We basically totally messed up La Paz, a city which others described as their favourite place in S. America. We flew in Wednesday night, and stayed in this extremely crappy hotel, which required a 5-10 minute walk up and down numerous flights of stairs at altitude to get from the entrance to your room.

The next day (a thursday) we swapped hostel, booked "the worlds most dangerous bike ride", and had a look at the famous "witches' market", where items such as statuettes, llama foetuses and t-shirts were sold. We had planned to go out that night, but we both were a bit altitude sick-y and had to wake up at 5 the next morning so just went to this local bar for a bit instead.

The bike ride the next day was in fact quite dangerous, cycling close to the edge of a cliff on a thin, unstable, rocky road, and whilst going down you do see numerous crosses, not the most comforting thing. However there were amazing views all around, and cool stuff like cycling under waterfalls. The trip takes 5 hours, all downhill and your arse hurts due to all the bumps and the lack of suspension, and we both got very burnt as we forgot the sun cream. Were in way too bad shape to go out tha night even though it was a friday, so stayed in again.

Saturday we were determined to do 2 things: watch the England - Israel match somehow, and finally go to a club in La Paz. We got out money and went to this fake english pub called "Oliver's travels" in the morning and had breakfast and watched Wales v Ireland, but found out that despite the fact that the whole of Peru is teeming with English people and Israelis, ESPN had decided to show Portugal v Belgium instead of England. A race around the city ensued, where we finally found a 'youth' hostel that was streaming the game off the internet. However, their connection was crap, and everyone in the 'youth' hostel was of the '30 years or older backpacker staying in either La Paz or Cuzco' variety that you would only know if you had seen them, but basically just all highly irritating at best. It was on the way from the hostel to an internet cafe to watch the match properly that Will realized he had left his bank card in the cash machine that morning, and in the internet cafe that Pete realized he had no money left. Our tickets to Copacobana, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, had already been booked though, so it was the next morning, after not having gone out once in La Paz or indeed having had lunch or dinner the previous day, that our brave travellers continued on their journey, light of wallet but heavy of spirit or something.