Sunday 14th October

We arrived in sucre in the afternoon and settled in to our next 5 star hotel, in the matrimonial suite as thats all they had with 3 beds!!!!! Sucre is a beautiful town, all the buildings are white and so different to everywhere else we'd been in Bolivia. For the first time we felt safe walking around. We headed out later that day to have a look around and get some food. The main square is pretty impressive with lots of colonial and gothic historical buildings and well maintained gardens in the middle. We ate in a nice restaurant with balconies overlooking the square, then headed around the night markets for a bit before going back to our hotel. The hotel workers spoke very little english so i (lisa) spent ages drawing pictures for the reception guy to get him to order flowers and cake for nikkis birthday the next morning!!!

Monday 15th October

We woke early and i was wondering how we'd keep nikki in the room for 2 hours when her surprise cake and flowers were to be brought to the room!!! Luckily we managed it and she was pleasantly surprised :o) we tucked in to a nice slice of birthday cake for breakfast before heading out to town. We had a few admin jobs to do (like booking coach tickets to la paz) before our main activity of the day, the dino tour, which was nikkis birthday treat!!! We boarded a dino truck early afternoon, which had dinosaur claws sticking out the roof!!! a short journey and we arrived at a quarry where the 5000 dinosaur foot prints were discovered a few years ago. They have made a pretty cool dino park in the quarry, beautiful grounds and life size statues of 32 dinosaurs believed to be from that area. We acted like proper cheesy american tourists taking pics with all the dinosaurs :o) finally we got to see the footprints up the side of a cliff face, was pretty cool!!! The best part though was eating chocolate dinosaur lollies :o) We headed back to our suite to get ready for our wild night out in sucre... so basically we got drunk in the hotel on raspberry vodka and beer (for tom) and danced around to tunes on nikki's laptop, and taking silly pictures, dancing on the fridge etc etc. By the time we went out to eat we were shattered and a little too tipsy and just about managed to eat in a cuban bar before having to head back and crash on our beds... hmm not such a wild night, but pretty funny!!!

Tuesday 16th October

Today we had a coach booked to la paz for about 7pm, so planned to site see during the day, as we liked sucre! We woke early and had breakfast, all feeling fine, then went back to the room to pack. But i (lisa) was in and out of the toilet every few minutes, bringing up everything i tried to consume. I knew it wasnt the alcohol as i'd actually only had 1 1/2 drinks, and my tummy had been bad all day the day before. I let Tom and Nikki go out and do some chores etc and get lunch and said i'd be fine when they got back, but i wasnt, i was getting worse. Tom and Nikki tried to make me drink loads of water and eat soup and bread, but it was coming up within minutes of trying it.. Finally about 4pm we decided i might be too ill to travel and needed a doctor. He arrived and within 30 mins a nurse was with me and attaching me to a drip, suspended by a shoe lace from the lamp above the bed... I was not impressed and feeling very very ill, tom was taking good care of me, by making sure he had plenty of pictures of me in this state, and laughing at me on a drip!!!!!!!! I was diagnosed with very bad gastroenteritis and told i'd need an injection in my bum the next morning and 5 days of antibiotics, and eating crackers and soup.. he assured me i'd be much better in the morning, and came back later that night to remove the drip.. Tom and nikki entertained themselves with pizza in the room while i nibbled dry crackers!!! The hotel were great at looking after me, and even sent the reception guy to the coach station to argue with them to get a partial refund on our tickets, as they wouldnt give a refund to nikki and tom when they went!!!! I spent the whole night worrying about my injection the next morning!!!

Wednesday 17th October

This morning I took Lisa to the Pharmacy to have her injection in her butt. Lisa sulked the whole way there, feeling sorry for herself at the prospect of having a needle in her arse!!! When we got there I used my fluent spanish to tell the lady what she needed to do to lisas bum, and she obliged :o) Lisa however decided to walk out the shop crying like a baby when she saw the pharmacist preparing the needle with the drugs to go into lisas bum. So I had to drag lisa back into the pharmacy, and hold her hand whilst she pulled down her trousers awaiting the little p**** lol (sorry mum)!! Lisa squeezed my hand as hard as she could (just for fun I think) and then complained about her bum hurting for the next..... day and a half!!!! We then went back to the hotel to let lisa to sleep it off whilst me and Nikki popped into town to get lunch again and do a few odd jobs in the internet cafe. Wehen we got back we all showered, packed our bags and headed off to the coach station. The journey was one of the worst. About 30 mins into our 12 hour journey lisa decided to feel ill and puke little bits of sick all over my travel pillow. Cheers Lisa :o) (i was sick out the window actually, cant help it if bits came back in!!! there were no toilets and i was really too ill to have been travelling 12 hours on a coach, i thought i'd never make it, and we got no sleep all night) I (tom) would like to add that I gave Lisa my sick bag I stole from our BA flight out to South America which she declined in using (god knows why) so ther was no need to puke out of the window letting it fly back into the bus and onto my pillow.

However after a horrible horrible.... (did I mention horrible) journey we arrived in La Paz at about 6 in the morning.