Mmm, intravenous fluids

Most of you won´t have heard from me in a while and may be wondering what I´m up to, but I bet you didn´t guess I was in a Bolivian hospital fighting off salmonella, a parasite and bronchitis?! I started feeling ill in Copacabana, our first stop in Bolivia which is on the lovely Lake Titicaca (the highest lake in the world and the largest lake in South America). Karen and I missed out on visiting the islands in the lake for a day in bed and there we stayed until it was time to move to La Paz. I was feeling even worse in the capital and when the altitude sickness tablets didn´t help I called in the doc. He quickly diagnosed me with the above and I was ferried off to his clinic where they hooked me up to a drip for 4 days and pumped me full of fluids and antibiotics. It was a nice place where I had a private en suite room and 3 meals a day (force fed mind you!), but by no means was the place sterile like our hospitals. Still, I feel almost as good as new now and ready to carry on with my adventures. It´s put me behind schedule which is a major spanner in the works, so I´m missing out Brazil and taking my time here and in Argentina instead. Karen has flown home and Sian and Phil have gone to Peru, so it´s just little old me again for a wee while until I meet the group I shall be discovering the Salt Plains with. Now I´m off to finally discover the city I have already spent a week in, including the scarey sounding Witches Market where they sell dried llama foetuses! They´re supposed to bring good luck to a new home and do various other hokery pokery special things, but I´m still not convinced, and I don´t want to give customs any more reasons to have a good frisk!