La Paz...

We'd heard many disturbing stories about bus journey's in Bolivia. Ranging from luggage being stolen mid-transit and drivers falling asleep on overnight journeys, to armed thieves boarding en-route and systematically robbing the passengers at gunpoint. None of these tales filled us with confidence for our forthcoming journey from Uyuni to La Paz, but we had to get there somehow, and the train which ran from Uyuni to Oruro was still a few days wait away. After being dropped at the tour office from our Salt Flats trip, we went with our bags directly to the bus 'station', namely a street where the bus may stop if you're extremely fortunate. Enquiries produced little, and we were being flatly refused tickets by a number of agencies. Handily, we got chatting to a group of four other backpackers who had also just finished their Uyuni jeep tour, and were having some success in getting a ticket. They kindly bartered for us too, and some 30 minutes later we were sitting at the back of an extremely crowded and somewhat odious bus.

With nothing more than good old British luck, we found ourselves sitting directly behind an inebriated group of Salt Flat workers, one of whom took a particular fancy to Sarah and her 'lovely blond hair'. He sat admiring her amourously whilst attempting some of his best English chat-ups, which included asking where we were from some fifteen or twenty times. Realising his luck just wasn't in, he soon thankfully turned his attention to another of the girls in the group. Next, a rather large Bolivian lady arrived, carrying her large rucksack-style blanket wrap on her back, and an extemely young child in her arms. With four of the back seats taken, she plonked herself handily into the middle one, at which point the baby began to scream manically. This was to last approximately seven hours, and it wasn't long before the baby's one and only shitty nappy was thrown on the floor in front of us. The Salt Workers played their sole CD of Bolivian pop music over and over again for the whole journey, and the bus spent the first four hours of the journey bouncing us heavily over dirt roads before finally hitting some tarmac. Where are those armed gunmen when you need them?

La Paz lies at the bottom of a steep canyon, and we had hoped to catch some spectacular views of the highest capital city in the world, but by arriving at nearly 1am, we had lost our chance for now. Finally catching some good fortune however, we managed to check into the first hostel we turned up at. Now that we were back in mild civilisation, the following day was to consist of organising some arduous necessities such as laundry, and in the evening we found ourselves taking a nap at 7pm, and not waking for some 14 hours. Lazy yes, but quite necessary.

We decided for our third night to move to a different hostel, and had been recommended one near the bus station which suited us fine. A much more modern place, the Adventure Brew Hostel neatly incorporated its own brewery, which meant that much to my disgust, we would receive a free beer every evening. Still finding ourselves a little rough from the 3,500m altitude, we took it easy again in the hope we would acclimatise fully for the mountain bike trip booked for the following day.

Rising early, we met the Gravity guides at a small cafe in the main strip, and boarded their bus which would take us to our starting point at 4,200m in the nearby mountains. Sarah's lack of riding experience in the last 20 years, and the unsurprising knack of going over the handlebars on her last Oz trip, aided her wise decision to just come along for the ride in the jeep. Kitting the twelve riders out with all of the relevant gear, we started our descent at around 8:30am, riding mostly without the need to peddle for the first hour down the paved mountain highway. Then we were told to prepare for a small uphill section, which managed to almost kill me. With two hours gone, the professional biker guides announced that we were now sitting at the very top of the main event: a single width dirt road, which hugs the edge of the mountains and is wisely named The World's Most Dangerous Road!

So called because it claims some twenty-odd vehicles and the lives of anywhere between two and three hundred people per year over it's vertical edges, this fifty-mile commercial passageway between Bolivia and the Yungas is the main route used by cargo lorries and a number of local bus services. The bird's eye view is on the left, where the earth itself seems to open up and you get amazing views of the Coroico River rushing to join the Amazon some half a mile below. Gravity is now the only company which can still claim to have not had anyone killed on one of it's daily mountain bike tours. Reason enough to pay that little extra for the peace of mind, even though they tell you that you must ride on the left next to the gaping ravine. There's no accounting for being able to handle a bike however, and with the track at barely three metres wide there is little margin for error, and it soon became clear why many people might have a small fatal accident.

I tried to stick with the front guide as much as possible as this was the only way to see how best to take some of the hairpin corners and narrow bends at speed. During our ride, crosses at the roadside marked the locations of fatal accidents whilst the guides regaled us with stories of previous victims and showed us a number of wreckages, one being that of a bus which had slipped over the edge just one month ago, taking forty-eight unfortunates with it. Luckily, this was the dry season, but during the wet season the rains will come cascading down the walls of the chasm and huge waterfalls will drench the road turning its surface to slime. There are pleasant stories of truckers too tired or scared to continue, who pull over for the night hoping to see out an Andean storm. Parking too close to the edge however, the road is washed away around them and they are swept to their deaths while sleeping.

