La Paz...World´s Most Dangerous Road

We heard La Paz was a big and dirty city but we actually both kind of liked the vibe from all the craziness (it reminded me a bit of Naples). We got in this ¨minibus¨ from the airport thinking it would take us to one of the main squares...easy enough. It wasn´t quite a BUS, but more like a VW van with 4 rows of bench seats and a rack on the roof for the luggage. To our surprise, as soon as we left the airport, we stopped and a man starts auctioning off space on the bus (for less than we paid mind you). And by space, I mean every little crevis of this small ¨bus¨. But hey, we are in Bolivia! Welcome to La Paz...

Mount Hyuani Potosi in backgroud...

We later saw these ¨buses¨ everywhere....they were instead of regular city buses. They each had a driver and another guy that tried to recruit people at every corner. I have never seen more people and stuff packed into such a small area (wait, I take that back...see blog about bus from Uyuni to Potosi). It makes us laugh now!

Back to La Paz. We found a movie theater that was english with spanish subtitles so we saw Iron Man Dos. Good stuff. What I liked most was the vendors selling candy, popcorn, soda, etc right outside for really cheap and you can carry whatever you bought right in (no hiding it in bags or paying ridiculous prices for soda and popcorn).

We heard from everyone that we had to mountain bike down the ¨World´s Most Dangerous Road¨ so we did. This road was officially named this in 1996 because it had the highest death toll per year of any other road in the world, over 300 a year. The road was built by prisoners of war from Paraguay in the 1930s to connect La Paz to Coricho with dynamite and shovels. It´s literally a dirt road placed precariously on the side of a huge mountain, winding its way through small waterfalls with 600 foot cliffs and no railings (except crosses where people had gone over the edge). Luckily for us, in 2006, another paved road was built (not on the side of a cliff) and now serves as the main road for most traffic.

We started our journey at around 4300 meters and finished around 1000 meters, biking over 60 kilometers, just to give you an idea in numbers. We road on the left side, closer to the side of the cliff, where our guide swore it was safer. Sometimes, looking down, I was not so sure! The ride was amazing, scenery was beautiful and the experiece unforgettable. 

Quick pose in between runs...

This picture kinda shows the cliffs off the side of the hill and a grop of riders...it doesnt look steep here, but trust me it was steep enough...

Beautiful area...

Two goobers in our safety gear...dont worry the duct tape held the huge crack in my helmet together jsut fine...jk

A picture after we finished the ride...this is from the most famous corner where you can see the road just drops off...

Oh yea, just to make it even better, we finished our ride in an animal refuge. The owner has saved all sorts of animals from bad or abusive care or nursed back to health from the wild. Animals included golden retrievers, cats, parrots, and best of all mokeys. All animals were very friendly and the monkeys would climb all over us visitors. We didnt get any good pictures of a monkey on Scott but it was cool.

Lunch with a monkey...

The monkeys were very active, just like kids playing around...its was incredible how smart they were..you couldnt keep anything in your pockets even if it they were zipped because they would open them and take anything in there...they were so inquistive, anything you would hide fromt hem they would want.