The arrival to La Paz was at 6.30 in the morning after a relatively smooth bus ride without any sleep once again. La Paz is the highest capital city in the world at 4030m asl and is built in a massive valley in the shadow of a huge snow-capped mountain called Huayna Potosi. We both got onto the bus with very sore stomachs (which by now was something we were used to having in Bolivia), but Rome was particularly bad and was in no condition to stay at one of the "party" hostels that La Paz is so famous for. We opted for a nice clean bedroom with a double bed and sattelite TV in a hostel called "Cruz de Los Andes". Rome was pretty much bed-ridden for the 3 days that we were in La Paz as I was in Sucre' which is part of the reason that I'm doing the blog this time round.

Once in town, La Paz is a mixture of vibrance and bright colours. There are hundreds of shops selling bright hammocks, bags, beanies and little Ukelele-type instruments called Charangos. The place is also full of tourist agencies offering tours to Uyuni, Death road trips (which i'll get onto in a moment), ice trekking trips and Amazon tours. After sleeping the morning away, I went for a walk around town trying to get some quotes for our next trip to the amazon jungle. I went into a well known tour agency called Indigena, but we failed to negotiate a good price between us so I left after around an hour of finding out about the Amazon. Bolivia is a county where pretty much every good and service is negotiable. There are no marked prices on any items in stores and a lot is left up to the consumer to try and negotiate. There are often times that one can walk away with a really good deal. I came back to the room to check on Rome who had hardly eaten anything the last 24 hours and convinced her to let us get a take away pizza for the night. We ended up getting a massive "American" sized meal that was freakin 80cm in diameter! It lasted us 3 meals. The next day, Rome came-out for a walk and we went to go book our Amazon tour. We ended up winning with an agency just arround the corner and booked all our flights, amazon tours and my death road trip through the same place. We saved ourselves close to 15% off the quoted price so we did pretty well.

We walked through town looking at all the "tzatzkes" for close to 2 hours and I got myself a leather arm band to string my backpack key onto (always helps to have it close at hand). We went back to the room and relaxed the afternoon watching TV and the movie Philadelphia (excellent film btw). That night was an early one as I had to be up for the death road trip at 6 in the morning.

Death road is infamous for (which as it's name hints at) being one of the most dangerous roads in the world. It was up until 2 years ago, still used for vehicles but is now far less popular after a new road has been built. The guide who took us cylcling mentioned some ridiculous statistic like almost 200 people used to die there yearly! (mostly on buses and trucks). The road is now infamous among travellers for being an adventure sport to cylce down the 63km route. The group met at 7am at the Solerio hotel for breakfast where we were treated to toasted cheese as part of the meal which was a massive luxury compared to what we've been used to. The group was around 13 people and we were split into 2 combis for the trip to the starting point. In my van was a Slovenian couple, a Japanese guy, a French girl and a couple from Italy. After an hour of driving, we ended up at the staring point "La Cumbre'". The start is 4700m asl and is freezing cold. There we got given our bicycles. The cycling is 4 hours, downhill mostly from an altitude of 4700m asl to 1200m (IE a vertical descent of 3.5km!) I got a top of the range hydrolic suspension beaut which I got as part of the negotiations from the day before.

The first 21 km's was on a smooth tar road (not all that challenging) which took close to an hour. It was a good time to get used to the cycles and enjoy the +-80km/h downhill sessions. The 2nd session was by far more challenging and dangerous. The road is all dirt and stone and has some very steep (fast) downhill sessions. The corners were obviously the most dangerous parts with many of them having 90 degree sheer drops of the cliff face. Around 20 tourists have died doing the tours over the last couple years so instructions from the guide are not to be taken lightly (one of them being: don't be *&%!ing stupid!). It was goodn fun and the group got away from everything without and injury which is always a relief for the guides. At the end, we went for lunch in Coroico and then drove for around 3 hours to get back home.

That night, Rome and I went out for a nice dinner and had another early night for our 8am flight to Rurenabaque (The amazon) the next day.