After I had recovered Ray and I explored La Paz. It is the capital city of Bolivia and another incredibly busy place. It is set in the heart of a valley with surburbia climbing and sprawling its way up the hillsides. At first I had similar feelings for La Paz as I had for Puno (dirty, dusty, smelly etc) but slowly the place grew on me.

As we wondered around we came to guitar shop street, you guessed it ..there were no other shops there except guitar shops and they sold everything guitary including hand woven guitar straps and ......of course I treated myself! It was a toss up between taking a tour to mountain bike down the Bolivian death road with some unscrupulous tour company or buy a handwoven guitar strap..tricky decsion but I just felt that unless I was really unlucky, a guitar strap probably would nt kill me but the death road might just get the upper hand!

After a while we wondered into what can only be described as the witchcrafty area of La Paz. We came across something burning in the middle of the cobbles. After some inspection we realised it was a baby llama!..my stomach turned and then looking up it seemed that every shop had a collection of freeze dried baby llamas hanging up as well as necklaces made of baby llama hoofs! ..Llamas clearly not having a good time of it here! :( (Could nt help thinking of little Pepe in Chivay although he was a baby alpaca and they are much cuter!!) As we carried on, there was a little fire burning at the entrance to nearly every street, some were burning leaves, herbs, glittery things and some were also burning baby llamas. (dont worry they werent live baby llamas!) There were bands every where playing up and down the streets and a sort of shaman type chappie saying some prayers to Pachamama (mother nature/earth)and throwing beer on everyone. As gruesome as it was I had to remember our yummy sunday roasty lamb at this point. It was an amazing sight. After the sacrifices and offerings and after everyone had taken their turn of throwing something highly flammable onto the fire, the road was closed off and used for feasting. People came from all around and helped themselves to homemade food, chicha (beer) and of course succulent roasted baby llama. It is becoming apparent that the South Americans love a good party and need no excuse to get their trumpets out and boogie around the streets..I totally love seeing this side of their culture. Like the people on Tequilas isle, they may not have a lot but there is a richness and colour to life here and they certainly know how to party. Hey Mr Bolivian, its a Tuesday (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, blah blah blah!)...get the llama roasting and crack open the beers!!...Si senor!!...(Please see above for photo section for said feasting!)

We had been in La Paz for quite a while although most of that I had spent in bed. But we had to move on..we caught a night bus to Uyuni..next stop salt lakes...