Travel

The next day we headed into La Paz.  This is when you get your first taste of culture shock.  Theres an assumption that when you travel to a place like Peru, Bolivia or India that the difference between said place and your home country are so great that you experience culture shock. But this isn't true, it seems different when you first arrive but you get used to it.  The shock is when you have got used to living in a place like zurite with about 1000 people, 2 telephone and 5000 pigs.  Then when you go to a huge city like La Paz you really get culture shock, there are too many people, too much noise and it's too modern.

So we headed out of the city to the valley of the moon just outside La Paz. This strange grey rock formation really does feel like another world.  As it gets nearer midday the heat really starts to pick up.  We head to a local restaurant where we get lunch for 35p!  It's then off to La Paz zoo for a look at the animals.

The Zoo seems in pretty good nick. Infact it wouldn't be unfair to say that a lot of these animals have a better standard of living than the average Bolivian.  There are Pumas, Parrots, Snakes and a goat which seemed to be there as a Bolivian attraction.  It seems strange that a goat might be an interesting animal to anyone but hey!

The next day we got up early and took a minibus up from La Paz (4000m) to the mountains above (4800m).  We had decided to mountain bike down the 'most dangerous raod in the world'.  Having signed a disclaimer stating that if we died it was our own fault, we leapt on our bikes and raced down the mountainside...  untill Chris fell off.

We cycled about 70Km and descended from 4800m down to 1300m which is 3500m for the unmathmatical.  As we descened the temperature increased as did the humidity.  We had started above the tree line and soon we were in cloud forest shrouded in mist.  Finally we descended into the sub tropics.  As temperatures hit 40'c and humidity raced towards 100 i was surpised to see a very large cat dash infront of my bike.  It actually turned out to be a puma, i was incredibly lucky; pumas are very rarely seen in the wild.

When we got to the bottom we were very dusty, hot and sweaty but we had just been down the most dangerous road.  Now all we had to do was get back to the top.