Halloween and Coroico

Hello there. So Sam delegated the buying of Halloween costumes to me which he later regretted but as you can see from the photos he looked very dashing as a tree. I thought it was a stroke of genius, much more interesting than your usual devils and witches. We had a jolly evening at the Speakeasy Institute Halloween "Spaceship", lots of apple bobbing, eating doughnuts tied from the ceiling on pieces of string (this is an American Halloween game apparently) and enjoyed the music of the house band, which comprised a chicken, a donkey and Alice Cooper. Oh, and Sam on the Cambodian Jews Harp. A fair amount of rum was consumed and the evening ended back at Peter and Sonja´s with Sam declaring he would shave his head if Owen (the chicken) beat him at Scrabble. I wasn´t delighted by the prospect I have to admit, fortunately he won, a lucky escape I think you´ll agree.

All Souls Day is a public holiday here so we had an extra two days off and pootled off to Coroico on Friday morning. The owner of the hotel picked us up in a minivan and drove us down the new road as opposed to the old "road of death" so we were spared the delights of watching bodies being pulled up from the ravine or indeed of flying over the edge ourselves. Had an excellent weekend lying around by the pool, lying around in hammocks and lying around watching the clash of the Scrabble titans. Sam enjoyed his birthday, he got a nice green Alpaca jumper and a cake with a dinosaur on it.

Pip pip, me here (Sam). Not much to add really. The last two weeks have been a blast. Coroico was beautiful and relaxing. Full week's work this week (if you can call 3 hours a day a full weeks work. Which you can't) so looking forward to the weekend. We may make a trip to the Liquor Supermarket to stock up on Christmas booze and other goodies, although I'm not confident that the supplies will last until Christmas. We'll almost certainly be in La Paz, although we might pop off somewhere for a week during the Christmas break. We're thinking Sucre or Cochabamba or maybe Arequipa in Peru...any other suggestions most welcome. The rain has started in earnest which I am loving (although no doubt I will tire of it after then twentieth consecutive day of downpour). Lots of thunder and lightning which is pretty spectacular what with being so high up.

There you are then. Hope everyone is well. There's a whole bunch of new photos on the website (link in previous blog entries). Bye. X