Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
The bus journey was not the best I'd been on and although I slept, it wasn't a solid night's sleep. We arrived in La Paz around 7ish.
It was an amazing view to arrive into, as you come into the top of the valley, thousands of houses are spread out below you and up the walls of the valley and right a the other end of the Valley is a huge, beautiful snow capped mountain. Strange to see such modernisation so close to stunning nature.
After collecting our bags, Jill and I jumped into a cab. The way we were feeling, the guy could have charged us three times the price instead of the double price and we probably still wouldn't have cared. He spent the whole time trying to find out if we booked accommodation at the hotel we asked him to take us to and how much it was etc. I think he was fairly determined to change our minds and take us to another hotel. But the Estrella Andina was where we were meeting the rest of the group, so he was sod out of luck.
We bowled up to the hotel in hope that they did have a spare room, otherwise, maybe the cabbie would have got his commission in the end.
After check-in I think it took us all of about 10 mins to go to sleep again.
Once awake, we took a wonder down the street to see what we could find and to have a spot of lunch.
La Paz was a real hustle and bustle sort of city, with micro vans all over the show, people everywhere, stalls set up on just about every part of the footpath - it was buzzing.
We stopped into a nice little courtyard and had cake - chocolate cake, yummy yummy chocolate cake.
Next on the agenda was to find Jill a cycling company so she could throw herself down the world's steepest road - over a matter of 75km, it drops 3,600m in depth. Somehow and I don't know at what point, I got myself tangled up in this cycle. I originally had no intention of doing it - my death isn't something I get overly excited about and that road was one fast way to a dead result.
It was back to the hotel for some more r & r, while Jill went off to the witch's market with Steve.
That night we went for Indian - we were all thrilled about the idea of Indian food and ordered starters and mains. By now, you would have thought that I'd learnt a lesson or two about over ordering, but my eyes are always bigger than my stomach. I managed to eat my samosas, but only got a third of the way through my curry. I would have contemplated the idea of taking the rest away, but with no microwave, it wasn't an option.
The next day was death day. We got up early and ate breakfast at a café before meeting up with the cycle company. We then headed out of La Paz, in an old Japanese school bus - it even had Miss Kitty stickers on the inside walls.
They'd told us to be prepared for a cold morning, but that it would warm up the further down we went. What we weren't expecting was the spectacularly freezing weather that hit us, it was also foggy and wet. We were frozen right through and I thought that my hands were going to freeze into the braking claw grasp I had on the handles.
The first part of the journey was on tarmac with well defined road markings, so I had a whale of a time, going down, overtaking people, it was just like cycling back home. We then got to a check point, where we had to clock in (if the cycle company goes in with 10 people, they need to come back out with 10 people). It was back on the bus (which was going to follow us the whole way down) for the ride over the 7km of hill, which would normally take an hour on a bike and in that weather, it just wasn't going to happen. Well that was our excuse, in actual fact none of us particularly wanted to go up steep roads.
The bus finally stopped at the top of the official "most dangerous road". We'd been given our instructions earlier, although South America was one of the Right is the Right side of the road places, this road you were supposed to go down on the left hand side of the road. This was so you could see if your own tyre was going over the edge of the cliff. Apparently this was supposed to work quite well?!?!?!
Because of the adverse weather conditions, the valley that we were cycling down was covered in cloud. This meant that we couldn't see the shear drops of the cliffs as we cycled down - to this day I'm still not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
The road was gravel which added a little bit more of a "thrill" to the experience and on at least several occasions I hit some rocks and went skidding.
I had no intention of being the next yellow shirted champ on those roads and I stuck to the back of the group. We had one guide in the front and then one at the back and behind him was the bus, which you could get on at any point should you choose too.
I would say my top speed going down the hill would have been around 15km/hr. Although we weren't supposed to use our breaks all the time, it was quite an effort to get up the confidence to release my grip from the safety of the break.
After watching Jeremy Clarkson sweat his way up the road in a ute, with all the traffic, I was a bit concerned about it all, but in total, we had four trucks/vans coming up the hill all day and miraculously they all seemed to come upon me at points where there were little bays I could stop and let them pass. In parts the road was seriously no wider than two small trucks so I don't know how they used to drive with so much traffic (before the new highway was built on the other side of the valley).
We would stop every so often and about half way down the weather warmed up enough for us to take off our multiple layers of clothes.
The lower half of the valley was a lot easier, not just because it was further down the hill, but it had flattened out as well.
Once we got to the bottom, we had a beer at an animal reserve for monkeys and birds. I was interested to see what the volunteers there thought of things since it was only going to be a few days before I started my time at another reserve.
