the bolivians have loads of extremes. highest road, highest lake, coldest hostels, saltiest soup, cheapest everything, smallest grannies..

they also have the worlds most dangerous road. built by paraguayan prisoners of war, it goes from a pass in the bleak freezing altiplano, at 4,900m, where nothing grows and the llamas don´t even breed, all the way down to semitropical lush green river valleys at 1000m where there are hummingbirds and mosquitoes and bananas.

the road is mental, its hacked out of near vertical cliff faces and is rarely more than 10ft wide. all the cargo traffic from the north of bolivia to la paz used to pass this way, there are few places where vehicles can pass and over 100 people were killed every year falling off the side. they have just constructed a fancy new road on stilts that goes down the same steep valley, its a miracle of engineering. now the old road is used for insane downhill cycle racing. there are no guard rails and the cliff edge to your left is sometimes up to 800m drop. there are crosses lining the side of the road (and lots of stars of david becuae many Israelis have died here too)

Scary though it is, it makes an ace cycle ride. You can go really fast and you have to make sure you don´t fall over the edge, and the road is so slippy its quite hair raising. having managed this sucessfully, i fell off my bike on the easy flat bit at the end and now have a purple bruise the size and shape of a handlebar and brake attatchment on my leg.

Last night in La Paz we were randomly ordered to the floor and made to lie on our fronts by police with big guns who shouted at us loads and shone torches in opur faces and searched us. So we are feeling a bit traumatised ! If the constant road blockades, industrial action and spontaneous marching bands don´t stop us, we´ll be leaving La Paz soon. seriously, another city called Sucre has decided that it wants to be the capital city instead and in true south american style they have covered all the roads with rocks so travelling is a challenge here.