After all the airport dramas, we finally arrived in La Paz, the highest capital in the world at nearly 4000m above sea level.  Since it was late at night, we decided just to head for the hotel that was the starting point of our tour with GAP Adventures the next day.  Being so high up, the lack of oxygen was noticeable immediately, and we both found ourselves having to consciously breathe in deeply as we could physically feel the weight of the struggle in our chests!!  We jumped in a taxi and admired the twinkling lights of the city below as we drove down into the centre.  When we arrived at the hotel, we weren't all that surprised to find that it was pretty upscale, considering the hotel we had stayed at in Iguassu on our last GAP tour.  Nice hotels come with a nice price-tag too, but since it was just for one night and we were exhausted, we decided to check in and headed straight for the huge warm beds!!

 The next morning we awoke to a HUGE breakfast of fruits, breads, cereals and even scrambled eggs!!  Too bad that the altitude had us both feeling a little dizzy and not at all hungry, and in addition Marisha hadn't slept a wink and had a slight headache.  We decided to try out the local remedy of cocoa leaf tea, and though it didn't taste all that great, it definitely helped!  The first day of our tour was once again an arrival day, so we headed off into the town for a spot of exploring, since we wouldn't be meeting our group till later that evening.  Although Sucre is the official capital, La Paz is the Bolivian centre of commerce, finance and industry, and the de facto capital.  The city is busy and bustling and situated at the base of a canyon 3 miles wide, with impromptu housing sprawling all the way up the surrounding hillsides.  The most striking thing about La Paz was the people.  Everybody was of indigenous appearance and everywhere we went, the streets were filled with all the old ladies, still in their traditional clothes (a long skirt and shawl with a bowler type hat) sitting on market stalls selling food and traditional handicrafts, or alpaca and llama clothing!  It was absolutely fascinating and we could have spent hours just sitting in the main square watching the world go by.  The people seemed almost untouched by the modernity that had sprung up around them and it was such a contrast to what we had been used to in Brazil.

 As advised, we took it easy so as not to over-exert ourselves until we had adjusted to the altitude.  We wandered around the many cobbled streets, taking in a walking tour of the main palaces and official buildings in the main square, the famous Iglesia de San Fransciso, whose architectural and historical structures are representative of the indigenous and mestizo heritage of modern Bolivia, and of course the many markets!!  We took in the Mercado de Hechiceria, or Witches Market, whose stalls were lined with potions and incantations made from all sorts of herbs, seeds and secret ingredients to remedy any number of illnesses (real or imagined!) and to protect from evil spirits.  One of the most bizarre (and slightly freaky!) goods, was the overwhelming presence of baby llamas and llama fetuses, apparently given as a house-warming gift, or to honour the opening of new buildings.  We later stopped in a local food market for a light lunch, where Marisha tasted some excellent Andean Soup, a kind of broth with meat, potatoes and rice that was so tasty she almost had two bowls!  That afternoon, we trundled off to the Cocoa Leaf museum, which turned out to be one of the most interesting exhibits we had ever been too.  It took us through the history of the cocoa leaf in Bolivia, where it was grown and its many uses, why it was considered bad and temporarily outlawed because of the fact that cocaine can be derived from it and what the future held for cocoa leaf growers in the country.  It helped us both to understand the difference between the leaf and pure cocaine, and how chewing the leaf and drinking the tea was helping to cure our altitude sickness!!  One of the most interesting things was learning about the politics of the leaf as America believed that it was the cause of their drugs trade/problem and was therefore trying to restrict growth.  It seems they were overlooking the fact that US consumption and Western demand plays a huge part in any form of trade!!  Another random fact, was learning that Coca Cola was produced from the leaf and that they were one of the few companies who had license to produce and export cocoa leaves from Bolivia, since the crackdown.

Early in the evening we headed back to the hotel to see what was going on with our tour group, however none of the reception staff seemed to know what was going on and nothing was on the noticeboard in the foyer!  We started to get a bit worried since we knew from the itinerary that the next day involved an unaccompanied early morning flight to Sucre, where we were to meet our tour leader and half of the group, but without getting tickets or finding the rest of our group who were leaving from La Paz with us, this wasn't going to be possible!!!  The receptionist didn't seem to understand this and suggested we pop down after breakfast the next morning, which was clearly going to be too late!  Luckily, Rakhee bumped into a lady who had all of our tickets and so we learned that we had to be ready to get on a coach at 8am the next morning!!  After indulging in a little bit of tv in our room (Denzel in The Manchurian Candidate no less!), we headed off to sleep.

 It was again another restless night and I think we were both like zombies at the breakfast table the next morning.  We somehow got ourselves onto the minibus to the airport the next morning, where we met Pippa, Hannah, Ann and Derek, some of our tour group for the next 11 days.  In true Bolivian, disorganized style though, we sat on the bus for ages without anyone telling us what was going on.  Afraid we were going to miss our flight, Pippa went back into the hotel to see what the problem was, only to find out that we were allegedly waiting for a seventh person, not mind you, that they seemed to be doing anything to find this seventh person.  Pippa scouted round the breakfast room and even knocked on the door of the room where this seventh person was supposed to be staying, but there was no luck, and it eventually transpired that the seventh person had cancelled almost two weeks ago, and we were therefore in fact waiting for no-one!  You would think they would know all this and not that we would have to be sorting it out ourselves having just met, but as time wore on we came to see that this was just how things were done in Bolivia!!  With little time to spare we headed off to the airport, where we checked in and paid our departure tax before running through passport control and baggage check onto our plane!  Having already done this ourselves once in the last twenty-four hours, we were exhausted!  We quickly learnt why the Bolivians are so laid back and that no one ever does anything in a rush at altitude for precisely that reason!.  We settled into our seats and prepared for our short one hour flight to Sucre?