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Published: April 12th 2007
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The coca museum
La hoja de coca no es droga OK... well we were pretty much expecting the worst coming to a bg city in a poor country especially after our experience in Brazil but La Paz surprised us. First things first... we stayed in a hotel with bell boys and room service if you called 9 and all for the princely sum of 6 pounds a night! We were in the central area of the city where there's loads of cool markets selling everything from shrivelled dried-up llamas (not kidding) to fluffy llama jumpers, socks, gloves, hats, ponchos... think of a product and if you can make it out of a llama or one of it's cousins then it's already been done and is sold here! Armadillo mandolins also featured! Despite what we were told on our salt flat tour (bloody clueless tour guides) it transpires that Alpacas are not in fact killed for their wool and give it up freely (allbeit with a bit of a fight i'm sure)! So... much assured by this fact we went on a little bit of a shopping spree! We actually spent about 2 whole days wandering around the endless markets and still managed to only spend a few pounds (although our
Shopping anyone?!
´I give you good price my friend´ rucksacks gained a few)! Many presents were purchased (be nice to us from now on)! We'd also been told (by many a hungry backpacker) that bolivian food is awful... however... this is very much not true! We had some of the best food we've had on the entire continent including an amazing organic restaurant and a very convincing english pub with proper pìnts and a good old english curry to boot!
The highlight of La Paz does however have to be (the artist formerly known as) the World's Most Dangerous Road. In the past 6 years 9 cyclists have died on that road so we decided that it would be a good idea to bowl down there on mountain bikes! We should point out at this point that before a new paved road was opened this was the only route to the town of Coroico and was racking up almost a death a day as sleep deprived, drunk or over-confident drivers saw fit to fling themselves and any helpless passengers off the 600m cliff to their doom!!! We set off down The Death Road (as it is now named - not enough deaths anymore apparently) in three groups of
different abilities and levels of confidence with Simon predictably at the front and me predictably in the tortoise pace group (i prefer to say that i was enjoying the view instead of frantically holding on to the brakes the whole way down)! It was a really great ride though and once i's got my confidence up me and my guide were way ahead of the others tortoises (i'm not sure they appreciated that and i'm pretty sure it was against all the safety regulations but who cares... i had fun)! The whole trail is 64km, approximately half of which is on tarmac and half of which is on deadly cliff sided gravel which just promises to slide you to your death at every hairpin bend! Having said that... the company (Downhill Madness... great name we thought) were really good and you never felt like you were in any danger (the bikes made up to even Simon's high expectations and with 1000 pounds under your arse you feel a bit better!!) Having said all this... we did meet a girl in the pub that evening (she'd gone with a different company) who'd actually almost plummeted 500m to her death a couple of weeks before! She got an insect in her mouth and in a moment of pure, unadulterated girliness slammed on the brakes, went over the handle bars and, luckily enough, managed to grab some vegetation about 10m down the cliff! She was saved by her mate and the tour guide tying some jumpers together and hauling her back up (talk about high-tech rescue equipment... only in South America)!
So, after surviving the Death Road and spending all our money on shit we don't need we left La Paz and headed for the highest navigable lake in the world and also the one with the stupidest name... Lago Titicaca (tee hee)!
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Jimbo
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Titicaca he he indeed