Latin Twelfth : La Paz : Sat 24th May

Three days left in La Paz, four days left in Bolivia, we manage to tear ourselves from our comfortable bedroom and make it to breakfast for a change. This doesn't improve anyones' mood as the breakfast hall is full of people all narky at the grumpy woman who runs breakfast. At 9.29am she puts away all the breakfast stuff. One of the other guests has to get the reception guy to come and get him something to eat. As if the bread / butter / jam / tea combination was really that worthwhile.

Sarah gets ready, I post a load of photos on my blog, out we go, have a decent coffee, wander over towards the sticker-swapping area but discover another artisan market (utterly lame) and, suddenly, the thumping of drums and honking of horns alerts us to some sort of cultural event. We ain't in Kansas any more (or Belfast, cultural wasteland that it is). Outside the Church of San Francisco is a Battle of the Brass Bands. Under the hot La Paz sky (which naturally burnt the hell out of me) we watched men in colourful suits play Caribbean tunes. Sarah snaps a bunch of photos and some older gentleman gives her a poster of Band Number Two, the Maya Por Siempre Brass Band. Gosh they were good, at least until Mayas Amanta Por Folklore got started. They had won a bunch of awards, toured the world, and now they were here, playing for free and making us feel like we were in a field in Fermanagh with Marc Anthony, not 4000m up in the Andes outside a Catholic church. A fun twist on Ulster culture.

An hour or so later and we have all our brass band / people watching out of our system. We wander across the bridge to the Sticker Swapping area and, sadly, have no joy whatsoever, holding no cards anyone wants at all. So we buy a few more packs, wander along Calle Comercio and end up in Pollo Cochabamba, wolfing down deep fried chicken and chips for lunch (again. Our diet has become a bit bland in La Paz, sadly), and get to our table in Cafe Torino only fifteen minutes into the Champions League final between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid. There we spend the next few hours with gurny faces, pulling doubles from the wrappers, and hoping Atletic take their fingers out of their collective arses. They don't. So now I can look forward to Sevilla v Real Madrid in Cardiff in August. Oh my I am excited.

Well it was never going to get tired, was it? :D

It's 5.45pm, cold, storms have been on and off for days now. We grab a few essentials from the little market stalls on the way home and are home for 6pm, arranging our stickers into numerical order for swapping on Sunday (got a few more doubles now), watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (in Spanish, again, this time all the way through), and the second half of Seabiscuit (could have lived without it to be honest) before snuggling under the blankets and watching The Godfather, in English, whilst Sarah picks out restaurants in Buenos Aires for our final nights in South America. Time is going very fast now.

The Portrait Of A Noo Noo : La Paz : Thurs 22nd & Fri 23rd May

We have horrid kids in the room beside us making a bloody racket until 2.30am when Sarah gets out of bed and bangs the wall. They finally shut up. This is not how we wanted to spend the night before our interview for a US visa at their embassy. We have an early start, need to be out of the hostel at 8.30am to be there for 9.45am at the latest. It's a bit of a dander from here, and I ain't risking rush hour traffic in a taxi.

Mind you, we do make it out on time even though Sarah's eyes are burning in her head. She has suffered so much worse than I at altitude. She hasn't been in great shape since the water bug in Lima, and that's quite a while ago. The security of drinkable tap water and familiar germs is a serious encouragement when it comes to thinking about going home.

The walk to the US Embassy isn't too bad, only takes us about 40 minutes instead of an hour (I haven't started walking any slower just cause I'm 4000m up!) but our initial plans go awry as the branch of Alexander Coffee, Bolivia's version of Clements, is shut for staff training until 10.30am. We were banking on it being open, getting breakfast there, and not wanting to kill everyone in the whole world. This is not a good start.

Worse yet, five more minutes down the road, there is a mad queue outside the US Embassy. Surely a line of staff trying to get in to work? No, this is queueing, US-style. Madness. There are three queues where only two can be seen. One girl at the top is verifying everyones' documents and sending them to the back of the second queue. It appears that our 10am timeslot is a little meaningless. Naturally we only figure this out, in our tiredness and hunger, after asking a few questions and finally arriving at the top of the queue. This takes about 45 minutes. Pages stamped, someone who speaks English!, we are sent to the back of the other queue which, admittedly, moves a little faster. Only one person through the metal detecting machine inside, that's what's keeping us. Still, somewhere around 10.30am we are inside the embassy.

