T'was a week before Christmas and we were looking forward to staying somewhere nice for an entire week! Coroico seemed like it would be a nice place, and we had heard great things about the hostel Sol y Luna, hidden away in beautiful gardens just outside of town.

When we arrived we were shown to our cabaña, a few minutes walk from the main house up the hill and through the gardens. It had a big glass window overlooking the valley and mountains around us, a hammock to laze in, a little kitchenette and table, and an outside toilet and shower.

We love rustic but we also usually like places to be clean. Most surfaces were dusty with scattered dead bugs around, and we had to clean every kitchen item before it felt safe to eat from. Given half the walls were built from bamboo with 1cm gaps between each piece, keeping the bugs outside proved rather difficult! But that wasn't going to get in the way of a nice relaxing week.

The first night of our stay we ate dinner in the restaurant, since town was a half our walk downhill (then back up hill) which we didn't feel like doing after riding 63km! But first thing in the morning we wandered down to buy some supplies.

The town is nestled in the hillside and there are great views from just about everywhere. It's only a small place centred around the main plaza with the usual church, post office etc.

We hit the markets and some of the small tiendas and found a few usable things. Raw oats and chia for breakfast, yoghurt, some fruit and veg, ham, bread, coffee and some actual proper cheese! This all took quite some time since we wanted to make sure what we were buying was fresh enough to last a few days.

We lugged it all back up the hill, enjoyed some fresh sandwiches and settled in for the afternoon. Now that we had supplies, we barely needed to leave our cabaña for the next few days, other than an occasional trip down to the main house to use the internet (when it worked).

For the next few days we passed the hours watching movies and TV series, reading, napping, admiring the view, escaping the rain and generally a whole lot of not much. Lindsay was pretty sick with a cold and stomach issues for a couple of days so these activities were perfect.

Before we knew it, it was Christmas Eve and we thought it might be nice to have some wine. Plus our supplies were running low. We had some lunch and did some more shopping in town, returning with some wine (including a 1.5L bottle) and the most Christmassy item we could find, a Panatone (chocolate chip, no one likes the fruit variety).

That evening we had Skype dates with our families and we were keeping our fingers crossed that the crappy internet would hold out. At 5 Lindsay spoke to her parents and while video wasn't going to be an option, the connection was just good enough for a crackly but successful conversation.

Unfortunately the same couldn't be said for our 7pm date with Fergus' family. We returned to the main house and the owner told us the internet didn't work then she walked off without any explanation or suggestion that they were trying to fix it. Great! Perfect timing! Instead we had to use Fergus' mobile for a very brief chat. Bolivia was not the right place to line up Skype chats!

We were now on our own for Christmas. Other than a moderately decorated tree, the hostel did nothing else for Christmas. But we did have a 1.5L bottle of wine to get through! We had some cheese crackers and some dinner on Christmas Eve with our wine, and a very relaxing Christmas Day where we ate very non-Christmassy meals for both lunch and dinner in the restaurant.

Our week in Coroico was over on boxing day. It had flown by and it was now time to head back to La Paz and continue on our travels. The transport to La Paz is any one of the mini vans that depart when full from the square. Our driver was crazy but we are pretty sure that would have been the case no matter which one we selected.

LAPFWT