FINALLY escaped!

So, I ran away from La Paz yesterday. After two weeks over festive season, at altitude, it was about as much as my health could handle!

Met some amazing and gorgeous people. Some less so!

Now, it´s onwards and upwards. Or downwards, geographically (or am I now higher than I was yesterday… who knows anymore?).

Now arrived in Sucre for some calm, culture and loveliness, after a long and arduous final day in La Paz. The sun´s out today, which was very welcome. Not worn a pair of shorts since I´ve been here.

May stick around and take some Spanish lessons, but if not, I´ll be here three or four days and then head to Potosi to throw myself into a silver mine (don´t worry mum, I will be neither the first nor the last!).

Was sitting a beauticians the other day trying to make myself look relatively more human than I had been looking, and during four hours of being buffed, painted and polished – all for about 15 quid (I know!) – I had a lot of thinking time. Sadly, now I have forgotten many of my more profound thoughts I thought I might share (worst blog post EVER!?).

But there´s a very common perception here, amongst the people I´ve been meeting, and I´ve had it a lot this week. A lot of people are putting pressure on themselves, as in they should see this place, or ´DO´ this country, and at the end of the day, every day is a different day, and we make choices. And each of those choices will be for a different reason, and will have different outcomes, some known, and some less known.

Anyway, the point of this ramble was that I needed to stop feeling guilty about moving on, or not doing something on The List, and relax. So I may change my originally planned route, or may extend by a while, as it´s FLYING by. I even thought about staying and working for a brief stint, but that didn´t quite work out.

I know to everyone who´s done these kinds of things before, this is a very typical thought process, but it´s new for me.

Also major events seem to be hindrances rather than helpers over here. For instance, there was the whole thing about Christmas and New Year and where to be. Now there´s the whole birthday thing, but I am inclined to forget about this one if I´m honest and stop here (not met so many 18-25 year olds since I was, well, probably 18-25)!

Now I feel like in wanting to be in Rio for Carnaval, I may have painted myself into a bit of a corner, as I seem to have underestimated the time needed for my original plan. So it could all change, in terms of going there first and then coming back in towards Argentina, or skipping it altogether, but I need to do some research into logistics first (not exactly my preferred forte!).

All good either way.