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The last evening in Rurrenabaque was a quiet one. Next morning i found an internet cafe in town and changed my flight back to La Paz to lunchtime. Once at the airport i was met by a twin propellor 20 seater plane. With no need for a safety demonstration as we would clearly all die if we crashed we took to the skies. It was a rather turbulent flight over the Amazon and ab ove the Andes but quite exciting at least.
Once in La Paz i checked into Loki hostel where i met Rachel (from New Year in Buenos Aires) and Liam, her boyfriend that has flown out for a holiday. We had arranged to meet Claire, Michelle and Ceira (Irish girls) for drinks later that evening so popped round the corner to Wild Rover for some drinking shenanigans which apparently ended up in heading to Traffic, a club in La Paz, and returning at 5am, well apparently....
Next morning was a slow one to say the least and i felt compelled to chose the full Englsh breakfast to help the situation. It also became apparent that i was hit with what is colloquially known as the runs! As discovered through a rather embarrassing surprise episode...i'll say no more!
By mid afternoon the day was slipping away when the barman suggested to Rachel, Liam and I that we should join them in abseiling face first down a 17 storey building.
So hangover well and truly kicking in, as well as having sprinted for the loo at least 5 times I thought why not. We got the lift up through a 5 star hotel to the 17th floor where we met by an assortment of ropes and super hero outfits. Having picked our suits (all spiderman in this case) we were strapped into our harness' (making an emergency toilet stop impossible) and briefed in how to descend, face first of course. We had a trial go on a mini wall before i started the agonising wait of watching other people abseil down before me whilst fighting the urge to piss out of my ass (excuse the language)!
The barmen and co went first before Liam, who is rather scared of heights took his turn to walk into the oblivion. Once completed it was Rachel's turn, who also wasn't feeling too fresh, and at one point shouted "im going to vomit" which Liam took as a hint to move out of the way from underneath, but the guide replied with "what, your doing good" and was rather unaware of the potential splatter of breakfast about to hit him. Fortunatelty (or not so) Rachel managed to re-swallow her breakfast and the guide came to no harm.
Finally, it was my turn and being so concerned that i was going to need a new pair of boxers very soon I tried to speedily make my way downwards, it turns out its quite tough to try and walk down a building face first so to my frustration I had almost accepted that i would come down looking more like a bat that pooed down itself than the super cool spiderman i was pretending to be! Anyway i managed to get down 3/4s of´the way and from here it was a case of letting go of the rope and free falling 20m to the bottom placing all of your faith in the guides to judge when to hold the rope. The adrenaline kick was instant, and somehow i managed to keep all necessary bodily holes closed enough just in time to de-harness, unsuit and sprint to the loo!
Once relieved of all inner strains we headed back into La Paz and found the witches market. So called because it is a market where you can buy the sorts of things you would expect witches to sell. For example, llama foetuses - for good luck of course, or voodoo dolls, or all manners of drugs and medicines.
That evening I went for dinner with Rachel, Liam and the Irish girls at a steakhouse in town and washed it down with some more drinks at Wild Rover before heading to Olivers English Pub for the night. Again i returned at 6am but do at least remember the evening this time.
Surprisingly, the next morning was a lazy one once more, but to make up for it Rachel, Liam, Ceira and I caught a taxi out of town to the Valley of the Luna. Once there we set off on the 15 minute tour route of the strange terrain. The wind and rain over thousands of years had made a sort of city like structure of upright rocks. A couple of minutes in Rachel and I spotted a chinchilla like animal, but rather disapointingly after 5 minutes we had completed the tour.
However, we were not disappointed for long because at the exit we met a local man, dressed in the traditional attire who went about befriending us by playing a recorder like instrument and dressing Liam up in his clothes. Not only did he make us laugh but it turned out the local women thought the sight of Liam puffing into the recorder dressed like a scarecrow was quite funny too.
After, we headed to a Swiss restaurant and enjoyed a cheese fondue and roclette (or something) at 4000m up. To our surprise we had to cook the food ourselves on a small gas fire which sounds a lot easier that it is! After a painfully slow (although tasty) meal eating in stages we returned to La Paz at 6pm as the Irish girls were heading off. That evening Rachel, Liam and I had a quiet one playing cards before turning in early.
The reason for thee quiet night was that the next morning we were tackling the Yunga's road - or more commonly known as the death road, or world's most dangerous road. We had breakfast in a cafe, which was the meeting point before the 13 of us headed up the mountain for 45m in a minibus. En route we were introduced to Rylan, our guide and had to introduce ourselves to each other along with an embarassing story. As i was still struggling with the runs and it was only a matter of time before this became common knowledge i decided that my incident 2 days prior would be suitable and thus that i had twice the reason to be concerned about s***ting myself on the death road.
At the top we were geared up and giving a safety briefing before heading downhill. The whole route is 60km, with the first 30km tarmacced and the latter 30k on a gravel road. The road itself is now used predominantly for tourism and for cyclists. The new 'death road' was opened in 2006 and is now used by almost all the traffic. The road itself was built to allow transportation of the coca which grew in the valley so it could be sold further afield and was built by 10,000 Paraguyan prisoners of war during the 1930's. An average of a car a week used to plunge the 600m and thus a total of 200-300 lives a year were lost on the road.
The company we went with, Gravity, were very professional and every 10-15 minutes we were stopped and informed about the road ahead. The first 30km were very pleasant and quick as we enjoyed spectacular views of the Yunga valley. There was one hairy moment though when 2 oncoming lorries decided to overtake each other squeezing us cyclists to the very edge of the road (and thus clifftop).
After 30km we hit the death road proper, where the tarmac stopped and the gravel began. Here you had to cycle through streams, around rocks and pray nothing was coming the other way around the corner.
The road itself was now only wide enough for a single vehicle at an average of 3.2m across. We were also told that we had to cycle on the left - the left being cliff side!
The reasoning was that traffic comng uphill has priority and so any reversing would be done by the downhill bound vehicles nearest the edge so that the drivers had a clear view of where the cliff was. Well that was the logic anyway...
The scenery was awesome and the 600m cliffs were certainly impressive. At one corner we were shown where 5 rival politicians to the President at the time were simply pushed over the edge to ensure the Presidency remained in his hands. After around 5 hours of downhilling and 60km later we reached the bottom, alive, and were rewarded with a beer. After Liam and I had arranged to take the zip line over the valley as well. There were a series of 3 zip lines, one at 300m above the ground, and the longest measuring 300m in length too. We each had one go in the superman harness too, which literally means you are in the superman posotion, horizontal for the run. It was great fun and after we went to an animal sanctuary for a buffet lunch surrounded by caotis, macaws and parrots. When it was time to go we all got back in the bus and with the light fading, and with the rain now pouring we took the 3 hour journey BACK UP THE DEATH ROAD, which was probably more scary than the cycle ride, especially when you saw headlights coming in the other direction and we had to edge towards the cliff!
Anyway, we all survived and back in La Paz i also met Gracey and Becki who i had met previously in El Calafate. After a rather tiring day i turned in for the night.
Next morning i watched the rugby in the bar before getting the 2pm bus to Copacabana on the border of Lake Titicaca which was 4 hours away.
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