Day 33 — free relaxing day in La Paz

I wake up early, as is my habit, since the sun has been waking me up most mornings lately. I make some green tea and work on catching up on email and updating this blog. After a couple hours Alex wakes up. We go for breakfast at a coffee shop called Alexander Coffee a block away from his place. I have a steak omelette and a capuccino, and he gets a teriyaki chicken wrap and some peach juice. I bring a duffel bag full of dirty clothes to a laundry service Alex knows. He says he does his own laundry and doesn’t really trust any service, but I don’t really want to spend so much time on it when I’m only around for a short time.

Alex and I both have errands to run, so we go separate ways. I buy hair conditioner, nail polish remover (I want to see what my painful right big toenail looks like under the thick layer of pink glitter), and some bandages for my other toenail. I go back to the apartment to use the Internet again. Alex gets back about an hour later and brings me a banana/chirimoya juice, which is delicious. He leaves to go to work and muay thai training for a while. I talk to Nic and Luke on Facebook — they just got back this morning from Illimani. Sounds like they had better summit weather than I did, and I’m a bit jealous. I also begin planning my next leg of my Bolivia trip. The Internet is patchy. Alex says that’s not uncommon in the afternoons. I don’t know how people here deal with it. I also look into moving my flight back to the US (scheduled September 9th from Lima, which I bought when I didn’t think I’d spend a full month in Bolivia) to La Paz, but decide against it. I’ll just fly to Lima a few days ahead of time.

Around 4pm I’m ravenous. I decide to go back to Alexander Coffee for a sandwich and another capuccino. On the way there I run into Luke. He’s celebrating his first afternoon off in more than 40 days. Tomorrow morning he flies back to Seattle, and the next morning he starts a Rainier expedition. Sounds exhausting. We make tentative plans to meet up later tonight. I buy a club sandwich and bring it back to Alex’s apartment. It’s huge but I eat it all. I get a couple more blog days posted.

Alex comes back and we discuss going for dinner and maybe going out tonight. He has some work stuff to do first and I am happy to just use the internet. Later we talk about dinner again but neither of us is terribly hungry. I ping Luke, and Alex heads out with his friends for a bit. I unintentionally pass out on the couch. Alex comes back around midnight, wakes me up, and mocks me a bit. He asks if I want to go back out with his friends but I’m far too drained. I go to bed.