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Published: June 12th 2011
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Hey all,
We arrived in La Paz after a big last night in Puno to say goodbye to Peru. It didn't take too long to get to the border, and there was a big process involving walking through three rooms to get our passports stamped. Once over the border we had to move all our belongings onto a hired minibus to take us to La Paz. La Paz is the highest capital city in the world at 3636m, and we stopped to view it in it's bowl surrounded by the mountains above. The next day we had the full day to ourselves to go around the markets. We had breakfast in Olivers Travels, a British themed pub which served pints of tea!! I had tetleys, it tasted so good I may have to switch to drinking tea from pint glasses at home. We went to see the famous witches market, which was very interesting!! There were more shops spilling out onto the street as much as actual stalls and sold a lot of souvineers as well as more traditional things. I ended up chatting to a woman down the end of the street who told me what everything was for.
There was a variety of dead stuffed animals for various purposes in Aymaran mysticism- armadillos to prevent burgulars entering your home, frogs for good luck with wealth, and llama foetuses for good luck if buried under a building. Then there were various idols and charms for good luck in a variety of things:-
snake=health
couple=love
frog=wealth
turtle=long life
and various other things for happiness, work, family etc.
We went out that night to Wagamamas which was a Japanese restaurant, my first. I had tempura prawns and veg - so tasty I'll be trying more Japanese foods!
The next day was death road day - we were taken to a really fancy hotel for breakfast before driving an hour out of La Paz to our starting point at 4700m. We were all kitted up in safety gear and had time to get used to the bikes, which had the strongest brakes. Adrian took the first tumble when he tried to show off and ended up head over heels flying off it!! We were so padded up though that only his pride was bruised!!
The journey was fine, we started off on the tarmac, the riskiest
section due to the traffic. It was great fun whizzing down the road in convoy, passed out a few trucks!! We had to stop to pay a fee to enter the death road, and we were driven to the starting point for it to avoid cycling up a series of big hills. The actual old death road was incredibly bumpy with gravel and huge stones everywhere. I braked the whole way down as you gathered pace at an incredible rate, but it only took one stone to send you off!! Mary found this out when she ended up face first in the cliff beside her, she cut her eyebrow and chin but got her confidence back when her braked were changed. It definately was not half as scary or as dangerous as I thought it would be listening to all the stories. As long as no-one goes flying round blind corners at top speed they should be fine!! Me and Lizzie took it in turn to be last in the fast group, the slow group were miles behind. The guides went at our pace so it was cool no pressure to get out of the comfort zone!! We only met
a truck and a jeep on our way down, but was no bother. There were only a few narrow areas though would have been impossible for traffic passing traffic!!
When we reached the bottom we had a few celebratory beers before getting our lunch and t-shirts and back to La Paz. We were tired but had to celebrate Lizzie and Adrians last night with us before we left- we met up in the Hard Rock Cafe, and stayed there for a long night!!
Orla
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