Gran Hotel Paris La Paz

... and several minutes)! The room is tiny and dark and overfilled with pointless furniture like an enormous wardrobe and drawers, but it will do... But I think I may start booking accommodation ahead from now on because Lonely Planet is foolish and there are much better places available.<br><br>My main reason for coming to La Paz is the Death Road, of course, as I missed out last time. Unfortunately it doesn´t run Sundays and I need to pay in advance anyway, which meant Sunday ...

... developing countries and this was no exception. Add to this tales we have heard of muggings and kidnapps (I know it happens in London too) and I was only moderately excited about our imminent arrival. I heard Chief in the site say "I heard people say they like La Paz but this looks **** to me"- I agreed. <br><br>Then we swung round a corner and saw a view I don´t think I´ll forget. La Paz is positioned in a massive bowl with the poorer houses holding on to the upslopes of the bowl with a ...

... yipee!!! It was sad to part ways with everyone although Ali was continuing to Bolivia so i was luckily keeping my Spanish interpretor!!!<br>It as then meet the new tour leader and group for the rest of our trip around Bolivia. All seemed good although with a mix of Scottish, Germans, Swiss, Kenyan and Australians and our new leader Suellen seemed the opposite of Mirko, hyperactive compared to the laid backness of Mirko!<br>

... br>On a possibly related note, I seemed to come down with something about a day later, which if it had held off another 12 hours until we were back in La Paz I probably would have simply blamed on returning to altitude after a two week hiatus (something which had clearly messed with our tolerance in much the same way the toilet in Coroico "would not tolerate toilet paper"). But it was obviously something different in this case, and it caught Laynni a bit as well ...

... Speaking of which we encountered a bit of a demo on one of the main Plaza´s outside the presidents offices and I was swanning about taking pictures when Ang said that the posters they were holding up basically said that they were sick of white people. Naturally I put my camera away pretty sharpish though it was more to do with white people taking their jobs, not tourists. Also spotted a dog wearing army fatigues which was a bit random.<br>Next morning headed up to the stadium to ...

... girl who fell for this and had everything taken. The fact that all I had on me was about 50 Bs (£4.50) a book I was reading and several snotty tissues wouldn't have pleased them either.<br><br>We discovered through talking to Chris and August yesterday that there has been some insurrection in the south which has led to a road (not sure which one yet) being closed. We're hoping that by the time we get round to doing that bit it ...

... properly without a local beer to cheer it up, so we piled into a crazy little colonnial cafe full of old telephones and 1920´s typewriters and ordered up a bottle of the local brew. Una Ceveza Huari por favor señor! Feeling mildly light headed we went back to the hotel to rest for half an hour and stock up on the strepsil fix for the sore throats, before heading out to the local Llama Steak house for dinner, kindly recommended by the man on reception downstairs and 20 metres ...

... continue on as is. I felt better after getting it all out of system, but didn´t care to eat food all day, so I felt incredibly weak and still had a 5000m pass to climb and a hike out. So, off we trudged at a snail´s pace...but slowly and surely we made it up and over and down to our destination of the old mining town of Milluni where another Jaime was waiting with an old Toyota to pick us up.<br><br><br>The fun didn´t end there...as we were ...

... war and the whole way has sheer drops of 60 metres to 600 metres and not a guard rail in sight. There are some really scary parts and the guide can tell you horror stories where tourists have just gone off the edge! The scenery was absolutely amazing with all the mountains surrounding us and we got really good weather. You can hit speeds up to 65kmh and can be scary seeing all the crosses marking the roads everywhere and thinking about all the ...