I survived the Death Highway and all I got was this lousy Monkey bite!! (and a t-shirt)

---

After our incredible mining tour I didn´t think that Bolivia could get any better. Ahh, once again I´ve managed to prove myself wrong! We did an overnight bus from Potosi to La Paz (conveninently saving having to pay for a night in a hostel) and arrived just in time to watch the sun rise over the city. La Paz is amazing - the highest capital city in the world located at over 3600m above sea level, it sure makes it hard to climb around the valley´s walls. The whole city is located in a bowl - with the central street running down the middle and the barrios extending all the way up and over all sides of the hills. The rising sun danced from one redbrick/mud house to the next until the whole city of over 1.5 million people was bathed in a beautiful glow as the clouds slowly receeded from the basin.

After a day of walking up and down the hills and through numerous parks and markets, we decided that we were ready for a little adventure. Not that we didn´t find plenty in the capital - almost getting hit by the thousands of cars and collectivos (taxi-vans that scream down the road, loaded with people and even little Alpacas!), and going into the witch´s market where we got to look over llama fetus´ and all sorts of potions and charms for goodness knows what! We all bought some good luck charms, I think just in fear!!! So, our adventure turned out to be going mountain biking. Pffft, that´s it, you say? Well, it was biking down the World´s Most Dangerous Road... that statistically kills more people per year than any other road in the entire world. It´s also known as the Death Highway.
Hmmm, probably not the most logical place to go biking, but it´s incredibly popular and such a rush that people are fighting to get the spaces on the tour! I remember watching a documentary on Discovery Channel back before I left at Gramma´s house with Mike and promising everyone that there would be NO chance I would ever do that when I got to Bolivia. Haha, in my defense, I didn´t really want to do it, but everyone that I was travelling with really really wanted to go, and they peer pressured me into it - ahaha, good excuse, right? In retrospect I am soooo happy that I did it, as it was definitely one of the most amazing bike rides I will EVER do in my life (sorry Gramma, I know I said I wouldn´t, but it just seemed like it was too good of an opportunity to pass up... and I promise I was really safe!!!). Haha, and Theresa, yep, this is the same road you wrote me about - like I said, most people who come to La Paz who can ride a bike do it!

The ride was incredible, like I said. We drove to the top of the mountain and at 4700m were dropped off - wow!! VERY VERY COLD! And getting up to speeds of 70km/hr didn´t make things warmer! We wore every piece of clothing we had brought, plus the clothes that we rented. The first hour and a half we cruised down paved roads, ripping around corners and hitting speeds that I´ve never biked at before - dodging trucks, dogs, pigs, children and the slower bikers... only stopping for the drug check-points and to pay the Gringo Tax. Then we hit the 6km of uphill. WHAT THE HECK?!?!? I signed up for DOWNHILL, not uphill biking! I was incredibly proud that I managed to not jump in the van and hitch a ride up (as all the Irish blokes had to do)... but did have to jump off and push for awhile due to the serious steepness and a massive black-smoke billowing truck driving by and contaminating the little oxygen there was in the air.

Theeeen we got to the actual Death Highway. We were told the basic rules, stay at least 5m behind the next biker... if they crash you don´t need to either, don´t hit any pigs, stop when the guide stops, if a truck comes up the hill, pull over to the left and STOP, don´t crash (I think we all agreed with that one) and stay to the left at all times. Now, this would have been alrigh advise, if only the left-hand side wasn´t the DROP OFF side!!! My instincts told me huggg the cliff- but nope, apparently the vehicles driving up have the right-of-way and we would be going at speeds too great to get out of the way if we met them on a blind corner! Against everything we believed in, we reluctantly agreed.

Wow! Wow, wow, wow. What a ride - drops of over 500m on one side, waterfalls pouring onto the road off the other and loose gravel and large rocks inbetween. We had such a good time ripping around the corners, trying to remember all the rules and getting soaked while biking under waterfalls and through rivers crossing the road. We passed a few towns and managed to not hit anything - the worst of our mishaps were flat tires and broken chains. The group before us had to send a van up with a rider who went butt over teakettle and ended up breaking his shoulder (or something like that - it wasnt his collarbone, but there was a bone sticking out of his shoulder that he would have to get operated on - luckily he was only 4 days from going home!)... he also just missed the cliff by a few metres - a classic case of testosterone exceeding ability!!!

