So a new country and having no knowledge of Bolivia, I had no expectations whatsoever, which is probably why I loved it. Yes it's got the same unfinished housing, dusty streets and stray dogs as Peru but it just has a nicer feel to it and it's so cheap (I think Darren is rubbing off on me!). I think our first stop of Copacabana helped too. It's set on Lake Titicaca and unlike Puno it's pleasant to walk around and has a definite holiday vibe to it. Unfortunately there's not much more to tell you about this place as it's pretty small and all we did here was eat and enjoy our own room, which was pretty nice for our current standards. It even had a TV which was a complete novelty, so we watched some Friends and Big Bang Theory, it was great!

We then caught the bus to La Paz, which wasn't too long a journey but half way through we had to get off and catch a separate boat across part of Lake Titicaca, while our bus went on the flimsiest looking vessel I've ever seen. Luckily we all made it across. In La Paz we'd booked ourselves into a place called Loki's, which is the most social hostel we've stayed at. It had its own bar and themed nights every night, and great food too which we made the most of.

We'd been told about a free walking tour, so the next morning we headed to the meeting point but when we arrived there was a full scale riot happening in the San Pedro Prison, which was pretty entertaining for us. San Pedro is very unusual in that there are no prison guards so the prisoners make the rules and apparently riots aren't uncommon: surprise, surprise. Anyway after getting the run down on this crazy prison, us and about 15 others followed a Maurice lookalike from the IT Crowd and his tattooed but more straight talking female counterpart around the city for a couple of hours. It was a really great tour, they were interesting and fun and they took us to the witches markets where we saw lots of llama foetus' and we finished the tour at the top of a skyscraper were we'd an amazing view over the city.

On our second night here we met some Aussies and then some more Aussies, and had a night of card games, bingo and trivia, it was so much fun. Especially because our team won the trivia (not that me and Darren had much input in that) and for winning we received t-shirts and a free drink. I then got a line in bingo and was given a free shot for my efforts, it felt like I was back at uni! As you can probably tell by now this night wasn't going to end there, we piled into some taxis and headed to a dodgy club. Darren and I were the first to arrive and pulling up to it, it looked like any other house in the street, so I was starting to think that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. When we approached, a man appeared from the shadows to open the shutter for us, I'm still thinking "what the hell are we doing here!" but fuelled by the alcohol and for an already good night to continue, we charged on in. Inside we met more Aussies and then some English lads. It was a pretty small club so everyone was talking to each other and the great night continued on into the small hours. The next day however the hangover kicked in but we had to check out and then wait until 8pm that night to catch another overnight bus to Sucre, so we pretty much spent the day in the TV room on the bean bags, veg'ing out and feeling very sorry for ourselves.

We then caught the overnight bus to Sucre, which was definitely the best bus we've been on so far. It had fully reclining chairs with foot rest that went all the way back so we actually got a decent night's sleep. So when we arrived early the next morning to Sucre we actually felt able to face the day. Sucre is known as the white city and we soon found out why, as all the beautiful colonial buildings are painted bright white. In fact they all have to be painted every year, which made a very pleasant change to the unplastered, unfinished housing that we'd been experiencing pretty much up until now. We're still very much in chill mode so we basically spent our time just wondering around or hanging out at this really cool vegetarian restaurant we found. We did actually visit the Liberty Museum and we wanted to visit some of the many churches here but they always seemed to be closed. So instead we ate well, one night at this beautiful French restaurant where Darren had a Thai masaman curry (go figure) and another at this really cute pizzeria where we wrote what we thought about it on the wall.

So far Bolivia has been pretty good to us, we've ate well, met some great people and seen some beautiful things so I'm really looking forward to the salt flats of Uyuni which is the number one thing to do here and our last thing in Bolivia before we head to Chile.

Clare