Following the bus ride from hell (due to the guy sitting in front of me having a broken chair and reclining far further than he should have been, I continuosly kneed him in the back) we arrived in the highest capital in the world La Paz at 6am, hopped in a taxi and went straight for our hostel the Loki. Unfortunately when we arrived we were informed that check in was not until 1pm so we had ALOT of time to kill. We decided to busy ourselves walking around La Paz (which is a work out in itself!!), checking if our bank cards had arrived at the embassy (thanks Hazel) which they hadn´t, and looking into booking some activities. Our first stop was “The Worlds most Dangerous Road” (Real name no gimmick), which lots of people had recommended so we entered the shop and were in the middle of quite a heated exchange between an Isreali bloke (wanting some money back) and the tour operator. When the guy left turns out he had been the trip 2 days previously and it had been cut short due to a 23 yr old British tourist from another group, losing his life. Supposedly he was going too fast round a corner and fell 100ft and died as they tried to rescue him, needless to say we had serious doubts about doing the ride but decided to go ahead with it as the t-shirts you get at the end are really nice!! Spent the rest of the day chillaxing and decided that seeing as we were doing the bike ride the next day it probably wan´t a good idea to drink too much that evening and being as the Loki is reknowned for being a party hostel we had to get out, where better than the cinema, watched the new X-Men film then headed to our ridiculously large comfy beds for an early night!

8am start for the bike ride, they drive you up into the mountains for about an 1hr and you start the cycle from around 4,800m the altitude descends over 3000m in under 40k that drop in height we were told was large enough to sky dive from!! The first part of the ride was awesom it was on a winding asphalt road and you could absolutely wing it down, Chloe still a little aprhensive by the news of the death (which was not on this part of the road) took it nice and easy. We finally got to the dangerous part of the road after about 2hrs and it got a little trickier I must admit on this part I was cacking myself at first and was going (almost) as slow as Chloe but my confidence/testosterone/stupidity kicked in and I was back up front trying to match the guide. The scenery was amazing and other than a few hairy moments around some corners wasnt that difficult to cycle at quite a speed, I was momentarily reminded of the dangers when we saw another tour company erecting a memorial for the kid that died half way down. At the end of the ride dripping with sweat and tired we went to an animal sanctuary and showered and had some lunch, then took a look around at the animals. On departing we were told that the bus would be travelling back up the road we had just cycled down which for me was actually scarier as the bus was far too close to the edge on a number of occasions. Hoiwever we made it down and back up the hill again in one piece and arranged to go out for a few celebratory drinks with some guys from our group. The night descended into a binge and we returned to our hostel a little worse for wear at 8am. Due to our antics of the night before we pretty much lost the whole next day aside from rising momentarily to watch United v Wigan we slept straight through.

The next day we headed to a “Fake” Irish bar where I had the luxury of a full english and booked a trip to the Pampas in Rurrenbache for the next day. Again we looked around La Paz some more collected our bank cards and generally wasted away the hours, there really isn´t that much to do in La Paz during the day. We headed back to our favourite La Paz hang out la cine (the party animals we are!! and watched Angels and Demons. We got back to our room and found a group of 18/19 yr old brits straight out of boarding school smoking the good stuff in our dorm!! After watching them for a few hours which was actually suprisingly amusing we hit the sack. Not much to report on our final day in La Paz other than going to the aeroport to catch our flight to Rurre, so you get buses and “mini-buses” and the same is true for planes we took a “mini” plane which seated about 14 people, a truely scary experience.