Even though we were still annoyed with Bolivia after being in a near fatal jeep accident, we learnt to love La Paz.

I even enjoyed shopping in La Paz, something I've never done anywhere else in the world.

There are no actual shops with walls and roofs and cash registers, they just have people sitting on the streets selling everything you could ever want under one umbrella. They sell lots of pirated music and videos and they even sell Llama fetuses and stuffed frogs with glitter on their faces for casting spells or something, I can't remember to be honest.

If I was someone who wanted to save lots of money, I would probably have spent 3 days in La Paz just looking around the markets for presents to bring home because you could get things that look like they cost 10 pounds for 10p! I didn't though.

One of these non-shopping days, we discovered a cocaine museum. We learnt a lot about the history of cocaine and Bolivia's involvement in the global production of this drug that lots of rich people like to snort. Did you know for example that although the USA only has 5% of the global population, they account for 50% of its cocaine use. On the way out they gave us coca cookies made from the leaves of the coca plant which are not to be confused with cocaine cookies made from an illegal drug. They tasted disgusting anyway.

Bolivia seems to have the highest everything in the world (apart from the highest mountain, that's in Nepal). They have the highest navigable lake, the highest city, the highest capital city (when we were in La Paz, we were still 3300 metres above sea level). We were getting used to being high all the time.

On Friday night in La Paz we went on the world�s highest pub crawl. We went from pub to pub in a La Paz style bus with a swiss expert on Bolivian pubs. It was a good way of seeing local pubs in La Paz without getting robbed, raped, or murdered which apparently happens all the time in Bolivia, according to people we met who have never been.

They had a big festival on when we were in La Paz with loads of costume wearing and dancing in the streets. Lots of the street dancers were carrying beer and swaying about. After about an hour it started to get a bit dull because to our untrained eyes they were all wearing the same costumes and doing the same dance moves.

Aidan.