Christmas this year was always going to be different, the fact that for the first time ever Dave and Emily would be away from family and friends.

After much deliberation, Christmas was spent in the Judicial Captial of Boliva, called Sucre where we managed to get into a lovely place called Dolca Vita with a massive beautiful room, common kitchen, nice sunny courtyard and great living room for all to use.

The city of Sucre is a smallish place of around 200,000 people, a very pretty and green main plaza, lots of beautiful white rendered buildings (it is called Cuidad Blanca, the White City) lots of nice churches and of course plenty of great restaurants and bars!

You already know of our Dinosaur park Christmas Eve adventure but after that we decided we should call home, so Dave called his family, then handed over the computer to Emily. By then it was 15:50 and we had washing to pick up at the laundry at 16:00, so Dave left Emily in the internet cafe while he went across town to collect the nice clean traveller clothes.

Dave ran across town like he was Father Christmas running late and got back to the internet cafe at 16:15 only to find no internet cafe! All the doors were shut and no signage was evident! After some futher running around the streets in confusion (was this the place Dave left Emily?) he could do nothing but sit in the square and ponder where he fiance had gone. All the time Emily was in the internet cafe worrying that Dave got lost in Sucre whilst trying to find the washing, little did she know that he had been locked out. Dave had downloaded all his photos onto the computer and expressely told Emily not to change computers, so she sat there worrying, and even wedding websites lost their appeal...

After a good hour of worrying by both parties, Emily ventured out of the building and found a lost and confused Dave sitting on a bench with a bag full of washing, thinking he had lost his fiance on Christmas Eve!

So, reunited, Christmas was back on!!

We made ourselves a nice Christmas Eve meal of cheese, prosciutto ham, avocado, tortillas, sauce picante and a nice big bottle of Bolivian wine.

So Christmas day arrived and up we got to a bit of an overcast day (typical that on all days the sun disapears here!) we made a nice Christmas day breakfast of avocado in bread, more tortillas and some bacon and eggs that our friendly travellers gave us. Then out into town we went were we noticed everyone walking around with little baskets containing the baby Jesus himself. They were all coming out of church carrying these items.

Then to the main plaza were we found a nice first floor cafe overlooking the square. Everyone was out, all the kids running around and families meeting each other and wishing a Merry Christmas to all. Latin America is very much an outdoors culture, the plazas are always full of people day and night just hanging out. So rather than a quiet outdoor environment that occurs in England, here is was more busy.

As Emily drank a coffee and Dave a beer we watched a massive crowd of adults and children going nuts below us. The reason was that various elves were throwing sweets out of a window. Then Father Christmas appeared, ran across the road and into a 4x4, which sped off with lots of chirdren chasing after (looked rather dangerous from our viewpoint!)

Morning drinks done, we then walked up to the city,s Mirador (viewpoint) which was impressive, then back down again to our hostel for card games and more Bolivian Wine.

In the evening we headed to a restaurant for our Christmas dinner, which consisted of melon and ham, and dutch salad for starters. Then a traditional Bolivian Christmas dinner main course called Bolivian Picaña (consisting of some chicken, corn on the cob, potato in a really nice fruity spicey sauce) and banana split and pancakes for dessert. All with some Bolivian beer.

Nice to try the local Christmas dinner, and it was very tasty. But it is becoming clear that Daves stomach isnt designed for Bolivian food and the next day was a fun day on the toilet!!

After this we headed back to our hostel but stopped by the city,s main church where Christmas celebrations were in full swing, amazing decorations and crazy loud, rather modern music with loads of kids in traditional dress dancing around like crazy at the front. It was a very joyous atmosphere and a great way to end our very different Christmas.

The day was very memorable and a great experience, but there was a flip side to all this fun which was seeing and interacting with the countless heartbreakingly poor homeless people, for which a terrible amount are young (some very young) kids.

We decided on Christmas Eve to buy a large bag of sweets to hand out to the homeless kids on Christmas day and thoughout the day we must of given out hundreds of sweets to loads of children, even their mothers were getting in on the action and also wanting sweets.

Seeing these little kids faces light up when they find their hands full of sweets was very emotional. In many cases the parents would wake their child up from their sleep on the pavement to recieve our small but appreciated gift.

To be so close to them, talk to them and make a small difference to these unfortunte people made it a very emotional and humbling Christmas day.

So Christmas day was an amazing experience, a happy and somewhat heartbreaking experience. A great day with great food and drink but also doing our little bit for the less fortunate than us means this is a Christmas we will never forget.