La Paz

Finally arrived in La Paz late yesterday, quite exhausted. I was so tired that I slept through the safety briefing and take off on the flights to Santa Cruz and then to La Paz. It´s good to be here at last though.
I was expecting La Paz to be freezing cold, but we´ve had a lovely wam sunny day today. It´s high altitude here, and that´s OK as long as you don´t try to walk uphill, which is impossible in La Paz because most of the streets are steep here. I don´t seem to be suffering with altitdue sickness!
First impressions of La Paz are that it´s a noisy, smelly (traffic fumes), colourful and friendly place. I´ve spent most of the day just ambling around the city streets soaking up the feel of La Paz. I haven´t seen that many tourists here, it´s mainly Bolivians with a fair number of women wearing the colourful traditional blankets with a bowler hat perched on their heads.
There are ´market stalls´ everywhere, all very colourful and selling everything imaginable and uninagnable. I´ve seen those selling dried llama foetuses - used to bury under new buildings, for luck!
I popped into the Cathedral which was very impressive, there was a service taking place and a lengthy sermon in Spanish - unfortunately I couldn´t understand any of it.
Next stop was the musical instrument musem, showng musical instruments usd in Bolivia from 000´s BC almost to date. After that I headed for their recommended musical nstrument shop to pick up a professional quality quena, set of samponyas (panpipes) and charango strings for Alan. I may well visit them again before leaving La Paz, the shop is a stones throw from our hotel - if only I had more space in my rucksack!
The hotel we are in is grim but functional, as expected. At least we have hot showers in this one!
I´ve already met our Intrepid guide, she seems very nice and will be with us for the 26 day trip. I´m told that there are going to be 9 other people on the trip. Various nationalites, and many doing the trip as part of a longer time spent travelling in South America. We´re all meeting each other this evening for a briefing and dinner.