Life´s all about calculated risk...right?

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Ola!
Well, it´s been a CRAZY coupla days some of which I´ll discuss here, some of which I´ll be happy to tell you in detail when you´re planning your next holiday and are considering using GAP travel.

So, we got to La Paz Boliva after a strange but actually pretty uneventful border crossing. It´s the first time I´ve had to get out of the vehicle and walk across. I´m also convinced that border crossing guys are bored and angry with their jobs and so just for kicks they make sure to stamp your passport on any page OTHER than the one you´ve opened for them. In fact, I think it´s a game and they get more points for stamping right over the other cool stamps you´ve got.

Anyway...on to La Paz. What a crazy city. Big. Dirty. Crazy. Kinda cool. We spent the afternoon wandering around the witches market. Neither of us bought anything because i figured that I could probably just pick up a llama fetus at most shops in Calgary so why bother trying to transport it home. And the stuffed cayman well I´m justnot sure how customs would feel. We thought about buying some of the potions they put into used medication vials(like one would pull liquids out with a syringe from) but we didn´t know which ones we needed most. We also spent some time the the Mercado Negro (direct translation: black market) where you can buy all kinds of clothing (some of it real brand names we think, some not), party supplies, shoes, brooms, home lighting, you know the essentials. It´s full of tightly packed together stalls and great bargains. Again, we bought nothing. That night we went with our gap group to a top notch restaurant with 360 degree views of the city. We ordered an extravagant ¨mixed grill ¨meal that came with 2 steaks, 2 pork sçchops, 2 pieces of chicken, two lamb chops, and two sausages...for two people. Needless to say that despite my piggish nature we ate about 1/8 of the food. Oh and it cost 117 bolivianos which is about $16. The dinner was unfortunately largely ruined by a large blowout with our current and future tour guides. Again, I won´t say much now but let´s just say that 12 very angry emails were immediately fired off to GAP head office along with some phone calls. Oh yeah, I forgot, I actually stood up and left the table because I was so offended...Anyway, we´re still on holiday and still lots to see.

We woke up bright and early the next morning super excited for the adventure we had planned. There is a road in Bolivia that is officially known as ¨the worlds most dangerous road¨ The statistics are that on average 100 people a year die on it. The problem is that it´s single lane (but two way traffic), down a mountain, gravel, 1000+m sheer drop off the side of the road, and you descend approx 3350m in 64 km. When we got to LaPaz the front page of the paper showed a semi that had skidded off the road and the driver died. They were also still running updates on the death toll from a few days before when a bus went ofçver the edge. The amazing thing wasn´t that 27 people were now dead, but in fact that 31 were still alive. People who have lost their entire families in accidents stand on particularly dangerous corners with red and green flags to tell vehicles if it´s safe to go or not. In exchange drivers toss them a few coins. Anyway...we decided to bike down it. It was fantastic. We were really nervous when we signed up but they provide you with Rocky Mountain bikes with full suspension and disk brakes, full face helmets, gloves, pants, vests, regular brake checks while on route, guides with radios etc, a dvd of your group doing the trip, and of course the all important Ï biked the world´s most dangerous road tshirt. In fact I was a little dissapointed at how scared I DIDN´T feel. It´s an amazing ride with beautiful scenery. You actually drop from Glacier to rain forest (with an accompanying 20 degree temp change). We ended at a campground where you shower, have a congratulatory beer, a buffet meal etc. AND, they have 3 kinds of monkey there! Shelagh fell in love with a spider monkey she couldn´t get over how human she acted, I prefered the little tiny guys who´s names I never caught (even though they repeatedly introduced themselves of course). They were just monkeying around the whole time. Then there were a couple capuchin monkeys as well. The thing I didn´t really think about until the end of the trip was the fact that we then had to drive back UP the worlds most dangerous road. I felt really safe the whole time (even though a couple others in our group were freaking out) I figured that the driver was in the vehicle too and he wasn´t about to do anything too stupid.

We had a quick drink that night with our group because three of them were headed home and we got one new group member. Then we spent the next day 3 hours on a bus, 7 on a train and arrived late at night at the cold and frankly completely $%·tty town of Uyuni. After a fiasco involving not having hotel reservations we all eventually settled down in 4 different hotels. Woke up to arctic temps this morning but had a great breakfast and are now headed off on a trip through the salt flats.

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Photos

The witches market
do you think we can get these llama fetuses through customs...?

before the ...
mud...the 1000m drop, 3000m loss of elevation and the dust...and the dust

The road
unpaved...heading into the jungle

After...
Safe...happy...and ready for the scariest bit...the bus ride back up the road!

The spider monkey
Amazingly human features.. some of us are closer related than we think...

Comments

[Dan]

it's "hola", not "ola"
in spanish, at least. have fun traveling. there's so much to see in Bolivia: Sucre, Santa Cruz, and Cochabamba...