Two days of not very much!!

Our last day in La Paz was pretty lazy really, did a bit of internetting, late breakfasting and basic wandering around town.  walked back over to the Plaza Murillo to try the dulce de leche ice-cream we spotted in a small shop there, not worth the effort really - did not taste very dulce and don´t think there was much leche in the ice-cream!  Just snoozed and watched TV this afternoon then went down to a nearby Chinese restaurant for dinner.  The place was upstairs in a dingy room, but the food was very good and the kitchen was fairly open so could see that the preparation was OK.  Very cheap too, so even better.  Back to the hotel to pack and get ready to leave tomorrow for Cochabamba.

March 1 saw us sitting in a public bus for most of the day.  The bus trip should have taken about 6 hours, but actually took 10.  As soon as we left the terminal (half an hour late), the driver proceeded to stop every 5 minutes to either pick up a friend who he would then regale with stories at the front of the bus, or let on some street vendor to sell things to the passengers (the driver always got a freebie of course).  We got very few moments peace on the whole trip, but the wierdest one was when a blind beggar got on and proceeded to rub everybody´s arms to get their attention.  If you have been dozing off, waking with a start to find a strange little man groping you is quite disconcerting.  The last straw was the young man who got on and proceeded to play his pan pipe made of plastic electrical conduit pipes and singing in order that we would throw our money at him.  Bolivia is the first country in the world that we have visited where almost every single person wants something from the tourists.  Indeed, we have noticed quite regularly that locals will be walking down the street but as soon as they hear a voice speaking English they straight away turn around and thrust their open palm in your direction.  We´re afraid we´re becoming a little callous about it all, but it does get extremely hard to bear after a while.  Got to the hotel in Cochabamba quite late so just had some dinner in a local cafe and will do our sightseeing tomorrow.  Actually found it difficult to get served in this town, we went to four places before any one in the restaurants would even acknowledge our presence.  To date, Bolivia is not high on our list of favourite places!