La Paz

This poor Cholita may no longer have a soul thanks to me

It is now our fourth day in la Paz and I have a slightly better impression of it than when we first arrived. (First photo on the left is stolen from google as I didn't get any good ones of the markets but this is pretty much what la Paz looks like).We are staying in the worst part of the city, but when you walk down the hill for about 30 mins, you reach a much nicer part (well, nice for Bolivia). On the first 2 days I wasn't feeling too great and every time we tried to walk anywhere we got really out of breath because of the high altitude and the pollution. They don't have proper buses here, they have thousands of minibuses that drive about beeping their horns with people hanging out of the doors shouting the destinations. The minibuses then pull up to the side walk nearly knocking you over and people off the street jump in. It's very chaotic and very noisy.
There are lots of Cholitas here (the typical Bolivian women with bowler hats and brightly coloured bags and dresses). They are literally everywhere and there are hardly any actual shops, just lots of little stalls with people sat at them selling random assortments of goods, from toilet rolls, to usb sticks. We have even walked past little stalls that are run by children. I think you are meant to barter them down and we have tried this a few times but the prices are so cheap sometimes its not worth bothering. I got a new battery for my watch fitted for about £2.50 which I thought was excellent. I have also been impressed by the honesty and friendliness of the locals (don't want to jinx it just yet) but when I dropped my camera case, a boy ran after me to give it me back. My first reaction was to scream and clutch my camera (I thought I was about to be scammed) but he just gave me the case that I had dropped. I am constantly on guard for scams here after everything I have read in the lonely planet. There are lots of them about, from people who spit on you to divert your attention, to fake police officers who kidnap you in a taxi. When we first arrived at the bus station, the woman at the tourist information office warned us about this.
There are also lots of shoe shine boys dotted around the streets with masks covering their faces, polishing people's shoes. At first we thought they might be wearing masks because of the pollution and then it crossed my mind that they may be on community service, but when we asked the receptionist in our hostel, he said that most of them are university students that don't want people to know their identity.

Again, from google (but this is still what la Paz looks like)

We have been trying really hard to not get food poisoning here by sticking to fast food places and English restaurants. There is a hostel that is an infamous party hostel called the Wild Rover. It's run by an Irish guy who won £40k on the lottery and then decided to open an Irish hostel. Now he has several of them dotted around South America. We didn't want to stay there after our bad experience of chain party hostels in Buenos Aires, but we went to check it out the other day because we needed to book our Amazon tour from a travel agents that is round the corner.
Before I describe the Wild Rover, I forgot to say that on our second night we went to an English curry house which is meant to serve typically English curry. Apart from the mango (which was actual real mango, nothing like sharwoods *euurgh!*), it was quite British, although they didn't do half rice half chips, which upset me. Randomly, whilst at this restaurant, we bumped into an Irish couple we had met in Brazil at Foz do Iguacu right at the start of our trip. It was lovely to meet them again and we arranged to meet up with them for drinks in their hostel (the Wild Rover) the next night.

The next day we went shopping for random bits like head torches, altitude tablets and shampoo, and in the evening we went to a Swiss Fondue restaurant that had been recommended to us by Rachael and Dan off our salt flats tour. It was excellent (we are making the most of being able to eat out whilst it is cheap - I think the fondue was about £8 each). We ended up ordering in French and talking to the owner in French as his accent was obvious and it seemed silly to continue in Spanish.

After the meal we met the Irish couple in the Wild Rover who had just spent the day doing the death road bike ride. This is a popular backpacker attraction in Bolivia but I really didn't want to do it a) because there is a high chance of falling off the edge of a cliff and dying and b) because it costs about £70 to do.
The wild rover bar certainly was wild, with the barman walking round pouring free shots into people's mouths and wasted Irish girls dancing on the bar. At one point our Irish friend nearly got violent with the barman after he would not take no for an answer when trying to force the shots on us. I would say about 80% of the people in the hostel were Irish and it was a really good atmosphere with good Irish music and food. However, I am glad we didn't decide to stay there as it is the kind of place you don't get any sleep (our friends told us that the bar man came into their rooms the night before and woke everyone up to make them drink shots).
When the music eventually became too loud for us to here each other, we left to go to another famous backpacker bar in la Paz - Oliver's travels. It is a nice little English bar with cheap cocktails and it was a good end to the night.
Yesterday I read on one of the Irish girl's facebook statuses that she had just had her first proper Sunday dinner in months. It made me really want a Sunday dinner. As we had to go back over to the travel agents next to the Wild Rover to pick up our Amazon tickets, we decided to drop in on the Wild Rover again and see if they did Sunday dinner. This is when we bumped into the Irish girls off our jeep tour who were all having Sunday dinner so we decided to join them. It was so nice that I think we will go back tonight for chips cheese and curry. The meals are so cheap and British I can't fault it. I know you are meant to soak in the local culture, but we had had enough of that (and so had our stomachs) after the 4 day jeep tour, so I feel I am entitled to a little Britishness.
Tonight I think we will have tea there and then relax in the sky bar of our hostel where there is a microbrewery and where they offer a free beer every night (we haven't yet taken them up on this offer).
We catch our plane to Rurrenabaque tomorrow to visit the Amazon Rainforest for a couple of days, but before we leave, I want to visit the witches market in the centre of la Paz where they are supposed to sell Lama foetuses and I am really intrigued as to what they look like.

More photos of la Paz: La Paz photos