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Published: February 28th 2011
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We have been delayed in La Paz for over 24 hours. One good thing has come of our hotel and airport lounging - being able to update the blog! I've written 3 entries so I'm sorry in advance if you get a little blog fatigue from reading it all!
...back to the entry.... The border crossing from Hell I do tend to exaggerate. My trusty editor will testify to that. However, believe me when I say that the border crossing from Peru to Bolivia via Desaguadero was a harrowing experience – and we had an easy crossing according to many stories we have heard!
We booked a recommended bus company for the crossing thinking they would guide us through and we’d be ‘todo bien’ (all good), but no.....
The bus ground to a halt in what seemed like a massive market place lining the road, with street stalls, shoe shiners, taxis, mini vans for what seemed like miles. The instructions were in Spanish and all we really got was ‘passports’ – yep, check, got it. We decided to do what you do in those situations and follow the crowd.
We all tumbled out of the
bus and just walked.... and walked.... pushing through crowds, nearly being run over by pedicabs and generally feeling a little worried about what the hell we were supposed to do. We finally saw a huge long line amongst the ravel. We joined it and snaked along the road amongst the street stalls, politely declining shoe shining services a number of times.
Inside the grim ‘immigration’ building (two clerks for thousands of people) we provided our paper work and passports. Some unlucky travellers, around 6 from our bus, had lost/not kept the paperwork (a tiny slip of paper that seems like nothing but is VERY important) – they then had a harrowing experience of finding another building, paying a fine then lining up all over again.
We left the Peru immigration office and started walking with no idea where to go. There was no control or direction, just swarms of people and dodgy looking police. We had heard and read so many bad stories of random police checks and ‘fake money’ checks (where they fleece you) that when I was randomly approached by a policeman to check my passport my heart nearly leapt through my chest. I firmly held
my passport as he checked my ID and Peru exit stamp... and then he left me alone... phew.
We eventually doubled back and found the Bolivia immigration office... well if you can call it an ‘office’. A dodgy corridor crammed with people, then you turn the corner into a pokey office and squeeze your arm through the crowds to hand your passport to the officer at a shonky desk. Good god people! David has travelled extensively and it was the worst border crossing he has ever experienced.
After all that we had no idea where to go or where to find our bus. We then found some more people from our bus huddled under a street vendor’s tarp (it was pouring with rain) and they said a policeman had told them to wait – that the bus would come through soon. Sure enough after around an hour of huddling in the rain the bus came. Hurrah!!! We bundled on and waited for the poor souls that had lost their paperwork (the only man in the entire place that could sign them off decided to go to lunch at 10am so they had to wait for over an hour
in the little office until he returned). They arrived back on the bus to cheers and we finally left the hell hole of a border crossing!
I realise I have written far too much on this experience but I hope it makes you think twice about bussing it and makes you book a flight should you ever find yourself travelling from Peru to Bolivia!
Hello Bolivia! La Paz the party town La Paz has a reputation for partying, shopping and not much else. We decided to relive our youth and book into a party hostel – ‘Wild Rover’, just next door to another infamous hostel ‘Loki’. We weren’t disappointed – it was like living in a bar with 200 other young people. Fortunately we were given the best room in the whole place – the furthest from the bar! They must have noted our age on our reservation request and put the ‘oldies’ down the back away from the revellers. We did not complain – we got the best of both worlds – a great bar to socialise and hang out in and a quiet room to sleep. The place is enormous with only a few double
rooms, the rest are dorms with a minimum of eight beds. There are parties every night in the bar, mostly dress up (our first night we had drinks with Spiderman and a dinosaur) and at 1.30am a bus arrives to take all the party people to night clubs.
I imagine if David was here with his drinking buddies he’d be drinking a hell of a lot more and partying till dawn... but for us we generally retire around 10pm! It hasn’t helped being pretty sick with travel bugs for nearly the last week.
We saw a few sights in La Paz – it’s a busy city packed into a valley amongst hills. We went to a few museums and churches including the main Cathedral and Museo Nacional de Arte, and walked for hours through markets (we saw the famous ‘witches market’ (Mercado de Hechiceria) and saw the grim, dried-out llama foetuses – they bring good luck apparently if you bury them under your house foundations). Streets are just filled with stalls selling everything from shoes to soap to pirate DVDs.
Death Road – The World's Most Dangerous Road (Sorry Mum, I didn’t tell you we
were going to do this! I thought it would be best to let you now after the fact, if we survived it)
Death Road is one of the ‘must do’s of La Paz. Formerly one of the only routes out of La Paz, it is just 3.2m wide and sits on the edge of huge cliffs. It is a steep 3600 metre, 60km decent down from La Cumbre to the town of Corico with a rocky, gravelly road that is prone to landslides.
The car, bus, truck remains at the bottom of the cliffs gave it its official title of ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Road’ (an average of 26 vehicles use to crash over the edge). After years of deaths a new road was recently built on the other side of the valley, so now the old Death Road is just for silly tourists that have nothing better to do (that would be us).
It is still a dangerous road, and 15 mountain bikers have been killed by random oncoming taxis (people live on the cliffs there so some cars still do use the road) or mishaps – our guide told us of a few in recent
times, one just last October.
We chose to ride with Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking – the most expensive but one of the safest, with a ‘no deaths’ record.
We began at 4,700m above sea level, near a lagoon. The area was shrouded in mist. We geared up (helmet, goggles, gloves, jacket, trousers and gloves) and received our mountain bikes – double suspension, top of the line; they were awesome and I’m not sure if I could ever go back to my old dodgy bike again!!
The ride down was exhilarating. At first I was nervous as the group zoomed ahead but then I settled into things and began to enjoy the freedom, the sights, the hard work, the fun! Riding through waterfalls, seeing the valley from the top of a cliff, seeing many crosses on the road side, riding around giant landslides... it was unusual. David sped along with the front of the pack, I was more comfy in the middle – and on two occasions at the very end of the pack, when I was too scared to pass a truck in the mist and when I got a flat tire!
We arrived at our
end destination – La Senda Verde (1,110m altitude) – safe and sound, completely drenched from the rain but extremely happy with our efforts. Bit of a sore tush but apart from that we survived ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Road’ and have T-shirts to prove it!!! Whoop whoop!
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Alison Lea
non-member comment
Thank you
Thank you dear daughter of mine for not sharing this part of your itinerary with me before the event!