La Paz 
We have settled into a sort of holding pattern in La Paz. Each day is much the same as the last.
Each day, we usually set of in some random direction and walk for an hour or two (always uphill or downhill of course), just absorbing the daily life in La Paz. It seems you can walk forever along some of the streets and never run out of street vendors lining the sides of the road, selling everything your heart could possibly want. If the streets happen to be extra wide, they just set up two rows of vendors along the sides so there is never more than 1 or 2 lanes left for traffic. For some reason, this seems to work quite well here and makes for a lot of fun just cruising the streets. 
When we get tired of walking, we usually find ourselves drawn to a place like Alexander´s Cafe, where you can actually get a real cup of coffee and a muffin. For some reason, coffee is a difficult commodity to find in both Bolivia and Peru (outside of Nescafé instant).
Then, we invariably end up at the Plaza Murillo, where we can sit on the steps and just watch people for hours. This seems endlessly fascinating, with the rich mixture of cultures that seem to meld in the square. You can see ladies in their lovely huge skirts and bowler hats, mixing with serious men in suits and ties, young families with little kids having a ball feedng the pigeons, a few military types patrolling the park and eating ice cream and a sprinkling of tourists from around the world.
This was a bit of a strange outing for us. We were bused up to El Alto where there is a wrestling ring in a small arena. Seating for the locals is all aroung on bleachers, but us tourists get the VIP seating (plastic chairs set up right around the ring).
We have settled into a sort of holding pattern in La Paz. Each day is much the same as the last.In the morning, we drag ourselves out of bed and have breakfast on the top of our hotel. Lately it seems as if we are the only guests at the hotel and we usually have the restaurant to ourselves. In spite of this, the attendant always has to ask for our room number and exclaim as if he has never seen us before.
We came home last night a little later than usual and found that the staff had all disappeared but our key was conveniently left on the recepetion counter for us, just reinforcing the idea that we are alone here.
Each day, we usually set of in some random direction and walk for an hour or two (always uphill or downhill of course), just absorbing the daily life in La Paz. It seems you can walk forever along some of the streets and never run out of street vendors lining the sides of the road, selling everything your heart could possibly want. If the streets happen to be extra wide, they just set up two rows of vendors along the sides so there is never more than 1 or 2 lanes left for traffic. For some reason, this seems to work quite well here and makes for a lot of fun just cruising the streets.
When we get tired of walking, we usually find ourselves drawn to a place like Alexander´s Cafe, where you can actually get a real cup of coffee and a muffin. For some reason, coffee is a difficult commodity to find in both Bolivia and Peru (outside of Nescafé instant).
Then, we invariably end up at the Plaza Murillo, where we can sit on the steps and just watch people for hours. This seems endlessly fascinating, with the rich mixture of cultures that seem to meld in the square. You can see ladies in their lovely huge skirts and bowler hats, mixing with serious men in suits and ties, young families with little kids having a ball feedng the pigeons, a few military types patrolling the park and eating ice cream and a sprinkling of tourists from around the world.
We try to vary where we have lunch, tryng various restaurants we have found and have been making lunch our main meal of the day. The afternoons seem to fly by, usually just more walking and possibly taking a much-needed nap. Supper is more or less fast food, picked up at some local eatery and we are usually totally exhausted by the end of the day. I don´t think we are fully aclimatized to the altitude yet, after more than a week in La Paz.
We have made an effort to find an English book store, with no luck. However, we have found a couple of places where you can exchange a book for another for about a dollar. This is actually not a bad solution to Sue´s readng drought.
Oh ya, we did manage to stir up our lives a bit on Sunday by attending the Cholitas Wrestling.
This was a bit of a strange outing for us. We were bused up to El Alto where there is a wrestling ring in a small arena. Seating for the locals is all aroung on bleachers, but us tourists get the VIP seating (plastic chairs set up right around the ring).We then sat through 2 hours of preliminary wrestling bouts with strange characters wearing outfits like skeletons and ninga turtles (and one midget for Russ). Very amateur hour theatrics but the locals sure seem to get a hoot out of it.
Finally, there was one bout with the promised Cholitas. Actually it was a tag-team effort with one man and one Cholita on each team. It was surprisingly very entertaining. Another one of those things you have to see to really understand.
So, that is our current daily existence here in La Paz. We have a few more days before joining our next Adventure travel group for the trip to Rio. For our part we are just going to continue to take it easy and enjoy the local life for now.
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