After Potosi, we took an overnight bus to La Paz last Monday. We arrived early in the morning and found a hotel next to one of the main plazas in the city. La Paz is the highest capital city in the world, at around 12000 feet in elevation. My body doesn’t seem to adjust well to the high elevation, because I easily am out of breathe.
On Tuesday we strolled around the cities main sites. La Paz is situated in a steep canyon on top of the Andes. We spent Tuesday strolling through the streets and shopping in the local markets. Everything here in Bolivia is dirt cheap. A 3 course meal costs one dollar at lunchtime, to give you an idea of the cost of things.
On Wednesday we visited the main plaza in the La Paz. The Presidential Palace, Congress, and an old cathedral surround the plaza. I should mention that Bolivian women have a very interesting fashion style. Most of the women in Bolivia dress almost exactly like this. We also went to the big city park on Wednesday. The weather was perfect so we were able to see the entire city from a vista point at the local park. Also in this park was a life size chess board, with pieces that were as tall as us. We spent the afternoon playing chess, and shopping again. We also purchased our tickets for Star Wars Episode Three, for the 19th of May at a local theatre. Surprisingly, there is a lot of Star Wars hype in South America.
On Thursday we joined a tour group to mountain bike down the world’s most dangerous road, also the worlds largest downhill. We met the group at a café in La Paz and jumped in the bus, where we were drove outside the city to the top of the canyon above. The elevation here was about 15500 feet. At this spot, the guides handed us our mountain bikes and gave us some instructions on how to ride down this road. We spent the next six hours descending 10,000 feet to the town of Coroico. Literally, we rode down the eastern face of the Andes, into the Amazon basin. The ride was amazing. We barely had to petal at all and rode very fast down through a beautiful valley. This is the world’s most dangerous road because alongside its 70 kilometers length this one lane dirt road has a 5000 foot drop. Here is a picture that describes the road well. Take a closer look at the bus, to get a fee for how big that cliff is. A few years back, an average of two vehicles per week fell over the cliff. The tour provided a website of pictures from our descent, so I didn’t take very many pictures. There pictures are better then mine. Check them out here. The password to view those pictures is photos. Needless to say, we made it down safely. At the bottom of our ride, we had a buffet awaiting us and a cold shower.
We stayed in Coroico on Thursday night at a great hotel perched over the town. On Friday, we took a 16 hour bus ride into the Amazon to a town called Rurrenabaque. This probably was the worst bus ride of the trip. The road was questionable, the bus was pretty run down, and the other travelers were smoking on the bus. But, we are now here in Rurrenabaque, which is in the Amazon rainforest.
Next we head off into the rivers, swamps and forests for the next four days with a local guide.