We arrived in La Paz and our taxi driver took us to the Wild Rover Hostel, an Irish owned "party hostel" which had a bit of a student union feel about it. Not to be put off we had a couple of beers in the bar and Alison took part in what is probably the worst game of pool ever played at such altitude, La Paz is 4,000 m above sea level. We spent the next day wandering around the city before another night in the hostel bar with a few more drinks. On Friday we visited the Valle de la Luna which is an area full of strange rock formations which we wandered round for a couple of hours. That evening Gemma, who we worked at the orphange in Arequipa checked into our hostel with her 3 friends having spent a couple of days in a Bolivian castle. We went out for a great steak at Casa de Argentina (as recommended by Guy in the Galapagos Islands about 3 months ago) before heading abck to the Wild Rover to meet up with a few others before we headed out to an exclusive La Paz nightspot. We had the latest night we have had since Buenos Aires and spent Saturday recovering from our excesses, I must have still been sufferring on Sunday as Alison dragged me round La Paz's markets and I failed to convince her not to buy another leather bag. We then tyook the night bus to Potosi on Sunday night.
We had a good couple of nights in La Paz and met some fun people. La Paz has, among travelling westerners, got a reputation as a bit of a party town and we were probably a little guilty of spending too much time in the bar and not enough exploring the city but with our deadline of Santiago by 8 October we felt we needed to move on after 4 nights.