Hola firends and family,

Today we leave the bustling city of La Paz and jump on a 4 hour bus to Copacabana - Lake Titicaca where we are going to do some Island hopping and exploring.

On Tuesday just gone we set out on the bike ride of our lives. The Death Road. It is 64kms long, descending from 4700m to 1200m on a very windy, narrow, dusty, rocky road that has a steep cliff on one side (the side we had to ride on) and huge trucks and buses flying around the corners which we had to avoid. Shane?s statement of the year was ?I am not sure what all the fuss is about with this Death Road, its not really that different to the roads we used to ride as kids.....?. For me it was pretty scary as the bikes could easily skid out on all those rocks and sand on the road and if you fell the wrong way that was it!

A girl in another tour group actually fell off the side but luckily only a few meters down. Her bike wasnt so lucky and fell about 100m. We came around the corner and found her lying by the cliff edge shaking and sobbing into her boyfriends arms...there were some very worried faces from the others in her group!

On the way down we stopped at a few places where people had previously died including a bus that went over the edge a few days ago killing 25 people. Our guide also pointed out a corner where he had seen a French girl step back with her bike to avoid a truck coming around a corner and fell backwards off the side of the cliff and died. Lastly, the place where an Israeli girl cycled deliberately off the edge after a fight with her boyfriend!!!

It took us about 4.5hours to complete and at the end we were all pretty dusty and tired. We ate our lunch at an animal reserve at the bottom of the hill where I (Sarah) held a very cheeky little monkey called Benny (see photos) who insisted on going down my top or up my skirt.....very funny.

Rather than coming straight back to La Paz we stayed in the village of Coroico at a nice hotel with a pool and excellent views across the valley. It was great to just relax and have nothing to do for two days.

Unfortunately we had to catch the local bus back to La Paz (via the Death Road) but got back safely....hence the postcard!

Will write more on our adventures from Lake Titicaca.
Love to you all,
Sarah and Shane xxxx