For such an enormous building, all the action takes place in one relatively small room to the left of the lobby. More efficient queueing system here, one that involves sitting down on seats and awaiting your turn. We are surrounded by Bolivians who all seem to want to go for a holiday in the US, except the girl behind us who seems to be married to a US marine. She drops her photos all over the ground.

Up to Window One, yes, its our first visa, yes, here are our fingerprints on your fancy machine, sit down again in a different queue then into another room. Now we're sucking diesel! This chap is incredibly helpful, he admits upon sight of our emergency passports "When I see those I know something bad has happened", and we blaze through our chat. "Come back here tomorrow at 11am and these will be waiting for you with your visas". The relief pours through us. Alexander Coffee is open now and we need to supplement our joy.

Except we don't have time. We devastate a Subway Club sandwich (average) and get to La Embajada de Argentina just after midday. "If we drop our passports into you tomorrow, would they be ready for us on Monday morning to enable us to take a bus at 1pm to Buenos Aires?" "Ummm... I would book the bus for Tuesday, just in case." Very sensible, that man. A taxi to the bus station, a bus ticket booked with Trans-Boliviana, BOB$700, bargain. That's about GBP60. The flight was about GBP300 or so.

So we dander back to the hostel, kick back for a while, watch some crap tv, and before long its nearly 6pm and we are starving. Should we risk the Star of India, La Paz's Number One British Curry House? Well, why not?

The restaurant is back across town in that touristy part of La Paz, but its still a relatively easy downhill ten minute walk. There, in a pokey place with a couple of big parties at the back and a door that no one understands how to close properly, we sample their starter platter for two (one big garlic naan, two pakora that are really salteñas, a couple of decent onion bhajis) followed by a chicken tikka masala (far too spicy but not bad had it been something else) and a chicken madras (not bad at all). The madras rice was just long grain white rice with spicy ketchup through it, the naans weren't bad, but the saving grace on the whole thing was the very generous portions the Star of India allocates, and not for too much money either. It scratched our curry itch, and that was what we needed. It is hilarious that Brits (and it really was all Brits) travel the world with a craving for spicy food that isn't even their own. Still, its also one of the finer cultural aspects of modern Britain. Fish n Chips is still supreme though.

Walk back home, pass out around 10pm. Woken again at 11.30pm by bloody kids. Sarah bangs on the wall again. No relief this time. I guess maybe they figure its too early to shut the hell up. Now I am very awake. Somehow, sometime later, I pass out. Then the weird dreams start. That's what I get for not having a beer today. Crazy, crazy dreams roll around my head. The rain lashes down all night, trying to drown the city. Somewhere around 8.30am I am awake again, surprisingly fresh and ready for Round Two of Visa Hell.

This time its a whole lot easier. An 11am appointment means grabbing a taxi to the US Embassy and being their by 10.30am. Far too early, but no problem. We chat to the security girl on the door and anticipate breakfast at Alexander Coffee, just up the road. Just before 11am we are called over to reception and sign off for our passports, complete with US visa, valid for ten years. There is yet more outpouring of relief. One decent coffee and plate of triple-grain pancakes later and we hike up the hill to the Argentine Embassy. One deposit slip later, a visit to the bank, hand over US$50 or BOB$348.50 and back we go, hand over receipts, my bank statement, photocopies of our bus tickets and our passports and we are done! Friday's work is completed and we may now sit, relax, and complete other basic tasks.

Which consists of wandering around places we have already been, eating salchipapas for lunch (plus a big bottle of Simba, which is a little like Inka Cola but comes in a big glass Maine lemonade bottle), discovering that Bolivia's fake Hard Rock Cafe is shut (we think) and Sarah buying everything she needed in one single shop. Some sort of miracle. We check out an artisan market outside the university which is deep in twice-the-price-pruck. We buy some more football stickers and settle down in Cafe Torino yet again, one more bottle of wine to oil the conversation, and we chat away with Jhonny, our waiter, who is very helpful and points out that, at the end of the main shopping street, there are a few chaps who will swap their stickers with you. In spite of all our travails this is wonderful evening, even if I do hear La Vie En Rose (instrumental version) half a dozen times. We inhale a couple of tasty sandwiches too, just in case.

