SucreI’m back in La Paz now, waiting for a few days for my Visa card to arrive at the embassy. The buses here were adventurous as they always are in Bolivia: flat tyres and aisles crammed with people. There was no need to run off the bus with everyone else as smoke poured out from underneath and people shouted “agua! agua!” this time though, as was the case on the 18-hour bus journey from Rurre to Trinidad a few weeks ago!

On the way up to La Paz, I stopped off at Potosí (the world’s highest city), and Sucre, Bolivia’s official capital. Just outside Sucre I saw the world’s largest dinosaur footprints. The tourist site was in true Bolivian style: it was also a construction site, and at one point we had to wait half an hour for an explosion to go off before we could walk any further!

It’s actually nice to be somewhere familiar and settled for a few days, a place where I know where the good restaurants are and I can completely unpack my bag; and La Paz is my favourite city in South America. It’s completely hectic and crazy, the roads are packed full of buses, the streets are lined with market stalls and you can buy everything on the markets here. One street will be full of stalls selling nothing but electric drills, and the next street will have nothing but silverware. Yesterday, I unknowingly entered the abattoir section, and saw entire sheep being gutted on the streets, with sheep heads lying around on the pavement. There are also those people who don’t have stalls and sell junk from their bag or their hands. Today I saw people offering their mobile phones to use; men holding up soft toys and llama fetuses (a great combination); a man walking around selling multi-coloured brooms, shouting “1 for $1!”; and just two minutes later, an old man walked down the street selling car aerials! It’s just a constant reminder of Del Boy and his suitcase.

I’ve finally updated my photo website, with photos of waterfalls, 7-coloured rocks, and me waving meat in front of aligators.