Blogs from Coroico, La Paz Department, Bolivia, South America

Few days since my last blog as I have been away. Spent the weekend at La Senda Verde animal sanctuary...more on that in a bit. On thursday, had my first photography class with Joseph, a professional photographer. Learnt a few excellent tips that I'm looking forward to putting into practice as well as an insight into the history of photography and having a gander through Joseph's own work. Spent the afternoon at the witches market in La Paz - a maze of streets where a vast network of shops offer buyers an bizarre assortment of goods including potions, amulets, dried sknakes, protection charms and other unusal items, none more notorious that the dried Llama fetus' which are used for Aymara rituals. Bought myself some traditional clothing, and travelling protection statue and a charango!! IOAB soon to ... read more

Well we did all survive the Road of Death, well sort of, as we were returning from Coroico back to La Paz, Allan hit a big hole and snapped the front assembly on his car, which dropped the front left down to about 60mm off the road? We pulled off the busy road as it was getting dark after such a big day. What can we do now??? Well it took Cory about ten minutes to locate a welder about 100metres up the road, so we greased the front drive shaft as it was rubbing on the suspension arm and he drove up to the welder fellow to re weld the broken component. Cory stayed with him and I led the rest of us back to the hotel, with a little help from Karen (my GPS). ... read more

25 février 2012 Info générales: Il y a plusieurs années, il existait qu´une route qui reliait La Paz au Brésil. Tous les bus, voitures et surtout les camions de marchandises devaient affronter cette route: Cotapata. La route corniche. La route qui tue. Les véhicules se croisaient sur cette voie unique, en gravier, sans garde-fous, longeant des précipices de plus de trois cent mètres. Suicidaire. (Allez voir sur Youtube. C´est à tomber sur le cul). La route la plus dangereuse au monde. 1500 morts par année. Death Road. Elle mérite bien son surnom, croyez-moi. Heureusement, le gouvernement a mit un terme à cette folie en construisant une route plus sécuritaire (mais beaucoup plus longue). Donc, le raccourcit de la Death Road a finalement été fermé aux véhicules. Rapidement, les amateurs de Mountain Bike ont sentie la belle ... read more

You have to do it to understand it, to feel it. The very notion of being able to descend 3600m in only a few hours is awesome enough on its own - the idea of being able to do that one one of the world's most infamous and dangerous roads, on a mountain bike, is even better. The Yungas Road from La Paz to Coroico was constructed by Paraguayan prisoners of war in the 1930's, it was required to link the fertile environments of the Yungas valleys to La Paz so the produce could be transported easier. The road is of incredibly poor quality however, clinging to a cliff edge, under a cliff and of course, not even remotely paved. In the mid-nineties it was christened 'The Death Road' due to an incredible average of 250 ... read more

Lapaz, an interesting city, a city full of big red brick buildings, thousands of taxis who seem like all they want to do is run you over, hundreds of tourist stores selling everything llama and alpaca you could imagine, a million pharmacys selling anything and everything you could imagine including penicilin and viagra; take your pick! hundreds of tour companies, some great hostels; namely the Wild Rover, which might I add has the most comfortable beds in South America! Route 36, some great resturaunts; I won't be forgetting that steak and red wine date with my Irish lads any time soon! and a nice temperate climate; sunny days and chilly nights; perfect for rugging up, or going out without a million layers on for once. I'd like to thank Lapaz for some big nights which resulted ... read more

Three hours from La Paz, three hours from altitude sickness and a capital strewn breathtakingly out at the bottom of a canyon, we find ourselves in Coroico. Coroico, where Andes and Yungas collide and reluctantly, turbulantly, agree to tolerate the opposing world of the other. Coroico, where banana and coca plantations do battle with barren grassland, where a drop of a few hundred feet sees a shift in power from the viulture to the mosquito. 'Vulture', Adri informs me, translates literally into Spanish as 'massive chicken slap to the face'. It possesses a certain ring, no? In Coroico we awake every morning to a yawning valley punctuated by clouds seeking to scale its peaks. Willing them away, every morning we dawdle at the pace of lotus eaters into this sleepiest of mountain villages. All forms of ... read more

Road of death Nearly beat us..... On our spare day in La Paz, we ride out to Coroico, this time we had Cory (the NZ guy that lives in Bolivia) with us. During our spare time he was busy with Robin, trying to organize the purchase of another BMW 800 GS from the local BMW dealer, so they could rip the clutch out of it and get on the road again. We all left the hotel, about 11.00am, as Robin, Baz , Wim, Paul and Cory had gone down to the BMW dealer with a show of BMW Loyalty. Now with Diane on the back of Paul’s moto, and Cory, Robin and me in the now shockless truck, and made our way out of the maze, that La Paz is. The paved road, and the scenic ... read more