Bathing and Bolivia

Here's something you can all try at home. Go out into your garden shed early in the morning and remove all of your clothes. Then use a hairdryer to heat up an eggcup full of water and throw it over your head. Repeat. Once you are very wet and very cold, have someone open up a nearby sulphurous drain. Now here's the most important part: as soon as you have put the shampoo on your hair and committed yourself, allow the hairdryer that is providing the heat to the water to explode, filling your shed with smoke, your eyes with shampoo and covering you in water that has been piped directly from the Arctic.
Fun, eh? You've now experienced a Bolivian shower. If we've never shared a shower before, dear reader, I think you'll agree that this was an experience.
Notwithstanding the grievous state of the nation's plumbing, Bolivia has so far exceeded all expectations. Partly this is due to our expectations being no higher than being kidnapped at the border and then again in the capital. Low expectations are a very good thing when travelling, as almost everywhere turns out to be nicer than the guidebooks indicate. Copacabana, the border town on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca, was an enjoyable pitstop while we sampled the delights of the Isla del Sol. And whereas in Peru the street vendors and purveyors of tat will attach themselves round your ankles and let you drag them several yards down the street, in Bolivia you have to actually express an interest in the merchandise. Now that is progress.

We have spent the last week in La Paz throughly enjoying ourselves. La Paz itself is an extraordinary city and a full on sensory assault after the gilded cage that is Cusco. La Paz is noisy, dirty, smelly, chaotic, vibrant, schizophrenic, sprawling, vibrant, thrilling, colourful and above all MAD. It is geographically steep and ridiculously cheap. A three course meal costs 90p. For the first few hours we mainly kept moving to avoid being run over by people, cars, buses, dogs, carts, policeman and everything else living. Cusco was a beautiful, elegant and contrived city. La Paz has none of its beauty but beats the crap out of it for character. And so in spite of all our expectations we fell in love with the place and stayed for a week when we meant to stay for a day.
There aren't a great many tourist sights (the Valley of the Moon, which is in the books, was a bit of a let-down, but the zoo down the road let us in for 35p and we saw jaguars, which quite made up for it) so we've sort of been roaming the streets. Our hostal is located in the witches market, which involves a lot of bunches of herbs, amulets, incense and dried llama foetuses. I'm tempted to bring some of the latter home but am unclear how I would explain them to Customs so I am having to limit my spending sprees to buying up tacky religious objects, which Bolivian seems to specialise in. I am particularly pleased with my glow in the dark Holy Family figurine, although Chris is less enamoured.

We were also fortunate enough to run into the lovely frenchies (vive!) that we met at Machu Picchu so spent a very nice evening quaffing the local beer and eating satay. In fact we are able to live like kings here on our meagre budget and are somewhat reluctant to move on. I assume this must be a common feeling as the streets of La Paz have a good sprinkling of dreadlocked gringos selling bracelets who clearly have never left either, and for the first time I am more than a little bit envious.