12/09/2012 - 13/09/2012 - Living the high life

Ready to rock and roll at 5,345m!

The fashion on the streets was
bowler hats - can't believe we left
ours in the UK!

Yep - it's high alright!

The title isn’t a declaration of our frivolous behaviour – rather La Paz is the world’s highest de facto capital city (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Paz) so we were literally staying in the heights! Added to this our room was on the 4^th floor of our hostel, so we were out of breath every time we had to make that journey! After one of the scariest night buses, bouncing over horrendous dirt roads leaving us occasionally clutching each other for our lives, our first day was a pretty chilled saunter round the city.

Um... They drink it in the Congo?

It was all downhill from here...

 The next day was the big one – due to miner strikes (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-19565981) we couldn’t get to the WMDR (world’s most dangerous road), instead having to settle for the largest* mountain bike descent in a day. From 5,345m to around 1,000m is a couple of earpops – http://www.gravitybolivia.com/index.php?mod=tempview1&id=1288116708. Despite the spectacular views, our group was the most interesting element: an older Aussie couple, where the lady basically didn’t shut up (thankfully we weren’t in the same transport as her!); another Aussie couple who were in the process of splitting up; and a South African lady as a tour guide who started the day off by telling us how nervous she was as she had never taken a group on this ride and had only been down it once 5 months ago – reassuring!!

Try as she might, Annaliza couldn't catch the Aussie mum...

A bit of a break by the stream

The ride started at an abandoned ski resort – once the highest in the world but following global warming the glacier has disappeared… We had a quick intro into how to ride the bike, with a practice up a small slope which left everyone struggling for breath (nothing is easy at this altitude), before heading off.  The order of the group was settled fairly quickly with the guys leading out and the ladies bringing up the back. Annaliza wasn’t last but suffered slight humiliation by being beaten by the Aussie mum! 6-7 hours of adrenalin later, after numerous chain incidents and we headed back to La Paz enjoying the sunset over the city, well satisfied with our efforts!

Stunning views on the return journey

Stunning views on return journey #2

Literally setting the city alight!

Key Learnings:

1. Ladies wearing bowler hats are all the rage in Bolivia – we think this fashion trend should take off in the UK…

2. A new T-shirt is required for the largest* decent in a day mountain bike ride – it wasn’t quite the same getting one for the WMDR when we hadn’t managed to set foot on it!

* - allegedly...