I had desayuno at the hotel, which consisted of rolls with either butter or guayaba (guava) marmelade, a treat I remember from my Havana days.

I went into the Mercado this monrning, where you can buy fresh fruit and vegetables, painstakingly put in nice heaps by cholas. I tried to find some salteñas, but they were all with meat.

Afterwards, I went to see if I could book a flight to La Paz, as I wasn't looking forward to a 14 hour busride, overnight, on a Bolivian bus. I managed to find one, but it leaves tomorrow. As it's Christmas soon, I didn't want to get stranded in lovely but quiet Sucre, so I took it.

I walked around the streets of Sucre, buying some more souvenirs and running into shoeshine boy Samuel, who still looked grubby and cute, and who had a whole new wishlist of things I could buy for him. I had a vegetarian sandwich at Joyride, and my craving for healthy food was temporarily satisfied.

For siesta, I just went to the residencial to read my book and chill out for a bit, enjoying the sunshine and that great Louis de Bernieres book which I finished, a lot quicker than the Dostoyevsky one...

I admit Bolivia is getting to me. There is something perverse about a country with so many natural and manmade beauty, and such an in your face amount of poverty. I also feel I am a bit travelweary, tired from moving from one city to the next every few days, so it will be good to stay in La Paz for a while, and to slow down this hectic travelling scheme.

At three thirty, I went to the Iglesia de la Merced, where the caretaker was still cleaning up after a wedding. He told me to go to the belltower first, and he's be done a bit later. So I did.

After climbing the steep stairs my head met with a very inflexible low ceiling, reminding me of that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where one of the clues to the Holy Grail is 'only the penitent man will pass'. So I ducked. The views are truly amazing, the white buildings and red rooftiles explaining why this is the White City (La Ciudad Blanca), the surrounding green hills (even though they are over 3000 metres, they seem like hills from high altitude Sucre) lending a picture perfect setting to it. It was intoxicating.

I went onto the church roof, which I don't think I was allowed to because there was only a plank there. Without being obstructed by the bell tower, the views were even more spectacular and I had to sit down, feeling quite dizzy and just snapping away with my camera in every direction.

A Bolivian couple and their two kids came up, so I left them in peace and went to visit the church, which wasn't that impressive. Although I did find out why San Judas Tadeo is the popstar of saints. He had all the cards to his name in Valparaiso, Chile, and at the time I wondered why. Turns out he is the saint of work and of the impossible (like Santa Rita) and the latter makes him a very popular saint to pray to.

I walked up the hills to Plaza San Pedro, a very pleasant square with an amazing view over the whole city. I had a great milkshake and tortilla at the Cafe Mirador and walked back down the steep streets. I had a look at what a Bolivian supermarket looks like (answer: pretty much like any other Latin American supermarket, with quite a large section devoted to Santa Coca Cola) and went to pack.

I was debating whether I was really hungry enough to go and have dinner, but then I remembered those vleeskroketten at Joyride and I admit I indulged one last time... I ran into Joel again, as the cafe seems to be a bit of a travellers gathering place. He went in the Dinotruck to see the vertical tracks of dinosaurs (vertical because of tectonic movement, ie earthquakes) but wasn't too impressed.