This part of the ride took almost three hours, and by the end with concentration levels waining we were ready for the all-inclusive buffet and a dip in the pool. Following the presentation of our 'survival' t-shirt and some quality time with a few monkeys, we all clambered into the back of the mini-bus for our ascent back up the very road we had just defeated.

If anything, this was worse than the actual mountain biking, and we were all pretty nervous as the small coach inched it's way up the winding track, our lives dependent on the driving skills of one local man who had been up since 5am. On occassions it was possible to actually look out of the window and see nothing but the sheer drop below. We also picked up one of the human traffic lights which are positioned along the route, who began to tell us that he was employed to signal manage this point of the road due to a young french girl going over the cliff-edge on her bike about a year ago.

At around 2,800m, the late evening cloud drifting around the van didn't do a great deal towards settling our nerves. Thankfully, we arrived safely back in La Paz at around 8pm after what had been a long and thrilling day. I was aching all over, but can honestly say that this was one of the best experiences of my life. Perhaps something I would have to consider in greater depth now that I am more aware of the consequences of one small slip in the wrong direction. For many of the tour companies at least, it seems that ignorance is bliss.

With just one full day left in La Paz before we headed north, we felt it was only right that we take in some sights, despite my unwilling limbs. First we walked down into the Plaza San Francisco, where a demo was taking place in the grounds in front of the giant cathedral. This is apparently a regular occurance in Bolivia, as the disgruntled natives passionately appeal for better working conditions or to stop the illegalisation of Coca, something the government are now trying to impose. Although not violent, this wasn't somewhere we wanted to hang around due to the masses of people congregating in the area. Menacing looking lads in balaclava's mill about aimlessly in the intense sun, but these are just shoe-shine boys, hiding their appearance so as not to bring shame on their families.

We quickly headed in the direction of the Witchcraft market, where we were expecting to find all kinds of weird and wonderful things, but were a bit disappointed to see just the normal tourist style knitwear and trinket stalls. In the middle however, we stumbled across the Coca museum and decided to go in and take a look. Despite doubts that it might be a little dull, it was actually really interesting, with insights into why the Latin American's believe this plant to be such an important part of their lives.

There is evidence to support coca leaves being used for a variety of purposes since as far back as 2500 BC, and it is now such a big part of Andean life and ancestory that the people will probably fight until the end of time to keep the tradition. According to the locals, chewing the leaves gives them some kind of extra energy, to the extent that miners would not even consider entering the workplace without their ration. Although it is said that the people chew, in actual fact they are just sucking on the dry leaves, and only using their teeth enough to release the juices contained within. A few minutes later, there is an intense anesthetic effect in the cheeks, throat and tongue. The ingestion of the juice supposedly acts as pain relief and it has been commonplace for centuries to take coca infusion to alleviate pain for a wide range of ailments including headaches, toothaches, intestinal cramps and so on. Of course, the leaves are most famous for their use in the battle against altitude, where the stimulating effect on respiration is the perfect complement to offset the chronic lack of oxygen at 4000 metres plus.

It was Vassili von Anrep who first perceived in 1880 the anesthetic properties of cocaine derived from Coca leaves. Later Karl Koller, an associate and friend of Sigmund Freud (who was later to introduce Cocaine as a recreational drug), had the opportunity of using the drug for anesthetic purposes - an ideal and long awaited medicinal breakthough. Many big pharmaceutical companies endevoured in its manufacturing and numerous 2% cocaine solutions were soon being introduced and used as medications against the likes of birth pains, ointments for hemorrhoids, solutions to relieve dental pain in infants, drops for earaches and during abdominal surgeries and the suchlike.

In 1887, Dr. Sttyth Pemberton from Atlanta gave birth to the world of Coca Cola. He manufactured the now famous non-alcoholic beverage from the leaves of the Andean Coca plant and it wasn't until 1902 that the Cocaine itself was removed from the product. Coca leaves are still however used in the flavouring, and to this day, the U.S. remain the biggest importers of leaves from South America. Sorry if you don't think any of that was interesting, but we did...

We continued our self-organised city tour by going to the Sopocachi neighbourhood, and visiting the central park and the Plaza Murillo, before heading back for our final night in the hostel and a few beers and a barbeque with some chirpy Aussies. Overall, La Paz held a mix of adrenaline, fascination and unfortunately, normal city activity but will always be remembered as the place where I could have accidentally killed myself in the pursuit of a little excitement...

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