I had to get up at 7 in the morning to go to the ruins of Tiwanaku, the first ruins I was about to see...

I was quite grumpy, it being so early, which didn't improve when I got into a dodgy minibus. We crossed half La Paz to pick up some more people and set off. Halfway on the road to El Alto, we picked up our guide, who was called Abraham, which did not suit him at all, as he was way too young (in his early forties), too Bolivian and he did not have a beard.

He started talking in English, but there was a couple of older Brazilians who only spoke Spanish, so he had to translate everything. And he couldn't do it in Spanish because there were two Americans as well. Not only that, he had such a droning voice that very soon I was ready to kill him off. This did not bode well...

We stopped at a viewpoint which had an amazing view of all the mountains (Chacaltaya being one of the most famous ones). When we got to Tiwanaku we first went into the museum, which would have been interesting if our guide had done anything else than memorise the signs underneath all the ceramics.

Whenever he was asked a question, he would just say something which was completely beside the point. For instance, the Swiss guy asked him how they flattened the skulls of the people (there were some on display) and he answered 'because of different social classes'. Even when he showed the instrument later with which they did it, he didn't explain any further.

He would say 'Here you can see some things used for ceremonies', then went on, forgetting to tell us what kind of ceremonies, what the 'things' were used for etc. Anyway, it went on like this throughout the whole visit and I was trying to see things on my own and forget about him, because he was really taking the piss. It was not his knowledge of English neither because he was just as vague and useless in Spanish.

We had lunch, which was quenoa soup (nice but heavy) and either omelet, chicken, fish or llama (all decidedly dodgy stuff). After, we had another museum full of monoliths (the American lady: 'Are they made out of different stones?') which I am sure would have been terribly interesting with a different guide.

After, we had a quick stop to see La Paz from El Alto, which was amazing, and got out in the centre. It was too bad our guide was so lousy, because this could have been really good... Oh well, I'm sure there's more ruins to come soon.