La Paz

12/06/13 to 16/06/13 - The 'de facto' capital of Bolivia and the highest 'capital' city in the world at 3700m, La Paz is unique. The downtown area is set along a valley running downhill, flanked on either side with more hills, all built on except for the odd sheer cliff face or gulley stuck in between. . It was quite tiring to walk uphill (La Paz has a lot of stairs) as we tended to forget that we were so high up.

The buses here are very cool too. A mixture of chunky, colourful old tin heaps which zoom around beeping their horns and trying to convert more pedestrians into commuters (which is easy when they're going uphill).



We walked around the city visiting the markets and a few miradors around the city. Our hotel had our first decent hot showers in Bolivia and TV and internet and we felt like we were in luxury (ironically it was the cheapest place we had found in Bolivia so far). La Paz has a nice feel to it, and at the Witches' Market, the Cholitas sell everything that you can and can't imagine (coca leaves, secret potions and dried Llama feuteuses, which apparently bring good luck if you bury them under your doorstep… souvenir anyone?). Chicken, both 'broasted' and 'spiedo' seem to be the food of choice here, as well as tiny stalls which pop up in the evenings selling miniature hamburgers and chips.

You might wonder why the Cholitas wear English bowler hats as part of their traditional clobber. Apparently, in the 1920's a shipment of the hats arrived in Bolivia for the European railroad workers. These hats were thought too small for the men's heads, but one local entrepreneur sold them to the local women instead and the rest is history. Somehow with a couple of platted pigtails hanging beneath them and combined with woolly cardigans and Nora Batty tights they don’t quite look like the same ones you find in the square mile.



After a few days exploring the city it was time for us to attempt the World's Most Dangerous Road... by bike. Since a new 'safer' road was built in 2006, the old road (known locally as 'Camino de la Muerte' or Death Road) is now mostly used by mountain bike tour companies and the odd local bus or lorry. We were slightly nervous reading the stats... 300 deaths, 20 of these cyclists, an average of 2 per year. We researched pretty thoroughly to make sure we used a reliable company with good bikes.



The day started with a huge breakfast in an Italian restaurant (well, they did invent the Full English). It had a bit of a feeling of the last supper about it. Most other people in our group seemed too nervous to eat. We set off from La Cumbre (4800m) at 9am. It wasn't too cold as we'd feared, but we still had plenty of layers on (in fact too many to be able to cock the leg over the saddle, so better strip off a pair of trousers!).



The first section was 30km of tarmac, with long fast sweeping bends. This was just for us to get used to our bikes and we could enjoy the scenery in between braking. Then it was on to the next section which was very different. Just a few metres wide and very rocky, we needed to balance braking with having enough speed to get traction on the rocky surface. Brake too hard and you just skid over the edge and fall between 200m and 900m vertically to the valley below. Oh, and one more thing, in Bolivia this is the only road where it’s legal to drive on the left side of the road. The reason is so that the driver nearest the edge can see out of his side window just how close he is to the edge when descending. So we would need to keep to the cliff side and not hug the mountain side as we’d planned (great!).

In reality, it wasn't as scary as all this sounds, and we never felt in any real danger but really enjoyed the ride down. We passed the spot where 'Jimmy Clarkson' almost slid over the cliff in the infamous Top Gear episode, which has since been (and probably was before he shot the footgage) well reinforced.

After 6 hours of hurtling downhill and descending over 3000m, we arrived in the jungle amongst coffee and coca plantations and some colourful parrots. We had a dip in a river to cool off before having lunch and heading back up the hill to La Paz. This time we took the new road, which had some equally stunning views and steep drops over the edge, but with the reassurance of safety barriers and two lanes of traffic.