Sightseeing

We woke up surprisingly early considering we didnt go to sleep until after 3 and after having breakfast and doing the usual internet stuff we left the hostal intending to walk to the far end of the central part of the city (before you cross the bridge to the south part) and take pictures of stuff we'd seen now it was daylight. The sun was shining and it was a lovely clear day which meant that we could see the mountains in the distance which up until now have been covered in cloud and mist. We got down to the club we'd been to the previous night which is as far as we've walked so far then continued on past and ended up on 'Embassy' street as this seems to be where most of them are situated along with plenty of guards with very big guns! We walked past the pleasant, non imposing British Embassy and as we looked up next door we saw what looked like a huge prison or containment camp.....but no, it was just the American Embassy!! Ugly, paranoid and over the top as usual there was plenty of razor wire to keep the riff raff out (or the Americans in?!) We carried on and passed several more embassies before coming to the Presidents residence which had police with even bigger looking guns, no chance we were even going to attempt a picture of this one, before the buildings petered out to a clearing in the road where 2 huge bridges spanned the valley. This was what we'd walked all this way for....the view was incredible!! We had pretty much a 360 view out across the valley and city between the surrounding hills and mountains that soared up to incredible heights...the airport here is the highest in the world at 4000m which is almost ½ the height of Everest!!! After taking plenty of pictures we started back towards the centre intending to detour to the right and walk through a large park that was marked on the map. The park turned out to be huge and included a massive open air concert stadium and a million little stalls containing everything from food to nicnacs to miniatures of anything and everything you could possibly desire. This of course was the Alsitas festival we'd read about but hadnt yet been able to find...basically people buy a miniature of what it is they hope for in the coming year...a house, car, money, a chicken...the usual stuff...then they take it to be blessed in the hope that they will be granted their wish before the year is out. We spent some time wandering round then bought a sausage sandwich each for lunch, this is the first time we'd seen proper sausages since leaving home and they were delicious! After our lunch we headed back towards the centro with the idea of going back to look at dresses etc again, however the sunshine we'd enjoyed so far seemed to be disappearing behind a very dark, very large black cloud that boomed with thunder ominously, so we gave up on that idea and went back to the hostel instead to escape the impending storm. It broke 2 hours later just as we were deciding to risk it and go out anyway, so plans foiled we put our dance shoes on and spent an hour or so avoiding the drips from the leaky roof and practising some salsa...much needed as we both feel we're getting worse due to lack of dancing and no one else to dance with to spot our bad habits :( When we'd had enough (when my feet started hurting) we went back into our dorm and I chatted to my dad for an hour or so on Skype before we got ready to go out for the night. We'd been told by 2 people about a salsa party at a place called como en casa but when we asked at reception about it, they'd never heard of it and said that where we'd marked it on the map there weren't any clubs just more of the Alsitas festival. They told us about another place to try and we went out to try our luck as well as get a kebab each for dinner (nom!! and only just over a dollar each!!). We went to the place they'd suggested which was on the top floor of a cinema but there was nothing on not even a disco so we left to try and find como en casa instead. After an hour or so of searching and not even the police knowing where it was we settled for looking found more of the Alsitas festival and buying a delicious coffee and a dozen miniature cakes for about $3 then going back to the hostel and watching Sherlock Holmes on dvd whilst eating the cakes, before getting to bed at about 2.30.