Next, it was back onto the bus to drive up the same way we'd just come down. The clouds had lifted and we could see the shear drops that we hadn't seen that morning. Our guide also progressed to tell us about the deaths that had occurred on the road over the last while. There had been 16 or so deaths from cyclists over the 9 years that tours had been going down the road, of which the most recent had only been a couple of weeks previous. An Israeli girl had gone down the hill in similar weather conditions to ours and had fallen 160 metres over the cliff - they suspect that her goggles had fogged up and she couldn't see where she was going. Our two guides were actually part of the group that had to recover her dead body.
There had been various car and truck accidents on the road as well, but also 6 (possibly 9) people (political) were assassinated on the road. There are various crosses the length of the road to remind you of the deaths - not really what you want to see when you are cycling.
We got back to La Paz around 7.30ish and by this time our truck had turned up, Emma had so kindly put our bags into our new allocated rooms.
For the second night in a row, we went out for dinner at the Indian place. I stayed long enough to have my beef salad, before I went home to my bed - it had been a long, long day, but I was still alive at the end of it, to tell my story.
Friday was a bit of none happening day, didn't do much during the day, went for a wander down to the witches market to find some presents for my niece and nephew, I think the adults might be out of luck on presents this time round J. Then there was just lots of laying around, doing nothing.
That night, the guys that were carrying on had their new team dinner so I tried to find some nice fried chicken for dinner. This turned into a bit of a disaster because the place I found didn't really look like it would stand up to KFC's high standards, so I flagged that idea and ended up having an ice cream for dinner.
Later on, I met up with the rest of the guys and we headed out for a few last drinks. This turned into a bit of an effort to find somewhere that actually had alcohol, because the first few places we tried were all closed. Eventually we stumbled on a locals' bar - if a bar is what you would call it. It was down a little alley and essentially a big concrete room, with various tables and chairs. Our party consisted of about 13 or so people of which half were girls, including a couple of blondes, so the stares from the locals was quite intense, to the point that those at the table behind us pretty much all turned their chairs so the could stare at us more comfortably, without craning their necks too much.
The night was really entertaining and I think we had discovered the cheapest beer in all of South America. Two crates of 600ml beers cost in the region of ten pounds (about 25 NZD). Once the crates were finished, we headed back to the hotel and those of us left, piled into Anki's room to have a little late night champers.
It was a wonderful way to end a fantastic trip that spanned the last three and half months, tomorrow was the beginning of my new solo adventure.
The previous night's antics and left us craving English breakfasts, so a few of us piled into a cab in search of bacon and real toast. Once we found an open café, which is surprisingly quite hard at 10am on a Saturday morning in the heart of La Paz, we settled in to our breakfasts.
Jill had to be ready for back locker at 11.45am, so we hastily sped out of the café, only to be caught in a traffic jam - there had been multiple protests over the last few days (and in the upcoming days), lots of women - not sure what they were protesting about - my Spanish didn't extend that far……..
Well, we'd all assumed that the truck had left without Jill, by the time we got back, but we knew Anki wouldn't do that. In actual fact, the truck had also been caught up in traffic on the way to the hotel.
Time to say goodbye. Now I'm not the best at goodbyes, am okay when it's me leaving (well sometimes), but that's because it normally means some big adventure for me. However, when it's others, the tears come a-running. I did well when it came to saying goodbbye to Paul and Craig, but struggled to hold it in with Jill and Anki. After waving the truck off I turned quickly back into the lobby burst into tears and had to be consoled by Colin, from the other truck. I briefly said my farewells to the people on the other truck, Elle, and made my way back to my bed room to spend the rest of the day feeling very sorry for myself. There was only Emma and me left and for a 35 year old woman, who used to be in charge of reconciling 8 billion pounds worth of shares, I found the whole thing quite daunting.
Sunday, Emma and I had a late lie in and then went for a spot of lunch and some shopping. I then mucked around at the hotel for the rest of the afternoon and then that night we had a fairly quiet night swapping photos.
Instead of leaving the next day, I'd decided to stay on one last night, so in the morning, I got up and said farewell to Emma (no tears this time) and spent my last day in La Paz. I had my first Bolivian post office experience when I had to send my niece's birthday presents to New Zealand. I'd kind of thought that two three year old's cardies wouldn't have been that much, but apparently it was going to cost me more than it cost to send two kilos of gifts from London. I think the look of surprise on my face said it all and the lovely teller tried to help me get the cost down. What I hadn't realised was that as soon as packages weighed over 500g, the price doubled, so after some whittling down of the brown paper package, I managed to come in under the required amount.
It was then off to watch Iron Man 2 at the pics. The good thing about South America is more often than not, they play the original film with subtitles, which makes life that little bit easier.
- comments
mum Glad you got back safely!
Michele Wow phase one over with - it seems to have gone so fast! I bottled death road so I am impressed, doesnt really compare to my last weekend in Madrid drinking Vinto tinto! So where next?
Diana Hi, Deb, enjoyed reading your blog...I am kinda glad I never had to decide whether to do that bike ride or not. Sounded very scary...so glad you made it!