As sunsets go it wasn't that spectacular. A soft pink as opposed to the shocking, palm tree-silhouetted orange of picture-postcard fame. But what made it so memorable was Tom Morrill - a soulful, 77-year-old American - reading his poems in the twilight.

Spare a thought - and some change - for the talented musicians playing on a corner near you

John Bonner reports on some of the leading lights of modern British science

Copacabana this may be, but unlike its Brazilian sister, the strongest drink on the shores of Lake Titicaca is coca tea.

THE heart-shaped sign outside the grey-painted wooden farmhouse read: "No food, drink or pets in Apparition Room." A line of policemen, a fence and rows of seated nuns ensured none of the throng got close enough to peer through the windows. Inside, we were told, the Virgin Mary had just appeared and was giving a message to the world through a 47-year- old Georgian housewife and purported "visionary", Nancy.

Pilar Fernandez's image shows Senora Linares standing beside not only three generations of her descendents but also a tribe of Judases. These huge figures are part of a custom as mystifying to others as the British habit of annually burning a guy. Mexicans make a pyre of papier mache versions of the man who betrayed Christ, to burn on Easter Sunday. Someone has to feed the flames and the Linares dynasty, who have taken over an entire street behind the capital's central market, construct traditional skeletons, devils and biblical characters alongside a fresh generation of newer imports: Dracula, Batman, a boxer and a hybrid beast known as an alebrije. Old Senora Linares, in her pink pinny and pinned- back hair, with her folded arms and earnest expression, is engaged in discussing the day's work, or perhaps the day's prices with her daughters.

Sybil Kapoor on the Latin Jeeves who went from La Paz to Le Caprice

High on the Bolivian altiplano

INCHCAPE SHARES soared yesterday after the company announced major progress in divestment plans and promised "substantial" cash handouts to shareholders.

City Life: LA PAZ

1 La Paz, four kilometres above sea level, the highest capital city in the world.

We've been having fun all winter long, checking the answers to our New Year competition. The questions were all related to the Beach Boys, and many of you achieved excellent scores - aided by the festive wild card, which allowed one answer to be "God Only Knows".

Atlantis fever is gripping the world of exploration. Jeremy Atiyah on the rival expeditions seeking out Plato's city under the sea

BEING the driving force behind specialist travel guide business, Bradt Publications, as well as an experienced tour leader, Hilary Bradt has no shortage of stamps in her little blue book.