La Paz and The Road of Death

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Arriving at La Paz at 7am after the worst bus journey in the world isnt everyones idea of fun and it wasnt ours either, however we dusted ourselves down hailed a taxi and headed for a hostel listed in the Lonely PLanet.

After a quick clean up in luke warm showers we headed down into the town searching for a mountain bike tour of The Worlds Most Dangerous Road for the following day. After convincing Pickles that he would survive and it was probably just a myth that it was that dangerous etc we booked up a tour for the 4 of us and a Kiwi guide. It was only then that I started to read a few articles about this so called road of death on The Internet and the fear soon set in. After an early dinner and a bit of cinema action we headed to bed to awake bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Our guide met us at the hostel at 8.00 am and we headed to the top of the mountain skirting around the obvious questions of how many people die per year etc. Although my internet research told me that it was normally over 100 per annum!!!!

On arrival at the top we picked up our gear, said our final prayers whilst sucking back on some 96% proof alcohol and we were off. The first 24 Km were on tarmac so we pretty much flew down these at full speed avoiding on coming lorries and taking in the amazing sights before arriving at the top of The Worlds Most Dangerous Road. 40 Km of gravel road with 400m drops at certain corners. Oh and just our luck it starts to rain as we set off. Lucky I packed that spare pair of pants!!!!!!!!

The first section wasnt too hair raising as the road was fairly wide and the cloud had set in so you could only see about 10m in front of you, but more importantly for me I couldnt see the drops that greeted me at every turn. After about 10km the cloud lifted and this is where I really started to cack myself. Flying past a previous lorry wreckage didnt do much for the nerves nor did Gareth continually saying Bim look at this and pointing to the cliff face. Knob!

Eventually we navigated our way down to the bottom where I thought we could finally relax. After a beer and a good shower our first in Bolivia, we headed back up the mountain to La Paz. By this point the spare pants had been used and I was desperately searching for the third pair. Going up the mountain in a jeep with a bolivian driver bobbing his head to Drum and Base is 100 times more scary than cycling down it on a piece of metal with 2 wheels. This coupled with our guide finally letting us know the horror stories he had heard and I was pretty much beside myself.

Finally we made it back to La Paz alive to complete an amazing day out and overall a brillaint month in Argentina and Bolivia.

All I have to look forward to now is the 2 day flight home via Lima, Panama, Miami and New York then the thought of entering the Real World.....Bollox!

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