La Paz is the business centre of Bolivia - the biggest and most modern city in the country (though it's not the capital city). I arrived there in early afternoon and grabbed a quick set lunch before walking around town. The central square, Plaza Pedro D Murillo, was swarming with pigeons and surrounded by some impressive buildings - the Presidential Palace, the Legislative Palace and the Cathedral. The shoe-shine boys that solicit business around there were a bit intimidating at first because they wear dark balaclavas, apparently they hide their faces because it's considered a shame to do this type of work.

Nearby is a large shopping mall which has expensive clothes and cosmetics. It's in stark contrast to the Black Market where I browsed later - several blocks in which all the streets are lined with stalls selling pretty much anything and everything you can think of. We found many of the people in shops and stalls difficult and frustrating to deal with - they would generally ignore us and our questions, they didn't seem to have any interest in helping us to buy things and came across as pretty rude. In fairness we also did find some lovely helpful people but they were in the minority.

I was paranoid about having something stolen at the Black Market as it's notorious for pickpockets but in fact I was caught out later, when I was walking down the main street, I had my purse stolen from my pocket. There wasn't much money in it but it had my cash card, which was frustrating. A woman came up and threw a handful of dirt on the back of my friend who was walking in front of me, I looked around to see what she was doing and a man was pointing at my neck - I didn't know what was going on at first and then I realised they were just distracting me. It all happened in just a couple of seconds but by the time the penny dropped they were gone with my purse, I didn't even feel it, grrr Not a great first impression of the city...

We went to the really nice Angelo Colonial restaurant for dinner and I had steak for the second time that day Afterwards we went to the Sol y Luna bar for a few caipirinhas and then stayed up talking 'til very late.

The following day I took a sightseeing bus to Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley), which has an interesting landscape of strangely eroded rocks.

On the way to Moon Valley we drove through the 'lowlands' of the City - the swankier part of town, which had some very nice houses. The bus provided commentary along the way with information about the history, politics, economy and geography of La Paz and Bolivia generally.

In the afternoon I went to the Witches Market, it didn't live up to my expectations of potions and spells though - it's just a row of souvenir shops and stalls, a couple of which had dried llama feotuses and gross dried baby llamas. One had a big snake skin and what looked like puma skins.

That night we had our last group dinner with Sebastian and about half the guys in the group who were leaving us in La Paz. We went to the great Asian fusion restaurant Maphro On. Our taxi driver didn't know where he was going though so we spent about an hour driving around the city. After dinner we wandered up the road to Mongo's club where we had a lot of fun dancing til it closed at around 4am. Then we went for an afterparty at the Brass Monkey bar 'til the early hours.

I was feeling lazy the next day and took another sightseeing bus tour, this time around they city and up to the Killi Killi lookout point for a fabulous view over the whole city.

In the evening we met our new trip leader, Carla, and three new people who were joining us for the journey down to Santiago.

My last day in La Paz was spent catching up on boring admin - sorting out my backpack, going to the Post Office to send some things home, changing travellers cheques and buying bits and pieces before we caught an overnight bus to our next stop, Sucre.