Bolivia land of protest part II

So there we were, wending our way through the streets of El Alto to no avail. A quick conversation between the guide and some people and a bulldozer and we were off back the way we came, looking, I thought from trying to translate their spanish, for a bridge. Eventually we turned off the main highway and followed a group of cars, trucks and buses and forded a stream. All of the other cars, trucks and buses turned left and we kept going straight ahead. Oh f%$k, I thouhgt, where on earth are we going to end up. The outlet for all the sewage apparently. The road kind of disappeared and we forded stream after slushy pile of sewage to the soundtrack of whoops of delight from the driver at another successful manoevre and some lively spanish folk music followed by something reminiscent of a communist russian rally chant.

Thanks to some creative visualisation from Debbie, we eventually arrived at a tarsealed road and were back to hour hotel quite some time after we´d planned.

Debbie and I then went out for Pizza.

The 30 April in La Paz was a bit of a shit day. Not the fault of the city. I´d been feeling a bit unwell for a while, but felt quite crappy and had to go the pharmacy for some medicine (it kicked in really quickly and I´m feeling much better now). We wandered through some of the markets, watched a protest (very well behaved) through the main street. I think it was for education again. It was our last night with our Tour Guide so we went out on the town (I was home by 10pm - not feeling well annd all - but some of them stayed out to the wee hours of the morning).

To answer Mum´s question, Bolivia is a really poor country. La Paz is made up of three sectors. The top at about 4100 metres is the highest and is where the poorest people live - but they have the best views. The lowest is about 3000 metres and this is where the (relatively) rich people live. The reason that they live in the area without the views is that it´s about 6 degrees warmer at 3000 metres. Most of the farming I´ve seen is done by hand or with the help of a donkey.