We are sitting in our hotel room in La Paz, it is 7.30 in the morning. We are listening to the world go by 5 floors below us, incessant honking by a bus driver looking to find customers from anywhere, even their beds, some market traders bantering and whistling at each other and the general clanking of street noise that you get when beat up cars go over bumps. All of our Bolivian experience so far, including this morning, adds up to the fact that Bolivia just doesn't work the same as other countries. Our hotel, you see, is a treat for us, after 3 days of really bad hostels, and we are splashing out a huge $30 on a nice room, but even so, the window doesn't shut properly, because some carpenter balls'ed it up. Other similar experiences have preceded this one…

Arriving in Copacabana we headed straight for Isla del Sol, having decided to stay on the island where the sun was born (according to the Incas). Everything was going great, we booked a place for the following night in Copacabana, packed and left our main bags in that hotel and figured we had some time for lunch before the boat left, just tucking in Rich suddenly remembered Bolivia was an hour ahead of Peru and we had to leg it to the port with minutes to spare…. Oops. However, we quickly learnt that the boat was not the most efficient and pretty much powered by a lawn mower (rowing would have been much faster) and it took 2 hours to reach the island. Having not sorted accommodation in advance, and not realising how much climbing might be involved, we were misguided on where to stay, opting for a room/shed just before the peak of the island, paying a little extra for a private bathroom too. We later discovered this luxury did not actually have any water! Our protest was in vain though, as the language barrier got the better of us.

The island was beautiful though and we enjoyed the sunset at a nice place at the peak of the island. Much nicer, and apparently with water too. In the morning, Rich was up bright and early catching the sunrise and a bit of his new hobby as an ornithologist. We then trekked to the north side of the island, which was very pretty and took about 3.5 hours. After this though we had to get the lawn mower boat back to the main land… via another floating island/ tourist trap, and 4 hours later - slightly bored - we arrived back at Copacabana.

Copacabana is nothing to write home about, another small town on a stop over route to somewhere else. We stayed the night, had a nice evening with some new found friends and headed to La Paz the next morning. The bus ride was interesting, and we soon reached a dock side where you have to get off the bus, while it is driven onto another lawn mower powered boat and shipped across the Lake… very bizzare, only in Bolivia moment! Fortunately, we were reunited with the bus and arrived in La Paz, luckily with the bus stopping outside a decent hotel (see paragraph one!).

Our first day in La Paz (translates to the peace, the city is known as "Our Lady of Peace") we wandered around town and enjoyed the fransiscan monastery and church, the cathedral and the coca museum, where we learned about the harvesting, use and sale of coca leaves (for various purposes, including making cocaine). The museum sold coca biscuits, cheesecake, tea, and we had an espresso with a "coca elixir", which gave us a heroic amount of caffeine to boost us for the day! On day 2 we went mountain biking on "Death Road" and it was AMAZING. We had to get up early, drove up to 4700 metres above sea level and then spent the morning descending fully 3000 metres until being driven to a hotel for lunch and swimming and back to La Paz. The ride was around a mountain pass where cars were (mostly) no longer allowed to drive because it was too treacherous. The views of the Andes were awe inspiring, as were the constant reminders that we needed to concentrate on the road in the form of memorials to fallen drivers/ riders… we found out only at the bottom that 16 tourists had fallen off the mountain in recent years - most recently in May this year. But being Bolivia, this didn't seem to bother the Government too much.

A day later, and our thirst for adventure fully charged, we signed up for another tour. Spurred on by talking to our new friends Chris and Diana from Houston, who we had met on the Bolivian border in one of the numerous queues, we signed up to climb a mountain. Huayna Potosi is 6080m above sea level, and was supposed to be one of the easiest climbs to reach that height in the world. We got lined up with crampons, hiking boots, wet gear, ice axes and all the kit, before setting off. We hiked to a few hundred metres above base camp and got to play with the ice in our gear, it was fun. However, our mountaineering careers will be delayed for a while… the weather turned awful and in blizzarding conditions, and with guides who didn't speak enough English to make Michelle feel safe, we headed back to base camp and didn't crack the summit on this occasion, maybe next time…

Other things to note: Michelle is ALWAYS hungry, especially first thing in the morning; you can meet really nice people in border queues; using a 2004 Rough Guide to get around is not the best idea as most of the restaurants have disappeared or changed; Perhaps the most efficient part of the Bolivian tourist trade is their ability to ask for extra cash for absolutely nothing as a tax for entering particular area/ using services that you may or may not need etc, in short, Bolivians are excellent at milking tourists if not at the whole tourist experience; Copacabana in Bolivia is a religious center of pilgrimage for catholics, and the beach in Rio de Janeiro is named after it; the US government paid coca farmers in Bolivia about $300 each to stop harvesting coca leaves, which the farmers took and then continued harvesting anyway… apparently this effort has led to a widespread Bolivian distaste for American foreign policy; in spite of this it is legal to harvest coca in many parts of Bolivia's more fertile regions.