At some point around 10pm we decide to pack up and go home, all out of stickers (though holding a few doubles by this point) and somehow, without us noticing, it has lashed down outside. Folk are drenched. The little market stalls are covered in wet plastic sheeting. We 'haul shell', as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would have said, and a quick hard walk later we are back in the hostel, the last five minutes of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince are on (in Spanish), and by the time Billy Wilder's 'Witness For The Prosecution' comes on I am exhausted, catch the first twenty minutes and pull the covers over my head.

Happy New Year, Andean Peoples! : La Paz : Wed 21st May

Today is the first day on the Andean calendar. Here is a mighty celebration by the Tiuanacu outside Bolivia's government buildings.  For a city that has so often reminded me of others (Belfast, New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro) it still reserves a character so unique that you marvel in it.

There were many tourists taking photos of these folk in traditional dress.Not all had the stones to go wandering amongst them and eat, too. 

The flag with the squares is the Aymara flag. The middle one is Bolivia's national flag. The white one... not sure. I'm guessing another native peoples'.

That´s an enormous blanket covered in potatoes. All for sharing.

This chap insisted I help myself to even more potatoes (admittedly cold, but still, free potatoes grown a few miles away!) and cheese. The cheese was just about as good as I've ever had in my life. He explained that it was the start of the new year according to the Andean Calendar and that they were from Tiuanacu. He also explained that the pink that you see everyone wearing is the colour of authority in their community. Its little facts like that that are hard to come by.

This chap gave Sarah a great big smile and insisted she also get in on the potato-eating activities. She had a big golden one and took her time with it. In this instance I totally understand why. Cold potatoes are an acquired taste.

This red poncho is the traditional dress for men in this part of the altiplano. When President Morales made his way into power in 2006 and the big social changes started you would find everyone wearing it, from the President and the military leaders right the way through society.

Coca leaves. "Not white" as President Morales pointed out the UN, a former coca grower himself whose popularity is often explained as that he is the first Bolivian president who can speak Aymara. The chap we spoke to taught us the first three numbers in Aymara, not how we expected to spend this morning, but brilliant all the same. I have been searching for a better Español - Aymara dictionary but they are surprisingly harder to find here than in Peru.

Best coca leaves I've had yet. Really fresh and delicious.

These coloured sheets are used to carry everything from bread to babies. You can buy them almost everywhere and they're extremely durable.

After all that excitement, as we waiting for Thursday to draw in on us, we had little to do but a little shopping. We downed a tasty coffee in Cafe Copacabana (accompanying Rollo de Canela, or cinnamon roll, was warm and delicious! Oh how I have missed cinnamon!) and stepped forth on what promised to be one of our final gift-hunting days. Up and down the streets of Old La Paz we went, in and out of little outlets, until finally we had another bag or two of pruck and we felt capable of sitting down and inhaling some meat. This is how The Steakhouse (just next door to The English Pub) serves up a llama steak. First one of the trip. Well seasoned though just a little overdone for me. Mind you, best salad bar in South America so can't complain too much.

Now, however, its time to live like children as we distract ourselves from the imprending maelstrom of visa hell. Around the bridge leading from San Francisco's church there are a lot of ladies with stalls selling sticker albums. World Cup Sticker Albums. Official Ones By Panini. This may have been Sarah's idea. According to her she has never had a sticker album. I cannot believe it. Even I, who showed no interest in football most of my entire life, used to collect stickers for the world cup. It must be done. It can be done.

Its done. The albums are about 80p each. We bought a box of stickers, 100 packets, for about GBP20. We bought a bottle of wine in Cafe Torino for BOB50 (about GBP4.15) and we spent nearly four hours totally absorbed in this.

If someone out there can tell me a better way of spending twenty quid and four hours, please let me know.

Oh, and we spent a quid on the way back for a portion of salchipapas too. Sarah had burned through her 50 packets, whilst I had only done half of mine, and I needed something to distract her. Chips and hot dogs were the answer, hahah!