At the hostel in La Paz

Got a cab OKish from the bus terminal to the hostel once it got light. Reception didn´t open til 7am, I hung around listening to my MP3 player and watching a surprising number of people filter through and mill around in reception (it seems an odd time of morning for most people to be around, unless they all got in during the night like me, but they weren´t here when I got here, so who knows) and spoke to them about twenty minutes ago. My reservation is OK but the room isn´t free til 1pm. They said there was a free breakfast upstairs in the bar but I don´t really feel like it.

Writing this in the hostel computer room, there is wi-fi here but I don´t know the code and don´t like to ask right now as the guy at reception seems slightly preoccupied (much bitching about people leaving before 7am and not having checked out the night before). Besides, I am having to leave both my bags in the reception area until I get my room and I fully expect the bag with the laptop in to be stolen anyway without advertising its presence excessively. There are lockers but they would just about hold a small paperback book, even if I could find one which was free. I could take the bag with the laptop out with me, but I figure it´s probably safer here than being carried around the city, although maybe not. It´s certainly more convenient to leave it here, so I will allow myself to be convinced by that logic.

I suppose in principle I could sit here in the computer room for the next 5 hours (it´s 8am now) so I can keep an eye on things, but I don´t think I can face that and I also don´t want people´s first impression of me to be that I just spend all my time sat in here. Guess I will go out for a bit of a wander (it´s damp here, of course, but not actually raining as far as I can see), maybe see if I can find a museum around 10am or something and perhaps pop back here once or twice to check up on the bag and kill a bit of time if nothing turns up during my wander.

Didn´t sleep much on the bus, I probably got 2-3 hours fitful sleep. I don´t feel too bad now but I expect tiredness will start to kick in this afternoon. Will try not to go to bed too early otherwise I´ll just screw my sleep schedule up even more, but just have to see how it goes.