Blogs from Yungas Road, La Paz Department, Bolivia, South America - page 10

The vast majority of our time in La Paz seemed to be spent drifting round the city aimlessly not really knowing what we wanted to do. Although we were there for 4 days I can only recall walking through the witches market looking at llama foetuses and going to a couple of very small museums. The best one of these was a musical instrument museum that allowed you to play some of the instruments, which was good fun. It is no disrespect to La Paz but the highlight was undoubtedly leaving. This was due to our mode of transport out of town, mountain biking down the "most dangerous road in the world." I have put it in inverted commas as I don´t know who has decided this, but the number of stories we were told on ... read more

The day was perfect. Clear blue sky. We met at the tour company in town and alter receiving our gear, full face helmet, surgical dust mask, reflective vest and over trousers we made our way up to La Cumbra. La Cumbra is the starting place of all this craziness. 4,700 meters high, its desolate, extremely cold and packed with scared tourists and adrenaline junkies. We all can’t wait to get going because it’s pretty damn inhospitable up here. We all hide behind the van to get away from the biting wind and listen to the safety briefing. Something about hand signals and braking is lost to me because James and I are goofing around…. Hey, we are amped. Our group is pretty multicultural. We have Uncle Olie, a Bolivian as the driver of our support car. ... read more

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 ... read more

Voznja v glavno mesto je bila dolga, ampak semi-cama bus je bil udoben in se predcasno smo ob stirih zjutraj prispeli na cilj. Sofer nam je pustil spati v busu kaksni dve uri, nato pa sva sla zmrzovat na postajo. Po nastanitvi v La Pazu sva se najprej podala na lov za spominki. Ulica je bila blizu, tako da sva jo parkrat na dan prehodila in si ogledala najzanimivejse in ugodnejse produkte. Malce sem okleval med kipcem Pachamame, ki prinasa sreco ter dokaj dobro razvitim laminim fetusom s podobnim urokom, a se nisem odlocil za slednjega zaradi morebitnih tezav na carini. Potepanja po mestu so bila zanimiva, mesto samo je cudovito, saj se razpenja po celotnem hribu. Edini problem je promet, saj vsi drvijo kot nori. Ker nisem videl nobene avtosole, mislim da je edini pogoj ... read more

Well, that definitely ranks as the most unbelievably, incredibly, ridiculously, stupefyingly, mind-numbingly brain-dead idiotic thing I´ve ever done in my life. And I´m sure I´ve done some pretty stoopid things before now. The Death Road. The world´s most dangerous road. Whatever you want to call it, it kind of suggests "Stay Away". However, there are numerous companies offering silly gringos the opportunity to throw themselves down it on a mountain bike for sh!ts and giggles. So, having met a nice young girl a few weeks in Peru, who´d done said activity with THE most well known and reputable company, fallen 30 metres down a cliff, scraped up all one arm and shoulder, and been unconscious for 2 days, you might be tempted to think "Stay Away". Hmmm. Somehow, instead, we thought "Let´s save $20 dollars by ... read more