Yep. The trip here was a shocker. Got a massively raw deal on that one! To top it off, after a few hours sleep, Boos Boos wakes with the start of what would be 3 days of lovely lovely gastro… enough said – great fun for her, spending the first few days of our La Paz stay in bed in close proximity to the toilet.
Feeling refreshed from a day sleeping – Doodles and Vasiles decided to head upstairs to the rooftop bar for the free beer that came with a night in the hostel (we had managed to choose – in our very tired state in the morn and unbeknownst to us at the time – a hostel which had a microbrew setup in the basement – so the beer was kegged in the basement and lugged up the 7 stories of stairs to the bar. Funnily enough – the guys behind the bar were not in the mood to drag a keg up 7 flights of stairs, and also were well experienced in the ways of poor backpackers. Thus – 5 minutes after our first beer – we found ourselves being led down into the bowels of the hostel to check out the brewery and lug a new keg up the stairs – sounds easy… The Dialogue after that point went as follows:
V: This will be easy man – kegs aren’t that heavy and look – there is only 7 floors to go.
Picks up one end of the metal keg filled to the brim. Struggles. Stops and looks at Doodles.
V. Um.. ok this might be a little harder than we thought.
D: Yeah man – why again are we doing this?
V: Free pint sir!
D: Not worth it! Tell her 2 jugs.
V to Peruvian bar girl who has given us the tour. He had previously confessed his love for her to me:
This is pretty heavy – and there are a fair few stairs there – can we get 2 jugs?
BG: Lo siento, pero no es possible. Dos vasos! (sorry but its not possible – 2 glasses.)
V to me: Bugger. We still have to do it! Lets go come on.
Points to the other end and takes his end. I grab the end of the freezing cold keg. Wish I had gloves – shit.
So basically – this went on for 7 floors – lugging this freezing stupid keg – all for a beer each. Apparently we were supposed to be racing against the clock or something, but unfortunately for us, we sucked at this keg carrying business and probably set the world slowest “Carry a keg up 7 flights of stairs” record. Alas, we were greeted with a round of cheers from the bar when we finally got to the top – and welcomed with two pints of cold beer (much to the dismay of my pommy friend – warm beer lover – you fools are crazy!).
So – 2 free pints down, and being a Saturday night, we figured it was probably the best option to make an evening of it. I don’t think we actually made it into a club until about 1am, which is around about the time things start getting going – most things are empty until about midnight – if you go earlier you will be standing around wondering where anyone is. Needless to say it was quite a night – no need to go into any incriminating details here, but it finished up with a group of us singing along to a freak of a Swedish guy who was simply the worlds best human jukebox. You could name a song, and either he knew how to play it and sing the words perfectly, or he would strum a few cords before getting it right. He easily earned this “Worlds best Human Jukebox” title by playing – when randomly requested by a hammered Norwegian dude – a soundtrack from the ending credits of Aladdin the movie. Really cool way to finish an amazing night, watching the sun come up as Sven (forgotten his name) strummed out our favourite tunes on a dodgy old guitar. A side note here for the lake crew: he did slightly disappoint by not knowing ‘Nobody Likes a Bogan”, but redeemed by smashing out ‘Copperhead Road” and “Khe San’ flawlessly!
The next few days passed with Boos Boos loving her gastro and the closely located bathroom, and Doodles and Vasiles checking out the crazy capital of Bolivia. As we’ve mentioned before, they don’t follow road rules here, so the streets are a hectic mix of buses, taxis and collectives (mini vans which charge a set amount for a set route) all beeping, yelling and jockeying for position all over the place. Somehow though, they get through the intersections and don’t seem to crash often, which is amazing in itself.
Ever since reading the incredible story of Tomas in “Marching Powder”, the infamous San Pedro prison in La Paz was a must, so on Monday afternoon we took a stroll downtown to check it out (Boos Boos having felt a bit better and dying for some fresh air). We had read that the prison was shutdown, but the bevy of guards with shotguns at the entrance and the glimpses of prisoners inside told a different story. Apparently 2/3 of Bolivian cocaine is processed in this prison, and unfortunately for us, we found out that on Sundays if you hang around the front of the prison, you still get certain inmates who come out and run tours through the prison. We were really disappointed to miss that, so if you get to La Paz – make sure you check it out.
The other main reason for our coming to La Paz was to ride down the “Death Road” or Worlds Most Dangerous Road, which runs from La Cumbre (at 4800m), in the mountains above La Paz, down to Coroico (1100m) a small town which is in the jungle at the bottom of the mountain ranges.
The road is actually now safer than it used to be, because of a newer road having been built on a different route down the mountains which means the traffic on the old road is significantly less than before. Before they built the new road, on average 300 people died in bus or car accidents because at most points the road is only wide enough for one car and has no guard rails to stop them from falling off a 600m sheer cliff. Despite this only 18 people have died on push bikes in the last 12 years that the ride has been running, the most recent being an Israeli girl 22 days before we did the ride, apparently she was cleaning her goggles, hit a rock and went off the edge. There are a bunch of companies that do the ride; several have dodgy reputations for crap bikes and half assed safety procedures. We figured that we wanted to live through it so we spent a little extra money and went with Gravity Assisted Mountain biking, these guys were awesome, great bikes and our guide was really experienced and super pedantic about safety. The ride starts with an offering to Pachamama (mother earth) of 96% alcohol – a swig for us, a swig on the front tire and a swig on the ground for her.
The first 25km or so are on tarmac but it is all flat out downhill with incredible snow capped mountains and valleys around you.
After passing through a quick drug check point (they didn’t even check us so we got the heroin through easily) there was a sneaky 8km uphill that they neglected to tell us about. Luckily there was an option of riding it or getting in the bus. Of course all the macho boys wanted to do it and the girls got on the bus. So the race was on, last person to the top was to buy all the beer at the end. Funnily enough it started to piss down rain in the first kilometer, so add this to a dual suspension mountain bike, 8km of uphill and 4000m needless to say Boos Boos was glad to be sitting in the bus.
As usual the Aussies beat the Poms by a mile – earning some sweet beer in the process and gaining back some revenge from the devastating ping pong loss in Chile. From there it was straight onto the old road where it was conveniently pissing down rain and misty making our first 15km interesting to say the least. Boos Boos trailing behind had visions of becoming the next statistic. It was pretty cool because we were dropping so quickly the vegetation was changing every few minutes. Overall the ride was about 75km and took us 5 hours of sweet sweet downhill.
Fortunately for us we arrived unscathed at the final stop – La Sende Verde Animal Reserve. This place was setup to care for many of the animals that were rescued from the black market in La Paz where they are frequently sold for pets internationally and mistreated. Here it is the opposite of a traditional zoo, the animals live outside and humans are caged in huts. There were lots of crazy spider monkeys that run and jump up on you. So we spent the afternoon playing with the monkeys, unfortunately we didn’t bring money or sleeping gear as we definitely would have stayed for a few days.
Just before dark we piled back on the bus for what was promised to be the scariest journey of the day, going back up the old road in the minibus. But not before stopping to stock up on a delightful beverage know as Cuba Libre (Rum and coke) because our guide told us that the best way to do this trip was drunk, and since he had the next day off he was leading the charge, along with our Bolivian guide, Jose. Needless to say 3 hours later we arrive back in La Paz, Doodles was well boozed and proceeded to pass out rapidly on our last night in La Paz.
We had to get a riggle on as we only had 6 weeks to get to Colombia, so we jumped on a bus to Copa…Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca.
See you soon!
Peace and Love
Doodles and Boos Boos
