La Paz, Bolivia

We finally arrive in La Paz, after our flight was essentially delayed by 28 hours. However, our last/additional night in Cuzco was a blast. We met up with the Irish group that was on our boat in the Galapagos Islands and some other great people. We didn't feel too great when we turned up at the airport again the following day but to our surprise we did get a flight at no additional cost. We thought that we'd be making the 20 hour bus journey that night, if we were going to be lucky enough to get one.

La Paz was similar to most of the other cities we had encountered since the start of our trip. Market stalls everywhere and poverty obvious. We seemed to encounter more English speaking tourists here, mostly from Europe but also Aussies and a few North Americans. Read my next post, when I make it, for my opinion of our next destination - Buenos Aires (we arrived yesterday). There was a marked difference to the place as it had very much a European feel. The people looked more European, clearly much less 'native'. There were more people with a grasp of English too. This was a disappointment, like we were almost back home.

We didn't do much in La Paz, we spent a lot of time in two 'British' pubs on Christmas day and Boxing day. One of the main attractions to the city is the "Death Road". It's known as the most dangerous road on the planet due to the amount of deaths that have occurred. A new, safer, road has recently opened, but there are lots of travel companies that operate mountain biking trips down the original road. It's still dangerous; we heard that the day before we did the biking a Norwegian guy went over the edge on his bike and was killed. We went in a group of around 25 people (we were by far the oldest!) and two of them had accidents and one was injured. Fortunately they crashed into the walls on the 'safer' side of the road, on the other side there is mostly a sheer drop.

Typical La Paz street, could be any number of the places we've visited.

Typical La Paz dish is trout. This woman was not happy when she realised I was taking her picture, a reaction we'd seen before.

We spent too much time in this pub!

My steak in its final seconds of preparation!

On a cable car across part of the city - lots of slums.

Lots of snow on the peaks around La Paz too.

Some shops sell lama foetuses, thought to bring good luck.

We prepare for Death Road! 

Me!

Typical bend in the road.

Myself and Craig.

The road below, from the road above! There's still vehicular traffic and some small villages en route. We were back up at 4600 metres.

The busses carry stretchers, and there was an ambulance stationed somewhere on standby!