Bolivia, La Paz

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Big, bizarrely beautiful and brimming with bowler hats. La Paz is a strange and colourful place where women, dressed in full skirts, bowler hats and shawls, sell llama fetuses by the roadside. If you bury one in your garden, it's supposed to bring good luck, unless a stray dog digs it up and eats it first. The offering to Pachamama (Mother Earth) stems back to pre-Inca times. There's also new traditions, such as National Labour Day, which took place while we where there and was marked by parades and dancing in the street. With over 1 million inhabitants, La Paz is the largest city in Bolivia, and the governmental, if not official capital (which is Sucre). It sits nestled in the Andes, 3660m above sea level, surrounded by towering peaks that top 6000m. Hygiene is something that needs to be worked on. If the altitude doesn't take your breath away the stench of sewage will. There's a toxic river that runs through the city which is known to contain lots of bad bacteria including E Coli. Horribly it filters into nearby plantations infecting crops and spreading disease. Unsurprisingly we both got ill at some point. [Clare]