Day 243, 244, 245, 246 -La Paz - Friday 15th, Saturday 16th, Sunday 17th, Monday 18th June 2012

The ride the day before, and descent into La Paz was nothing short of spectacular; along the way the scenery was made up of Lake Titicaca on one side and miles of snow-capped mountains on the other and then once we arrived into La Paz we saw the numerous houses ascending into the mountains with the sun setting in the distance - not a bad arrival into the highest capital city in the world.

We spent four very lazy and very cold days in La Paz. To be honest, after walking around the markets and checking out the locals we were left with little to do; we could have done the death road mountain bike tour but given my history on bikes (on our last bike ride, on flat road, I fell off about five times) we thought it best not to put me on two wheels on the most dangerous road in the world! We spent quite a bit of time looking around the markets but a lot of it was similar to the stuff we had bought in Peru so we bought a couple of bits, yes more Alpaca jumpers, but not too much. The markets also threw up the usual very scary mannequins - seriously South America needs to invest in some normal looking ones! We spent a lot of time in bed, trying to warm up and watching films - as crap as that sounds! Sadly we were also quite excited by having a TV in our room and it had BBC news - god we're getting old! We did quite enjoy watching the local woman in their traditional dress with bowler hats - we are completely obsessed with how they keep them on their heads?! And again, the dogs are mega cute and so fluffy, although apparently there is a really big issue with strays in La Paz; they currently estimate that there are 300,000 strays just in the city - maybe a few too many for us to bundle home in our backpacks?! Oh and we checked out San Pedro prison, famous from the book Marching Powder and illegal tours (Ad's just finished the book so was especially keen to see it) - but only from the outside! Apparently the tours are now really difficult to do (maybe to do with the film rights just being bought and the possibility of a film coming out next year) plus we heard that a girl got raped a couple of months back so for these reasons we decided against trying to get it!

Monday came and we were packed, washed and ready to head to the airport for our flight to Rurrenabaque to start our jungle and pampas tour. Just as we were about to leave I quickly checked our email only to find an email to say our flight had been cancelled - great, not another day in cold La Paz!! We were both a bit peed off as it mucked up all of our forthcoming plans and tours for Bolivia but after getting ourselves down to the travel agent we just about managed to sort it all out and arranged a flight for the following day. Still feeling a bit fed up and cold we decided to treat ourselves to a nice dinner, only problem was it was only 2pm. Not to be deterred we eventually found a open steak place that did a set meal and settled down for quite a few hours - first course was two double shots of tequila followed by nachos. For main we had a bottle of red wine and a meat platter with salad and mash and to round off we finished with pud and coffee. Drunk, full up but feeling a bit better about the world we headed back to our hotel for the night.