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Published: September 20th 2018
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Our journey from Cusco across to Copacabana in Bolivia was fairly straightforward. It only involved a single bus and a well organised fast border crossing which was a far cry from the bad reviews we’d read online. Copacabana is a small town next to Lake Titcaca which is the largest lake in South America and is known as the “highest navigable lake” in the world at around 3,800 metres above sea level. We only stopped off for one night to break up the journey to La Paz but it was enough time to eat the tasty local dish of trout, panic because none of the ATM’s were working and find somewhere that would change up our emergency dollars and marvel at the plumbing / electrical job that had been done in the bathroom of our room. How we didn’t get electrocuted whilst taking a shower is beyond me!
The race was on to get to La Paz from 2pm to make it in time for the England v Colombia match which meant we had to be up at 6am to take a 7am minivan to the capital. We arrived early and secured our seats up at the front next to
driver and waited for the other seats to be filled before we set off on our way. I thought sitting at the front would be a good spot to take in the scenery but it also meant that we saw the driver making the sign of the cross and saying a little prayer to himself which didn’t fill us with much confidence. Julia gave me a look of disgust and put her headphones in and tried to shut her eyes so she couldn’t witness any of what was happening on the road! My favourite part of the journey, other than when we got to La Paz in one piece, was the lake crossing when we were all made to leave the van and get in a small boat that took us across the lake whilst the van itself made its way onto a floating platform and followed us across! We arrived in time for the game and made our way to the Wild Rover, a renowned chain of party hostels in South America and went through all of the emotions that come with an England World Cup knockout match including a penalty shootout! England’s progression wreaked havoc with our plans
as we kept on having to plan what we were going to do around the games. We ended up being in La Paz for all three of the knockout games and we were a little relieved to be able to leave once they’d been knocked out by Croatia in the semi finals.
La Paz proved to be a good base and it was from there that we organised a bike ride along the worlds most dangerous road a.k.a ‘Death Road’ and a climb to the top of a mountain whose highest point was 6,088 metres above sea level! We’d first learnt about Death Road back in Sri Lanka whilst chatting to a girl who told us it was one of the things you simply had to do whilst you are in Bolivia but when we pressed her a bit further it turned out she hadn’t actually done it herself!!! Having left Cusco a few days earlier than Amanda and Bailey they had caught up with us and we took the road on together. After a lot of trying to figure out whether we should pay the top price rather than settle for a cheaper option we went with a
company called Freebikes, who were middle of the range cost wise but we had met a survivor who had recommended them to us which sealed the deal!
The road was infamously named the world’s most dangerous road by the Inter-American Development Bank in 1995 due to the thousands of people who died every year on it. Until 2006 it was the only road that connected the capital city of La Paz with northern parts of Bolivia so people had no choice but to go that way. The road in places is only 3.5 metres wide meaning any kind of manoeuvre in a car would be risky and we were passed by a large truck as we were cycling down which gave you a sense of how tight things would be. To cycle down the 56km and 3,500 metre descent though would be fine, or so we hoped! Before you get to the start of the road we were on tarmac roads but there was one bit where we had to cycle around a tunnel through some gravel. Julia was in front of me and when I saw her wobble and her feet coming off the pedals my heart was
in my mouth but thankfully she recovered and stayed upright but it didn’t help our nerves if we were going to let on that we had any! At the start of the road we stopped for to have our picture taken and looked out at the valley which was completely covered by a sea of cloud. It was quite a sight and we were soon cycling down through the clouds on the dusty gravel track that made up the road. The ride went pretty smoothly without too much drama, the only person to fall off was the oldest guy in the group who probably should have known better and the further we went Julia who had started off at a snail’s pace started to get more confident and competitive as ever. There were plenty of stops along the way to take in the views of the road snaking its way through the valley and its surroundings. At the bottom we celebrated our survival with a nice cold beer and were taken for a buffet dinner before being driven back to La Paz.
After climbing Huayani Potosi (which you can read about in the next post) and once England had
been knocked out of the World Cup we took an overnight bus to Uyuni which is where the tours of the salt flats tend to start from. As we were keen to continue onto Argentina and didn’t really fancy spending three days in the back of a jeep we opted to do a one day tour. It probably made our onward journey more difficult but I think we finished the day feeling like it was the right decision. The day starts off with a short journey out to a train graveyard which isn’t much more than a few abandoned train carcasses that have been left to rust in the desert that you can climb and have your photo taken on before you drive out a hotel on the salt flats which is made out of salt and where lunch is served. The salt flats were like nothing I had ever seen before. It was just so flat and white everywhere you looked for miles around apart from the jeeps driving people around in search of the perfect photo. We got some good pictures and then after driving to an island that was full of cactus we drove back to Uyuni
where we rested and tried to figure out how we would get to Argentina the following morning.
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