La paz Bolivia

Arrived  after an excellent journey accross rivers and montains, la paz is amazing when first seen, all from above with snowcapped mountains surrounding it in a big valley, the hostal the three of us had to bigin with was rough, but with a great view, and only 20 bls, each thats about 3 dollars, went out for cake then on the piss, good laugh but the place closes on mondays at 2 am and we were forced home, second night was more er lively, we hammered caiperina cachasas then went to look for somewhere to dance, still a bit quiet, we went to a bar at 3am for more cake and cubra libres, damian had the bright(?) idea of doing a runner without paying , it was only 150 bls, but drunk boys we were, i said im not jumping out the back, if you want to you can, im walking out the front, if your still in here in 5 minutes, im coming back in to pay, i hung around up the road in a phone box for a while , could not see them, so i walked back and took a look down the road towards the restaurant, and saw a military policeman and the waiter on the balcony looking for the other two, i turned around and saw them a couple of blocks up the street, they shouted to me , probably a bit too loud and i replied "they have sussed us" and started to run towards them, caught them up and we all shot down a side street with the police on our tail, i ducked into the shadowof a doorway and they all ran by me, i stayed there with my heart pumping, richard was walked up the street handcuffed past me , but amazingy no-one saw me , i could hear the police shouting saying there was a third one, i hid very still, when the comotion died down i crept off, getting a taxi back, packed my stuff and was ready to do a runner, just as i was about to leave , the boys got back, they had been taken to a police station but let off becuase the police had better things to do,3 hours later me and richard were due to be picked up to cycle down the most dangerous road in the world

Click on the pictures for a bigger version and more pictures, gettin good at this web page stuff now!

It is reputed to be the most dangerous road, i thought yeah yeah, other travellers said it was safer to cycle it so thats what me and richard did, we opted for hireing bikes for 16 bucks rather than going on the 50 dollar tour, not such a good idea, the road is downhill for 5 hours, from 4500metres altitude, rich thought it would be warm, it wasnt, he didnt bring a jacket and when you are rolling down through the clouds its bloody freezing, road wasnt so bad, for the first hour or so, the we came down from the mountains and the road turned chronic, within half hour more i had a puncture, and had to walk, it was then we realised what they were on about, the road was about 3 metres wide wide with cliff on one side and sheer rock drops of 150m + on the other side, and loads of psyco bus drivers cutting the corners back wheels just teetering over the edge, every corner had a collection of gravestones and tyre tracks over the edge with debris at the bottom, why the dont just put barriers there i dont know, its almost as if they like it like that, the previous week 10 israelies and two dutch tourists had gone over the edge, all killed, at this point it started to dawn on me, how do we get back up? we would have to get one of these buses, shit, we flagged down a merc truck that looked ok and he drove us down, spectacular rain forest with huge waterfalls , so beutiful, we got down to the town (4 hours) and the driver started saying about how he was going to a bigger town where we could get my bikes fixed, we were quite enjoying the view and trusted his driving so we went for it, what we didnt realise was it was another 5 hours into the amazon jungle to a frontier town that had never heard of a tourist, we arrived at night, a bit scared, but managed to find a place, kind of a hotel familar where poor families stayed, we saw some fellow gringos and went to chat with them, it turned out to be danish missionaries who had lived there for 2 years and were as surpised to see us, very friendly though and we spent the evening chatting with them preparing ourselfs for a scary ride home, the next day we got a dodgy bus, took 10 hours and one puncture, luckily on a safe stretch to get us back to la paz, treated ourselfs to large amounts of meat and alcohol when we got back  to our hostal!

The most dangerous road in the world, oh yes

Uyuni bolivian dessert

By now i had to get on the huury up to get to san pedro in chile to sort out a hotel for me and julieta for the new year, so me ronaldo,mika and richard got a jeep tour for 3 days to san pedro from uyuni, fantastic scenery, salt flats with hotels made entirely out of salt and huge desserts with live volcanos beutiful sunsets and freezing nights,
But by far the most amasing thing was the flamongoes, they are the only animal to survive up here because they eat kelp, same as whales, but strangley enough there are no whales in the lagunas a much easier time than on the inca trail, being driven around in a big jeep a good laugh plus it was only  60 bucks all in wich is very cheap, we all got the runs though, nice symphony of noises in the toilets we came across