La Paz - 23rd to 25th April

Next bus journey was to La Paz which was supposed to take about 6 hours. We arrived a bit later as the sodding bus ran out of petrol about half an hour from the city - I s*** you not.

Everyone got off and started flagging down cabs rather than wait for a refill as the driver just ran off to find fuel and his mates just kept telling us he´d be back in ´5 minutes´ despite us waiting for over 20 minutes. We didn´t wait for him to come back. (*)

After getting a free upgrade to a sister hotel as our booked hostal was full, we went for dinner with a Dutch couple we met on the bus which was a good end to the evening.

La Paz was pretty chaotic as it was Easter Saturday going into Easter Sunday (predictably we hadn´t realised how mental it is in South America during Easter week) so there was a full on party outside our room until late and then we woke up at 5am to the sound of drums and the start of an Easter parade - Jesus Christ.

Our little district was pretty much shut down all day so we just chilled out on Sunday before booking a tour of the city the next day.

The tour we booked (via Turisbus) was OK, but not great and the bloke´s English was pretty average, but we got some amazing views of the city and saw some of the old school streets, cathedral and government buildings (sounds dull, but was actually alright).

Pretty much every square centimetre of the land in and around the city has been built on and it sounds like the city is still expanding. Our guide told us a story of a massive landslide that took out thousands of homes a while ago so doesn´t sound the safest of places to live.

We also saw the ´Valley de la Luna´ on the outskirts of the city which consists of some odd rock formations from thousands of years ago. Would have been good if this was the first country we came to, but not a patch on the volcanic rocks we saw in New Zealand.

Have to say that all in all La Paz was very disappointing and wouldn´t recommend spending any time there. Just another loud, over-populated and polluted South American city.

We also noticed that compared to Peru, the people of Bolivia are far less friendly - you´d probably get more smiles from The Kop wearing a United shirt.

(*) addendum to this story now we're safely home (didn't want to tell the folks when we were away!)

After the bus broke down we were chatting to another Dutch couple and collectively decided to flag our own cab down rather than wait for the driver to come back with petrol for the bus…

They joined us in an 'unofficial' cab that just had a sticker in the window and another local bloke (who suddenly appeared from nowhere) joined us and sat in the boot.

2 minutes down the road the driver pulled over into a side street and we were cut off by another vehicle. 2 blokes jumped out flashing ID's and claiming to be 'tourist police'. They demanded our passports and for us to get out of the car. Another bloke had pulled down the back seats of their car for us to get in!

Luckily I'd read in Lonely Planet about these fake police so we refused to get out of the car. One bloke then became a bit aggressive and opened my door (I was in the front) and started shouting and trying to get in! I refused to let him in, even though our cab driver was telling me to shove over.He kept waving his ID in my face which looked like the fakest thing ever so I was sure they were trying it on.

After another 2 minutes of demanding for us to get out and accompany them to the police station in their car and us all refusing to budge the first bloke got back in his car and drove off.

Our cab driver then went back to the main road and mysteriously dropped off our other passenger straight away, even though he said he was coming to the bus station initially.We then all got out of the cab and flagged down an official one which got us safely to our hostel.

We were pretty naive to get in a dodgy cab even though there were 4 of us and we were very close to getting kidnapped! Pretty frightening stuff and we were definitely on edge for the rest of our stay in La Paz.

In hindsight, our mysterious passenger probably orchestrated the whole thing after talking the driver into going along with it - b******S.