update.


I returned to La Paz on Saturday 23rd of May by plane from Rurenabaque in the Amazon Basin and I have been staying with my friends James and Maughe since then. In the evening I have been socialising and in the day just pottering around. I am going to leave La Paz on Saturday to visit Lake Titicaca before heading up to Lima in Peru, where I need to be to take a flight to Nicaragua (via Miami for a 18 hour stop-over). In Nicaragua I am going to catch up with a friend and study at a school for a few weeks, and after that probably head down to Ecuador and Colombia towards the end of July.

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