We stopped for lunch 1/2 way down, resting our sore arms and hands, and feeding the little doggies on the road to please Pachamama, the MotherEarth. The dogs apparently represent her, and if you don´t feed them something bad will happen! We passed a few cars that obviously forgot to feed the Mama, as they were over the cliff tangled in branches or smashed up on the rock ledges, or completely at the bottom of the gully, recognizable only by their bright paint colours that were incredibly out of place in the lush greenness of the valley.

I pushed myself harder than I´ve done in years - and at the end felt a serious sense of accomplishment for biking 67km and decending over 3600m in altitude. We had started in the altiplano, and ended up in the jungles of Bolivia at about 1100m above sea level. We ate our lunch at a wonderful ´resort´ in the middle of the jungle right by a cooling stream, surrounded by macaws, parrots, budgies and monkeys! We ate a buffet pasta lunch and really had a great time watching the animals steal food off our plates and play in the trees and with the random toys they had laying around the area.

I wandered over to the monkey cage and was taking pictures of a little guy jumping between the fences and just having a great time. I knelt down and held out my hand... and to my surprise he came bounding over and took my palm, obviously looking for a food offering of sorts. He didn´t find anything, but he did take my arm in his little paws and started to lick me and rub his little face against my skin. A guy who worked at the restaurant walked by and said ¨That´s Marcel, he´s new here¨... so I felt extra special that he was paying attention to me!

Suddenly he started to get a little frisky; don´t know if it was because I was giggling while his little tongue was running down my arm and my hands, or if he was really upset that I hadn´t brought him any treats... either way, he started to use his teeth as opposed to his tongue. Hmmm, at first I was okay with it, figured that he was just playing, but soon it got to be really hard and quite painful, so I tried to pull away. Apparently that was NOT the right thing to do!!!!! As soon as I made the sudden movement away from him instead of letting my hand go out of his jaws he bit down, HARD. In fact, so hard that when I stood up trying to get away from him he was still attached to my hand with his teeth.
By this time I was screaming pretty loud and he was flailing around doing goodness knows what... yet still holding onto my thumb with his fangs. After a whole lot of hand shaking and wailing on my part (I think I thought about drop kicking him to try and get him off me), he finally went flying through the air and landed after flipping a few times on his feet and ran way, otherwise unscarred. I, unfortunately, was not so lucky.
A little bit of shock kicked in and I didn´t feel too much pain until I looked down and saw the blood pouring out of 2 puncture wounds at the base of my thumb. A few people had some running by this time (Lauren actually thought it was the MONKEY screaming) and I got ushered into the bathroom where I got some FirstAid from many hands.

As traumatizing as it was, the woman who worked with the primates assured me that they had all been vaccinated and that they were clean - I tend to believe her, as she also had a bite mark on her hand from the same guy. He was apparently new and had just been rescued from a mean owner. Unfortunately they had failed to mention to us to stay away from him (they had warned the other groups, but not us!), as he wasn´t fully adapted or used to playing with people in a non-violent situation. Basically the little guy was scared out of his wits and reacted the only way he knew how - with violence. As much as it really really hurt (and 5 days later it STILL does), I don´t blame him at all. He was badly mistreated and was just learning. I just wish we had been told about him!!!

Oh well, aside from Richard (the Brit we´re with) scaring the crap out of me by sending my videos of rabies victems and articles about the 100% fatality rate that any rabies case ever documented has... and that 98% of all rabies cases occur in South America - through monkies - I´m doing fine. Haha, not to worry anyone, but they were all vaccinated, so I´ll be okay!

Anyway, moving on! Just trying to get everyone caught up - have 1 more blog to add from the last 5 days, and then we´re good to go - expect another one tomorrow in the evening after we arrive in Cusco.

Cheers!

ps. no pictures as Im at the hostel and Im getting free internet - will put them up as soon as I can in the next few days. Better note: Mike´s here in 12 hours!
pps. went to the doctor today and found out that nope, no rabies, but got some antibiotics to kill any monkey germs I may have left! Pewf

---