La Paz

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Potosi was once one of 'the largest and wealthiest cities of the Americas', according to my Lonely Planet guide. It is safe to say that whilst remaining rather large, Potosi's wealth dried up a long time ago. On out first night, after finding a hostel, we went out to find somewhere to eat. This was a surprisingly difficult task because, apart from street food, there weren't many restaurants to be found. We ended up eating at a Bolivian-stroke-Taiwaneese chicken shop. Because of this my meal cost less than £2.50, and was surprisingly good. The next day we were planning on doing the famous Potosi mines. I thought that I had conquered my claustrophobic fears, however I was yet to be proved wrong. We turned up at Big Deal Tour, which I would recommend to anybody, all of the guides were ex-miners, they did very well at giving background information and they were all bloody funny. Firstly we went to the miners market and saw where they buy all of their equipment, coca leaves and alcohol. Coca leaves are chewed on in order to get rid of altitude sickness amongst other such things. The alcohol was 95%, no joke. Pedro, the guide, passed around a bottle to try. Sadly I was the last one in the circle, so I had the pleasure to watch everyone else's faces crinkle up with pain as they sipped the liquid. It was all fun and games until it was my turn to have a sip, it was vile. Then we were given jackets, trousers, helmets am torches to get changed into before we wet to the mines. The penultimate stop before the mines was the plantation, where they extract the pure metals (silver and tin) from their ore by a process called plantation. I have never seen a less safe workplace in my life. The noise was deafening, there were cogs and ropes spinning in different directions all over the place and we had to walk on wooden planks around the building. Going into the mines was the easy bit, I calmed my nerves and marched on. I had rationalised the safety if the mines by thinking that they had been there for hundreds of years, and unless there was any sort of reason for the mines to fall, such as an earthquake or dynamite, they would be safe for the hour we were down there. Within ten minutes we were watching someone prod a stick of dynamite into the wall and set the fuse alight. I was starting to worry, obviously Ben and Henry worsened my nerves by telling me that we were going to get buried alive and die. I was bricking it. We moved out of our tiny little cove into a (slightly) more open area where I was able to stand up. When the dynamite went off it was a bit of an anticlimax, I was expecting a huge explosion, a flash of light and rocks tumbling everywhere. In reality, it was a muffled pop and the mines didn't budge. The next stage of our tour was where we crawled on our hands and knees through the darkness deeper into the mines. We descended about 100 meters from where we started into what felt like a sauna. I cannot imagine how anyone would work such long hours in such poor conditions. Pedro had a little rant about how poorly the government has treated the miners in the last 50 years but that nowadays they are paid for how many hours they work. Which is a more fair system. The rest of the mines were fairly easy and we made out way back to the top and into the sunlight.

After the mines we were planning on going to Sucre, however after a brief check on trip advisor we thought it would be a waste of money. In hindsight this was the right decision because we have spoken to a few people who have been there and they feel like it was wasted time. The next destination was La Paz.

La Paz is quite a dangerous city so we didn't go out at night, instead all of the parties take place in the hostel. We had one night where we didn't buy a single drink and ended the night very drunk playing flip-cup all night. Apart from the Witches Market there was not much to do in La Paz, apart from the adequately named Death Road.

Our guide was an absolute nut-job from America called Mike. We met him, along with the group, in a restaurant very early in the morning. We all jumped into a bus and after a short journey out of the capital we were about 20km away from Death Road. We were given all of our gear; clothes, bikes, helmets and goggles. The first 20km was all downhill and on Tarmac, so it was just time for is to get used to our bikes. The first bit was easy and we made our way to the top of Death Road after a brief safety chat. The safety chat was actually worryingly brief, the message was don't be an idiot and you won't die. Just before we started, Mike pointed out a bus at the bottom of the valley, all smashed up and rusting, he said that the bus slipped off the side and no one survived. That was the moment it really sunk in the what we were doing was actually quite dangerous. The drop was so huge, half was down the ride there was a point where we could dangle our legs off the side of the cliff and when we did this my stomach started to churn. As far as the cycling is concerned, it was very easy. It was all downhill so it wasn't physically exerting the only difficult but was that the road was rubble, very thin (roughly 3m) and dirt track for the remaining 60km. We cycled through waterfalls, over streams and as far away from the edge as possible. It was one of the most fun experiences I have ever done.

At the end of the ride we were given a nice cold beer (and a few more), which went down a treat. We had a late lunch in an animal refuge deep in the heart of the Bolivian rainforest. I paid a little extra and did the monkey tour, which was amazing. I learnt a lot about spider, squirrel and howler monkeys. We got back in the bus and went back up Death Road, opposite the way we had just come down. This was also a lot of fun, the driver was a nutter and drove so quickly, we had to pass a few cars on the way and had a lot of hair-raising encounters. We got back to the hostel at about 9pm and went to sleep almost instantly. It was such a fantastic experience and also draining day.

Our next activity was the Pampas tour in Rurrenabaque. Our flight was only about 20 minutes long, once we had taken off and given a complimentary drink, the pilot was already thanking us for flying with Amazonas Airlines, it was so surreal. Although we weren't far away from La Paz, the climate changed considerably. It was hot, humid, sweaty and full of mosquitos. Rurrenabaque was a really cool little jungle town, with one hostel and a couple of bars we were deep in rural Bolivia. The tour started the following day with a three hour jeep ride further into the jungle, at the end of the jeep we were met with a thin wooden boat. As we were moving through the Amazonian rivers in our boat we could see big splashes ahead of us, Tony (the guide) told us that they were from pink river dolphins and that we could jump in the water and they would come up and swim with us. So, of course, I jumped in the boat along with Henry leaving Ben and three Irish girl behind in the boat. It took a while for the dolphins to come to us, but they eventually did. I could feel them swimming beneath me, striking my legs and splashing the water around me. The next impressive animal we saw on the boat tour was a speckled cayman resting on the bank of the river. When we first went past it I thought it was plastic, it honestly wasn't moving at all. It had flies crawling on its eyes, and insects in between its open jaws. It was only until Tony, accelerated the boat in the caymans direction was I able to see it moving. And then I really saw it moving when it snapped its jaws about three meters away from me. We also saw loads of monkeys and birds around the national park. That night we did a night excursion looking for more cayman, we shone our torches out of the boat and tried to look for blood red eyes in the distance. We saw a few angry pairs of eyes looking straight at us. I was quite keen to get back to our basic eco-lodge because I was being bitten by Mosquitos. The second day we hunted for anacondas in the morning, sadly we couldn't find any but it was a good opportunity to do some well needed exercise. In the afternoon we fished for piranhas, and, where Tony caught about 20 I only managed to catch 1. To be fair, that was joint second best with everyone else on the boat. The Pampas tour was amazing and we saw loads of wildlife and had a lot of fun, I felt like Bear Grylls. We caught the flight home that afternoon and stayed the night in La Paz.

As I write the blog now from Copacabana, Lake Titicaca, the weather is warm and we have a few days lined up to relax and chill out.

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