Wow. Last time I wrote this we were mid way through a 2 week spanish school in sucre wondering whether or not we would be able to leave Bolivia's capital due to the easter weekend. Now, we have just returned from 2 weeks of volunteering at an animal refuge in the Bolivian jungle, and we have done plenty in between! Our second week of spanish classes was great fun. Our teacher, Coco, took us into the markets and introduced us to some food and drink I'm not sure we ever would have tried without him. We had a drink called batido, which was a blended drink of dark beer, egg and sugar! It sounds and looks disgusting but it was a taste sensation! We also had a fruit smoothie made with a fruit I have never heard of before, Tumba, which was really tasty. One day we tried a hot smoothie called Api, none of knew what was in it but was lovely, especially on a cold day at high altitude. I feel our Spanish has come a long way but whenever we had to write about what we did the day before my story always ended up reading like a primary school child wrote it, although that may not be all due to my bad spanish! It was a sad day when we finally got the bus out of Sucre to La Paz, Bolivia's biggest city. We said a fond farewell to Coco, who very kindly offered to keep in touch to continue to help us with our Spanish. He was by far the best Spanish teacher we have had and I would recommend his Spanish school, Me Gusta, to anyone who is heading that way. To get to La Paz we took a 12 hour overnight bus on Good Friday evening. Like our last bus in Bolivia, it was cheap as chips but I can safely say it was the comfiest bus we have slept on so far. After hearing alot of horror stories about Bolivian bus safety records we had absolutely no problems and arrived bright and early on Saturday morning. A short walk down the hill from the bus terminal got us to our hostel, Arthy's guesthouse, where we were warmly greeted and shown to our private room which was ready even at 8am in the morning. After a quick kip and a shower we were ready to see the sights and sounds of Bolivia's busiest city. What first caught my attention was the smog. There are so many very old minibuses and taxis (not many people own their own car so the public transport is heavily relied on) on the road using unclean diesel that breathing in La Paz is extremely unpleasant. Coupled with the fact that it is 4100m above sea level, I found myself regularly out of breath. Our first stop was to have a look around the markets. They were not particularly hard to find as it would appear that most of La Paz is a market. There are far more market stalls lining the streets than there are actual shops in this city and they are laid out in what initially looks like a complete mess but is actually a very ordered kind of chaos. If you you wanted to buy pasta, you would go to pasta street and find all the stalls selling exactly the same kinds of pasta at exactly the same price. If you wanted to buy any electronic goods, you would go to electronic goods street and find all the stalls selling the same products at the same prices. This would happen for anything you wanted to buy, you just need to know where the street is. The element of competition for customers is not done in the pricing but merely in who shouts the loudest to get the customers to come to their stall. I questioned what would happen if one stall lowered their prices to get more customers and found that if that strange occurance were ever to happen, then they would simply be run out of town! We spent the day wondering round until we found llama knitwear street where we purchased jumpers, gloves, leg warmers, hats etc. all made from alpaca wool, all with llamas on them! Now we look like real tourists! Our final stiop in La Paz on our first day was to book our bike ride down the Worlds Most Dangerous Road, also known as the Death Road. This is a one lane rocky road that traverses along a cliff edge and used to be the only road that connected Coroico to La Paz. It got its name due to the number of accidents that occured with motorists going both ways along it. These days it is rarely used by cars as there is a new 2 lane road that connects the towns, but it is still looked upon as a dangerous bike ride as there is the very real danger of falling off the cliff edge! We nervously booked the ride for Easter Sunday with a company called Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking, who have been recommended by many of our friends. The day began bright and early with a meeting in a coffee shop at 0730 before an hours bus ride to the start of our ride at La Cumbre, 4700m high. We were lucky as the day before they had heavy rain, and we heard that the same was true for the day after, but we started in beautiful sunshine with the only clouds around being a long way below us. The first section of the ride was on a nice smooth tarmac road to get us used to the top of the range bikes. They were by far the nicest bikes I have ever ridden. Before we started there was a long safety brief designed to put us as at ease as possible. Gen was feeling extremely nervous but very determined to complete the course without having to get in the safety bus that followed us down. When we started cycling it was quickly evident that we were going to be the slowest out of our group of 10 riders. I was more than happy to cycle at Gen's pace, pretending to be the kind and caring fiance but really quite relieved that I didn't have to race down with all the others! The view was breath taking and we cycled the first 'easy' part of the course with huge smiles on our faces not quite beliveing that we were cycling in such an amazing place. Before we actually started on the 'Death Road' section there was also a 10km uphill section which our guide, Derron, strongly suggested we all skip as we were very high up on specialised downhill bikes. Completely ignoring him all of our group decided to give it a go, all bar me and Gen as we were more than happy to take the advice of an expert and sit this section out. It was not long before 2 of our team mates had given up and decided to join us in the bus and by the looks on the faces of the rest at the half way point, they were carrying on as a matter of pride! After a good hour of watching them struggle, and get off their bikes and walk up this tough section we finally got to the start of the World's Most Dangerous Road. This narrow, rocky, dirt road descends 2000m with sheer drops off to one side and waterfalls regularly cascading upon us from the other. It was amazing. The cycle itself is not too difficult, especially with the bikes we were on and the fact that our guide stopped us regularly to take photos, videos and brief us about the turns coming up ahead. What made the ride tough was the ever present lack of road side barriers to stop you from falling over 1000m down the side of the road. We were told when we first signed up that if anyone was riding too slow and holding the rest of the group up then they would have to sit out a few sections in the safety bus and we are proud to say that we did not have to do this. Admittedly we were at the back the entire time but our pace was good enough to keep in touch with the group for the whole ride down. By the time we got to the bottom Gen's hands were stuck in the grip position from holding her handlebars so tight for the previous 5 hours but she was over the moon and relieved that it was all over and we could wear our t-shirts with pride. Even though Gravity are the most expensive of all the companies doing this ride I would happily recommend them to anyone as we felt as safe as you could possibley feel all the way down on excellently maintained, nearly new, top of the range mountain bikes. The fact that they are the only company that finishes in La Senda Verde is also a massive plus point for them as well. The ride finished in the hot and humid town of Yolosa, a mere 1100m above sea level, and from there we went to visit an animal refuge called La Senda Verde. There we were able to enjoy a good shower, a very tasty all you can eat buffet lunch, a wonderfully refreshing and thoroughly deserved cold beer all followed by a tour of the refuge. On our tour we were taken to see some of the animals that they looked after including tortoises, turtles, macaws and monkeys. The tour ended in the monkey area and it was amazing to see so many different types of monkeys all living together in the same area. We had such a good time there that we spoke to one of the volunteers about how we could get involved and found that there was an opening for help at that time and they would happlily accept us as volunteers in the next week. All we had to do was pay a small upkeep and commit to doing at least 2 weeks there. This gave us plenty to think about as we dove back to La Paz. The drive back was almost scarier than the cycle down as they take you back up the death road at near break neck speed! It was made even more amusing as the bus we were in used to be a party bus so when they turned the lights on in the back for us we had to put up with disco lights and a laser show all the way back up! It was with great relief and very tired legs that we finally walked back into our hostel that night. On the drive back we had decided that if we could extend our visa by another 30 days then we would head back down to the refuge for a few weeks volunteering. As it turns out, extending your visa up to 90 days takes all of 2 minutes in a queue and a few pence spent on photocopying. Job done. We were heading to La Senda Verde the following day. Still top of the league.