Arrived in La Paz after what we know knew was the bumpiest road in the world, how the bus stayed in one piece i will never know. The film that was shown was jumping from english to spanish it was so bumpy, luckily about half way through the road got a wee bit better so we both managed to get some sleep. We arrived at 7am so we were way to early to check into our hostel, got some breakfast, bacon and eggs, was so good. La Paz is a weird city, it totally hilly, and the centre sits at about 3600m so walking anywhere leaves you pretty tired. Our hostel was at ther top of a heap of stairs so we were knackered all the time.

Had a wander around the city centre and booked our most dangerous road in the world for the next day. Brid and Helen werent to sure if they were gonna do it but i managed to convince them otherwise. Went fot some lunch and finally found somewhere that did good sandwiches, good sandwiches are pretty rare in south america so far, everything is cheese and ham!!! Just wandered around the rest of the day and joined in the spagetti bolognase night at the hostel as we couldnt be bothered going out, it turned out to be quite good although it wasnt all you could eat, 1 bowl and it was taken away!!

Got up early the nest day to go to the mountain biking, there were 10 of us in total doing the biking, couple of guffs and canadians. We got our dafety talk and then got to do the first 32km on smooth steep roads, overtaking bus´s and lorry´s. At one point point brid got a bit fed up with the group and decided she was going to plow on past the instuctor, he had to chase her half way down the hill to tell her to stop and wait. Finally reached the start of the death road and it looked pretty dodgy, the highest drop was 800m on one side but it ranched from 80m to 800m most of the way. The guide would stop us along the way to point out places were people had died and other accidents had happened. We split up nto 2 groups, the fast group with me and 2 other guys, and brid, and the slow group which were all girls. Brid managed to keep in the fast group the whole way down and put the rest of the other girls to shame. He pretty much didnt give us any rules except dont die so we got to go as fast as we wanted, the bike cost about 2000pounds each so the brakes were decent. I think brid and i both had one time were we thought we were going over the edge. Finally made it to the bottom and we were taken to nice hotel with a swimming pool for lunch, although this didnt make the 3hr journey in the back of a cramped van anymore bearable.

I would definetly reccomend the mountain biking, its probably one of the best things ive done in a long time, although its not really cheap it is worth it. we used Downhill Madness tour company and our guide was ace. Headed out for a couple of beers that night but didnt last long as we were all pretty tired. Luckily an annoying boy in our dorm is checking out tomorrow morning, he is a proper londoner who thinks he´s some kind of gansta!!

Didnt do much the nest day, had a wander round all the town markets, went back and grabbed some more good sandwiches. Collected out photo´s from the biking and out t-shirts we got. Went out for some food and a couple of beers, bars were not the most exciting in la paz, headed home around 1 for some beauty sleep.

Rurrenabaque tomorrow, so hopefully it will be roasting.