La Paz to Riberalta
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Published: December 9th 2007
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La Paz
La Paz, the capital of Bolivia is built in a crater where it is protected from chilly mountain winds. The bottom of the city is 3600m above sea level and the top 4000m. One of the nicest cities in the world Seems already very long time ago since last time we wrote here. We are now in Brazil already. Since last time we spend first couple of days in La Paz organising things. Its a really nice city, built in a crater high up on the mountains. it is the highest capital city in the world. When you walk on these small streets in the city, you never know what to expect from around the next corner, could be going up or down, or show an amazing view of the snowcapped mountains, or anything else.
Really exciting place.
We had tasty steak sandwiches from the market each morning and freshly squeezed orange juice for maybe 2 dollars all. amazingly cheap, unfortunately we didnt have more time there.
We left then to ride down the worlds most dangerous road on bikes. The road is now closed for cars, only cyclers go there, as they built a new
Worlds most dangerous road
Beginning at 4500m in freezing conditions road for the cars. We started at 4500m high up in the mountains, with snow covered mountain tops all around.
It was freezing cold and raining, but we didnt mind, we were cruising as fast as possible down the mountain road. We
paid the smallest price possible for the ride for the agency, so we had really crappy bikes. My breaks didnt almost work at all, i had to squeeze them with all it got to make the bike stop, and even then it would just slide down the road
for some meters until it stopped. Gladly not down the ravine!
On average i think 300 cars were dropping off this road each year, before they closed it. Its really only a single lane, and huge trucks were supposed to take over each other. After 4 hours, we were already on the bottom safely
in subtropical vegetation, in town of Coroico.
alt='Coroico' class='photo-protector' style='width:100%;height:225px;left:0;top:0;position:absolute;'>
Coroico
We paid a little extra to stay in a nice hotel
with sauna
and swimming pool
overlooking the mountains. We stayed with a funny French guy, who couldnt take the heat of the sauna, so he was sitting in the water bowl or on the floor all the time. 😊 Michal was putting so much heat
that nobody else stayed there either.
Next day we walked along the hills
that had coca plantations growing on them
to some amazingly beautiful waterfalls
. On our way back, we took the wrong path, and ended up on some almost vertical hill, that we had to slide down. our shoes were like two surfboards when
we skated down like bullets through the bushes. Our legs were full of cuts.
After our trip we took a bus back to La Paz, and next morning early took a flight on a 12 seater plane
to Rurrenabaque, which is the beginning of the amazonian jungle. It was quite a suprise to get out of the plane, felt like we had landed to the caribic (yeah Larry, west indies 😊. It was hot and humid and lushously green, and the airport was just a colourful little house
. The town was lovely too, and our hostel especially. We had a great hammock place where you could just relax all day long.
Our intention was to go on a pampas trip for
3 days to see some animals, but one of the tour agencies just bought us out of the idea when he explained what the trip will be like. Exactly like a kindergarden teacher, telling kids what a fun day it will be. he even said in the end when he was explaining what we should take on the trip with us "most importantly, bring your good mood!>D" at that point we decided not to do any happy funny holiday trips.
We asked a few people around, and found a really nice little walk to do ourselves near the village on the hills in jungle by the river. It was really beautiful, and we had to cross several bridges
, shift ourselves with liaans
and go through tunnels. Beautiful flowers and giant ants! Tot: 0.121s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 8; qc: 82; dbt: 0.0684s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
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