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La Paz City
Deep in the valley the awesome city of La Paz awaits our arrival HEALTH WARNING: Please note this blog may contain information unsuitable for nervous parents. Read sitting down and with another person of rational mind!
After being in the country for such a long time, hitting La Paz was quite a shock to the system. It was fairly frantic, full of people, markets, stall and traffic but we soon warmed to the place.
The first thing on our agenda was to mountain bike down the 'World's Most Dangerous Road', so named after the many vehicles and people who have died at its feet. We hadnt mentioned this activity to Ma & Pa Hicks & Shaw to date, partly because we were pretty nervous about doing the bike ride ourselves. There are no end to the 'when i nearly died' stories you hear on the backpacker route, most of which you hear from someone, who met someone, who met someone. Saying that, it is fact that 2 bikers have died on the road this year!
So if you havent heard of it before, the WMDR starts at 4,800m at La Cumbre and for 60km heads all the way down to 1,200m at Coroico. The scenery is immense as you
La Paz City
Inglesia De San Francisco, Plaza San Franciso, in the centre of La Paz travel from high altitude down to tropical temperatures. The only issue is that the last 40km are on a gravel road, which is sometimes no wider than 1 car width and has 1200m vertical plummets to its side!!! As our guide said, its not a problem if you stay on your bike, and on the road - simple...
The good news was that 4 months ago, a ‘new road’ was opened which means that ‘old road’ is pretty much traffic free. The bad news is that you still have to give way to up-hill traffic which means you have to stay on the left hand side of the road, which you guessed it, is the side with the vertical plummets.
To cut to the chase, all our group except one managed to stay on their bikes, and ALL managed to stay on the road, so pretty successful. Once we had gotten over the nervousness of the road, and the thoughts of how horrified our parents would be if we died doing something so stupid, then it was pretty awesome. Particularly as you get two thirds of the way down, the road widens a little, and you can really
La Paz City
Mercado de los Brujos or Witches Market - selling herbs, magical potions and llama foetuses all to cure illnesses and protect from malevolent spirits!!! give it some. The bikes were amazing and took all of the bumps in the road no problem. That plus a few tips of how to sit on your thighs rather than your bum, meant we could actually sit down for the next few days too ;-)
And to top it all, we finished the ride at an Animal Refuge, so we had baby monkeys playing in the trees, parrots squawking out a few words, and a few wild pigs and dogs to keep up the numbers!
The rest of our time in La Paz was pretty much catching up on admin (washing, sorting out our next tours, updating the blog...) and eating.
We fell in love with a place that had been recommended to us by James, Tim & Hilary on the Inca Trail called the Colonial Pot. It did the best ‘Menu del Dia’ with massive homemade soups, good fish and meat dishes and then to top it off Lemon Meringue Pie & Apple Pie. All for a whopping 1.20GBP, you just can’t go wrong…
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Gill Redfern
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Always a puppy?!
I am beginning to think this is a tour of all the puppies in the world - everywhere you go you seem to pick one up!! Can't imagine Cat is encouraging that at all!! All sounds v scary but LOTS of fun .. so not even a grazed knee?!!