We land back in La Paz and are told that our next flight leaves from Gate 7a. As we only have 20 minutes to spare we race around to board the flight only to find ourselves on the same plane sitting in the opposite seat. We get a wry smile from the air stewardess. This is typical of Bolivia with no joined up thinking.

Sucre is actually the constitutional capital of Bolivia and not La Paz. La Paz holds the government seat and there have been a few attempts to change it so that La Paz holds both, but this small beautiful city has managed to maintain its capital status.

We have to wait for our room at the hostal as we are too early but we enjoy a breakfast and chat to some of the other guests. It is an art hotel and the walls are painted with murals and there is colour everywhere. The owner has the most adorable puppy called Emilia, a little black Scottie dog that we want to take home with us. Once we get in our room we are pleased to find it is bright and spacious and has a large bathroom. We are here for a week so are happy with our chosen hostal.

In the main centre of Sucre we notice some great architecture and many white-washed buildings. The main plaza is full of trees, including palms, plants and a sculpture of some lions where kids happily clamber, but we are pre-occupied having to dodge the pigeons that fly low overhead. The temperature here is perfect and the sky is blue. There is a big catherderal dominating one side of the plaza, some beautiful ornate buildings with balconies, and restaurants with an open view to watch the world go by. The pace of life here is so much more pleasant than La Paz.

Most people we speak to are on-route to the World Cup and, like us, are taking Spanish lessons, despite us being in South America for the last few months. It seems the thing to do here as it's cheap and, in addition, we fancy a change from the usual sight-seeing. We do also need to brush up on our patchy Spanish. We book individual lessons for four hours per day over the next five days. We find the Spanish lessons quite intense, as we also have homework to do everyday. We realise how much we have been getting by on pidgin Spanish, although we haven't had too much trouble in making ourselves understood so far.

As most of our time is taken up with school we don't get to venture out and see too many of the sights. We do spend some time walking round the huge market where we buy meat and vegetables for a fraction of the price in the supermarket. It looks so much fresher and we also get to practice our Spanish with the local vendors.

We go into the Casa De La Libertad, which is a beautiful historical building with a huge courtyard. We are taken through the building by the very articulate tour guide who gives us the history of Bolivia from it's fight for independance to modern day. The declaration of independance was signed here in 1825.

We also go for a walk through the park as the Spanish teacher had said we need to see the replica of the Eiffel Tower. That gives us a laugh.

We had mapped out our onward journey to Santa Cruz (still in Bolivia) and then to catch the 'Death Train' over the border in to the Pantanal (wetlands) region of Brazil. The death train is called this because of the yellow fever victims it used to carry, and also because of the amount of travellers who would fall off the roof of the often over-crowded trains. We need a yellow fever vaccination and a certificate of proof to allow us over the border. We knew we would need this at some stage before our trip, but in Shanghai we thought we would wait until UK, and in the UK we ran out of time. We go to the local hospital on the Friday afternoon to find that they only give jabs once a week on a Thursday. They send us to the other side of town to a vaccination centre which sounds more promising, only to find there that they only do jabs on a Friday morning. Our pleas were met with a firm 'no'. Feeling very frustrated we have no option but to chose another route. Of course, this is the only time we are ahead of ourselves with hotels and flights and we spend the next few hours cancelling everything with varying degrees of success in terms of a refund.

We decide to go straight to Sao Paolo and soak up some World Cup fever instead.