Hi everyone!

Well I'm in Sucre, which is the official capital of Sucre but all of the government and administration actually happens in La Paz. Its quite a beautiful city, very colonial, white buildings with orange and red tiled roofs.

We have 5 nights here, which is nice as on the salt flats we were constantly on the move - and our hotel is amazing! Well.. I guess not compared to normal standards, but compared to what we've had lately. Its a lovely old colonial building with a courtyard in the middle, so all the balconies overlook it. And we've had amazing breakfasts! Pretty much all through Argetina and Chile we just got different bread or cold toast assortments with butter and jam - South America seems to be against hot toast! And we'd be lucky to get eggs.. Here, there's fresh watermelon, papaya and orange juice, fresh fruit, cheese, rolls, scrambled eggs, cakes, savoury breads and cereal! very deluxe.

I haven't really done too much here.. 2 days ago was our first day and we just had a walk around the city and then in the afternoon we went to a cement factory where they discovered over 300 types of dinosaur footprints in the rock they were quarrying. There was a big park to go with it, with fibreglass models of dinosaurs which was pretty lame - more of a small children exercise. But, it did bring back lots of memories of playing with Louis and watching "walking with dinosaurs"!

Yesterday I had another lazy day (I'm kind of doing that again today but its nice just to relax). We went out on Saturday night until quite late so I had a sleep in. First we went to Karaoke, which was pretty atrocious.. then another place to dance. I've never heard such a weird mix of music.. Christina Aguilera, REM, Shania Twain, Nirvana, Hip Hop stuff and lots of spanish stuff in between.. very odd but lots of fun.

Yesterday afternoon we went to an Orphanage that GAP supports... we all gave Carolina - one of our tour guides - some money and she went with the lady from the orphanage to buy the older boys shoes and the younger ones some toys. When we got there, all the boys came out to meet us and the little ones ran up and hugged us... very cute. We handed out the present individually and called out their names. Then we had a soccer match with them! Well... 4 out of our group of 14 played and the rest of us watched.. I was wearing a skirt and flip flops so wasn't really equipped to play! There's a lot of poverty here - babies and small children sleeping on the street at night, which is heartbreaking so it was nice to be able to give something directly to the kids.

Tomorrow, Jen, Ria and I are going biking to some waterfalls where we can have a swim afterwards. We were meant to be going to Cochabamba on a 15 hour bus tomorrow evening but we were given the option to fly directly to La Paz.. the road to Cochabamba is a dirt track and there's a few dodgy cliffs and the flight was only $65US and takes 45 minutes! Plus, there's not loads to do in Cochabamba and its pretty nice here. But only 6 of us are going and the rest are taking the nightbus. I took the option cos those dodgy roads along the cliff edge aren't really that conducive to sleep!

xx