A life less ordinary

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Why not take a spin down the worlds most dangerous road, dance along to a brass band into the wee hours, visit the local prison or crawl through crevases in a working mine. That's what we thought - why not!
Our first port of call was Copacabana on lake titicaca. It was a nice town but bloody cold. There was some religious/brass band festival the weekend we were there. It was really colorful and went on all night and all day. One night a fwe folks from La Paz showed us how you're supposed to dance along to the brass bands. They were exceedingly drunk but very friendly.
From there we headed to La Paz. It was bustling with 'gringos' and little bolivians. For some reason (I'm still not sure why) we paid $75 for a guided bike ride down the worlds most dangerous road. Our tour company had the best safety record but they had their first fatality a couple of weeks before our ride - very reassuring. The ride itself wasn't that difficult. The main difficulty was trying to ignore the 300m vertical drop just 1m to our left as we hurtled down the mountain.
Later we visited San Pedro prison, made famous in the book 'marching powder' (written by a guy from liverpool who got caught trafficing cocaine from bolivia). We met some of the prisoners: a few south africans and 1 portugese dude. inside we were taken on a tour including one of the 5 star 'cells' and solitary confinement. the occupant of the 5 star place was a columbian drug lord but seemed very amiable. it was such a surreal experience.
It was time to start moving towards Argentina. We stopped in Potosi, formerly one of the biggest cities in the world (owing to the mining industry 3 hundred years ago or so) and aparently the highest city in the world. it was friggin freezing! We visited the mines where guys spend 8 hours a day in horrific conditions. The average life expectancy of miners there is 45 years old, mainly because of the respitory problems that they get. We bought the miners some coca leaves, fanta and dynamite! They were happy with that. Its quite a depressing experience but still interesting.
Our last stop before Argentina was Tupiza. We went horse riding here in a real wild west setting. 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' was actually shot here. Unfortunately our horses weren't very responsive but we'd make up for that when we got to Uraguay.

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Photos

Festival in Copacabana
It started on the 1st May and lasted until the 4th. We asked a few locals but we didn't really get any answer as to why this festival takes place :)

Ah, that was what the festival was about!
On the day we left, we found this poster on our bus ;)

Comments

[Rosemary Lynch]

Memories
Guys, Reading your blog and seeing the pictures brings me right back to not so many months ago when I was journing through S America. I miss it. How are the funds coming along? Is it tighten belt time? Hope you are having a great time. Love Rose