La Paz.

La Paz was amazing, and really erratic, exciting and culturally diverse city with gorgeous old american dodge and ford trucks used as public transport.  The city had a really distinct feel to it unlike any other city we had been.  As you arrive you see the crazy shape of the city, it is surrounded by snow capped mountains in and large hills. Houses are built up right to the top of these hills, and the city flows down the sides, where the rich live and the main metropolitan part is. We quickly got out of the bus station and made a B line for the artisan area with loads of hostels.  This area was fronted by a beautiful grand old catherdal and large public space in front where all day there would be amazing street performers putting on different acts.  We walked up the hill from here with our heavy bags through cobble paved roads dotted with run down but beautiful old buildings and bussling with street traders. There were hundreds of litte artisan shops selling everything from really cheap touristy tack to gorgeous antique furniture and fabrics.  We found a cheap and basic hostel, But the area was perfect. Our hostel was right next to the witch's market, a crazy street filled with stall after stall filled with the most bizarre stuff you could imagine.  Perplexed at first me and Jess wondered around trying to work out what they were selling.  There were countless dead lama babies and foetuses hanging from the ceiling in each shop.  Bottles of Pachamama (mother earth) wine and hundreds of thick colourful potions lined the shelves, offering solutions to all of lifes problems .  There were large sweets all in different shapes such as love hearts, dollar bills, work ties and boyfriends or girlfriends for burying and praying to Pachamama that they come to life.  We later learnt that the dead lamas were used as an offering to pachamama before building a house, and if you dont conduct a ceromoney using one you are not insured to have workers on your building site, so no one will build your house.  We also found out it is commonly believed that for large constructions a larger offering is required, a human sacrifice! It is said that a drunken homeless person with no family is picked up from the street and burried in the foundations of all big sky scrapers in bolivia.  A ceromoney is conducted with all of the builders there present, they wont start work without seeing this as they believe pachamama will smote them down on the site if a sufficient sacrifice is not made!  This is not proven but its wildly believed to be true.
The thing that we were enjoying the most was late night drinking and dining, La Paz really is a metro city brimming with expats, we had the best Turkish/ Arabic food we have ever had here even better than back in london.  We also did a walking tour and found out why the chollitas (traditional women with the small hats and puffy skirts) all wear tiny little fancy hats.  Apparently the Italian community here all wore hats like these, and thought they could sell them to the Bolivian men here.  Because the men were so short here they assumed that they would have small heads, which it turns out they do not.  Hundreds of these hats had already been shipped out so they decided to lie to the bolivian women by saying these hats were all the rage in Europe. They completely bought it as they had no way of finding out whether this was the case or not and so to this day women all over Bolivia are still wearing them.        - Lyndon.