La Paz was a bit of a shock to the system after enjoying a slower pace of life over the past few weeks. We arrived in the polluted, noisy, congested city with a stern warning to watch out for scams and street robberies so didnt exactly fall in love with the place. Still, we ventured out and were really surprised. No tourist attractions as such, but a great place to mooch around the streets and check out the various markets. The one thing I wanted to experience whilst in La Paz was the worlds most dangerous road. Unsurfaced steep downhill single track road with two way traffic, mostly lorries and buses. You hire a mountain bike and get dropped off at the top of a mountain pass at around 4,500m before being met at the bottom of the road at about 1,000m a few hours later. Total journey is around 40 miles, a small portion of which is on a tarmac road, but the money must have run out pretty quickly because you are soon on a dirt track. The ride is mostly downhill so not physically demanding, but bloody scary. You fly down this road pushed on by a guide. Ours couldnt speak English, but when all he yelled was "vamous!" you knew what he meant. The road is lined with crosses showing where people have died, mostly when the vehicle they were travelling in was backing up to try and let one coming in the opposite direction pass. As the road is so tight without barriers there is no room for error, and off the edge you go. You kind of accept the single crooses, but the worst ones are where a bus has gone over and you have a whole cluster of crosses in one spot. On a bike it would be bad enough hurtling down a deserted 10 foot wide road with no barriers to protect you from a vertical drop of 1,000 feet down into the valley below, but when you go round a sharp bend and see a lorry about to flatten you, its pretty scary - especially on a well used hired bike with brakes that could be better. Lisa joined me with good intentions, but when she came round a corner to find me sprawled on the dirt a couple of feet from the edge (and death) having taken a bend far too quickly she had second thoughts. My arguement that you should always push yourself to find your limits wasnt well received and she waited for the support vehicle and jumped on. When she saw the driver drawing a cross on his chest with his finger as he sqeezed past a lorry on the road, she wondered whether she had done the right thing though. I survived the distance and got the t-shirt. Exhilerating, exciting and scary. Fantastic! If you want to check out the ride, go to www.gravitybolivia.com. Go to one day rides and look for worlds most dangerous road. Other than mooching, eating, drinking and biking, we went to moon valley, a bizarre maze of canyons and pinnacles. Check out the photos. Left La Paz for Puno - our first taste of Peru. Another bus journey and another corrupt border crossing. Illegal charge was only 20 Bolivianos (about a quid) but Lisa got a bit aggro with the officials (funny as I was paying). She quietend down when I pointed out their guns, powers to search and that they might just understand the word "corruption" (Last time it happened, a Paraguayan taxi driver babbled in Spanish to me and the only word I understood was "corruption"). These guys didnt seem too bothered though, so long as they extracted their beer money from every traveller that passed through. Simon