Arrived in La Paz on Thursday afternoon after a relatively short bus ride (about 4 hours)! We found a hostel which finally had hot, powerful showers (woo!), so once we´d dumped our bags, we headed into the city to check out the sights!

La Paz was a cool city - a bit on the dirty side but very bustly and full of interesting things to see! We decided to hit the markets on Friday, hoping for some good bargains! Bolivians so do not bargain though! Everything is a fixed price and they are almost impossible to break and get a lower price! Despite Jess and Hayley´s best efforts, I think the most we managed to bargain was the equivalent of £1!! We also decided to book the mountain bike tour of the infamous Death Road for the next day! Then headed back to the hostel for the best food ever!! Steak and trout, salad buffet and a beer all for £3.50!!

Saturday we were up early for our bike ride! Caught a bus to our starting point and jumped on our bikes, fully geared up, with waterproofs, gloves, helmet, goggles and knee pads!! The ride started off at about 4,600m, and for about an hour we were riding on paved roads (mostly downhill), going as fast as possible (well Lee was, Jess was slightly more cautious!!!) until we reached the beginning of the Death Road. The whole of the Death Road was gravel ..... it was so bumpy the whole way and to begin with it felt impossible to control the bikes. Eventually we just got used to the fact that the path consisted of massive stones and you just had to hope your bike could stay upright as you rode down!!

The ride was pretty long (about 38 miles with masssive drops at the side of the very narrow path) and dropped down 3,600m during this time. It was also really painful on both the bum and hands! Because you had to brake constantly the whole way down so you didn´t go too fast, it meant that we were squeezing the brakes for about 3 hours non-stop! However, depsite this, we had a brilliant day and were definitely pleased we decided to do it. We reached the bottom of the road (eventually) and because we had descended so many meters (we were told it is where the Andes meets the Amazon) the weather had changed dramatically. We headed off to a hotel in a town called Coroico for a delicious buffet lunch, before we had to jump back in the bus and head back to La Paz (a long and boring 3hour journey back up the way we had just come)!

We decided not to stay too long in La Paz, and caught a bus to Uyuni on the Sunday.....