As we boarded the night bus from Potosi, we noticed all the Bolivian passengers had brought blankets with them. We had sleeping bags and Down jackets but they were in our big packs in the luggage compartment. The journey was freezing, it seemed to go on forever. We could see street lights in front of us and way up in the sky! We were entering La Paz - built in a canyon, with hills towering around it, most of which the city had covered with ramshackle housing. We actually arrived an hour early. It was still dark outside and too early to get into the apartment we had booked, so we found a bench in the bus terminal and waited. We were joined by Jeremy from Australia, he had been on the same Navimag cruise as us in Chile and shared our late-night taxi to Puerto Varas. His bus had arrived 2 hours early and he was also hanging around until it got light. Our apartment wasn't as advertised. It was supposed to have a kitchen and a dining area - it did but not private. The facilities were shared by other apartments! We found ourselves to be out of the centre - we had great difficulty with Wi-Fi when we made our booking and ended up booking a place that looked clean, safe and with a kitchen rather than nothing at all. After a morning sleep we strolled into the centre for lunch, this was followed for me by mild stomach ache. La Paz is the highest city in the world - if China was to release Tibet to be an independent country again then Lhasa would once again be the highest capital city in the world. The highest city in the world though is El Alto, which is on a high plateau on the edge of La Paz but it is a city in its own right. Our first impressions of La Paz were not favourable. We didn't explore much as we needed sleep. Dinner was followed for me by a torturous night of stomach ache. Enough was enough, in the morning we enquired about a doctor. The maid cleaning the apartments was so helpful, she arranged for an English-speaking doctor to come to us. After a good examination, the diagnosis was salmonella poisoning. The doctor didn't say so but we reckoned Donna had suffered the same but had recovered without medication. We put it down to the chicken we ate on our last 4WD tour lunch. Donna only had a small piece of chicken whilst I demolished considerably more. I started taking antibiotics immediately. It was another wasted day as I felt rotten and Donna was exhausted from lack of sleep - if I don't sleep well, then neither of us do. The next day we went out to explore La Paz using their cable car system. Because of the geography of the city an underground train system is out of the question, so they have opted for an over ground transport system. Seven cable car lines crossing the city, going from the lowest points to the highest points, and 4 more lines are under construction. Journey times from the extremes of the city have reduced from 2.5 hours by road to 20 minutes by cable car and the fare is 30 pence. Congestion has been reduced but it is still a problem. We hopped on the white line, followed by the orange and red. It's quite amazing that an ultra-modern cable car system whizzes you through modern tower blocks and over 'slum' like housing that climbs the hillsides in a higglety piggledy pattern. Exploring the city, we found the same as in Potosi, whole streets are full of opticians or photocopying shops or barbers, etc. We reckon if you wanted to open an opticians but couldn't find a vacant property on the opticians street so opened one instead in the DIY street then you would probably never get any customers. Locals are only going to the DIY street for paint, brushes, etc! La Paz doesn't seem to have much to offer visitors but from here you can arrange trekking, cycling, horse riding and more. Even though we aren't impressed with the place we are hanging around hoping to get better and then arrange some trekking. We found a really nice but reasonably priced hotel in the centre with an English pub right next door! We checked out of our apartment a day early and relocated. We quickly sampled bacon and egg baguettes at the English bar - oh wow so yummy. Later in the day we joined a walking tour and learnt a lot about the city. The unfinished buildings that we had seen across Bolivia are just that - unfinished. If you complete all the external building work on your house you pay higher taxes / rates. You can live in an unfinished building and pay reduced taxes / rates indefinitely! The tour took us through the Witches market where you can buy still born baby Llamas for use in the Bolivian ritual for blessing land for building a new house on. Bolivia's main religion is indigenous beliefs and rituals interlaced with Catholicism. We found out the women don't like their photos being taken either because they are witches and believe cameras will steal their souls or because they are wearing their everyday working attire and not their Sunday best which is saved for annual festivals. The tour took us to San Pedro prison - like no other prison on earth. The government lost control of it a long time ago and now it has developed into a home for 3000 inmates who appoint one of their own as their own mayor who runs the show. There are no guards or metal bars on the cell windows and inmates have to pay for their own cells by working inside the jail. Available jobs include carpentry, laundry services and even shoe-shining. Drug production inside San Pedro is rife, with some of the purest cocaine in the country made and sold inside. The prison inspired the cult 2003 book Marching Powder by Australian journalist Rusty Young. The inmates' families can visit and even stay in the prison, there are a handful of police at the main door just to ensure the only people who come out are the visitors. On the tour we also met 2 young ladies dressed as Zebras - trying to teach people how to use pedestrian crossings! With both of us feeling better we booked a day excursion involving some mild trekking. The first stop was Chacaltaya a 5400-metre summit. The 'everyday' bus chugged along in 1st gear up every increasing roads that allowed us to escape the urban sprawl. The tarmac changed to cobbles then we took a sharp right onto a narrow dusty road clinging to the hillside with a precipitous drop on one side. This white-knuckle bus journey went on for over an hour, the drops ceased but then returned and the journey became even more frightening. We alighted at around 5200 metres and plodded breathlessly to the summit, the air was thin but the views amazing. On the descent I developed a headache from the altitude - Donna was fine. Our next stop was yet another 'Valle de La Luna' but to get there we had to go through La Paz. We actually went right past our hotel and I felt so bad that Donna insisted we got off and give the Moon Valley a miss. At 2pm I went to bed, shivering and head banging. Another day spoilt. After being nursed by my loving wife for several hours my headache had almost gone. We headed for the English bar, we didn't have to go far. Shepherds pie for Donna and Steak & Ale pie for me. Another day and we are both feeling better. We are checking out tomorrow for a 3 day 'El Chorro' trek. We are hoping that something in Bolivia is going to be good for us without any downsides for a change.