Sucre 25/02/14 - 1/03/14

We spent 5 nights in Sucre. We originally planned to have less time here but that's the way it worked out with our next flight to La Paz. Sucre is a lovely city to chill out for a few days though; it's known as the white city because there are so many white buildings. We hoped to do a hiking tour outside of the city but the dates didn't work out, so we just hung out in the city and ate nice meals :) There's a great lookout over the city where I had possibly the best (Italian) hot chocolate ever. Every day we were in Sucre there were celebrations for Carnival, where people play music and dance in the street (nothing spectacular like with costumes, but it still gives the city a fun vibe). You can't walk around the city without being hit with water bombs or foam out of a can though - these are part of the carnival celebrations. It's funny at first but gets old when you just want to stroll around the city. I just want to buy an empanada!

La Paz 2/03/14

We took a flight from Sucre to La Paz, and it was soo worth it after having that really unpleasant and long bus trip in Argentina. The view is awesome as you fly into La Paz. You can see mountains and glaciers and then as you fly closer to ground the bowl-like shape of the city becomes clearer, with houses at high altitude and others in the valleys below. My impression of La Paz was tainted by Carnival unfortunately. The streets were crazy busy with people and they are all armed with water bombs and foam. Because we had already had a bit of this in Sucre, I was pretty over it. And it's 100 times worse in La Paz. I would even feel better about it if there was actually some sort of interesting parade to watch. There is a parade. But basically it involves people walking through the main street and, surprise, drenching each other with water and foam… while people watch on the sides. So as we were trying to see something of the city in our one afternoon there, we managed to end up in the middle of the parade. How do you just find yourself in the middle of the parade? Surely you can avoid it, you say. No. To get from one side of the city to the other, you have to cross the parade. Also, there are deceiving blue tarps up everywhere so you don't know what's going on until you've passed through the tarps to see what's going on, and THEN there are no exits from the parade for ages. I ended up in tears because I hated that there was no way to escape; even if you don't want to participate you are targeted. I got smashed with water and foam all over me, and directly in my face, mouth and all down my shirt because someone came really close to me and burst the water bomb on my chest. Get out of my space, man. So we went to a nice organic café and ate a huge plate of spaghetti and cake to cheer me up. As I read this back to myself it sounds a little silly, but I guess it was all just a little overwhelming at the time. Elliott didn't cry. This time.

Copacabana 3/03/14

Four hours on the bus from La Paz to Copacabana - the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca is the highest altitude, navigable lake in the world. We crossed the lake in rickety boats, and waited for our bus to do the same on a flotation device that looked as if it might sink at any minute. Alas, it did not sink. Copacabana has a nice relaxed vibe. The weather was lovely when we arrived, and we had a leisurely lunch with a girl from California that we met on the bus. We didn't have accommodation booked because we had tried to get a reservation at two super nice places (Hotel Las Olas and Hotel La Cupula) who said they were booked out, but told us to show up at 2pm to check if they had any spare rooms. We went to Las Olas (our first choice) at a few minutes past 2pm, and we got a beautiful room with amazing views of Lake Titicaca and the town. The room had two hammocks out the front and one inside, a lovely kitchen, a fireplace and a proper hot shower!! Bliss. We walked up to the lookout, which was hard work at high altitude. We were hoping to enjoy the sunset but the view wasn't great through the clouds. Still, the pretty colours of the sky made for some good photos. It was nice to make our own eggs for breakfast in the morning and take in the view for a little while longer, before boarding the bus again - this time for Peru!