After my experience in the salt flats, I decided I needed a few days in a big city to chill out for the first time this vacation before Melissa got here. I took an overnight bus from Uyuni and checked myself in to a private room with my OWN bathroom and TV in the room. Its crazy to imagine that just 2 months ago I had my own apartment in Manhattan and now I'm beyond excited to sleep in something that's not a bunkbed. I hadn't slept for days and was beyond exhausted when I got there, but I found SIX friends I've met along the way at breakfast! I explored the first day, revelled in the fact that everything in Bolivia costs under $10, and watched 100 episodes of 2 1/2 Men on my own private tv. On Sunday, I was reunited with my travel friends Cassie an Kenzie, and a few hours later Melissa arrived!
We all signed up to do the death road bike ride on Tuesday. Death Road is a 64 km downhill bikeride to Corioco on a narrow, steep dirt road with drop-offs that if you go over the edge, well... That's it for you. The road got it's name because there used to be more deaths on this road a year than any other in the world. The road used to have cars on it too, which meant more deaths, but now it's only open for the bike riders. We went with one of the reputable companies which are known for having good guides and equipment. If you have bad brakes, or no knee pads - there were a lot of things to decide before signing our lives away on the contract. The ride was the hardest and most incredible bike ride I've ever been on. The scenery was amazing. You start out at 4,700 meters above sea level, so the winding narrow road is above the clouds and in a layer of mist which made me feel like I was riding in Jurassic Park. We had a training ride on gravel for the first 30 minutes or so, and then went on to the main road. There were rocks everywhere that I knew if I landed on the wrong way I was going over. Me, Melissa and Kenzie decided to ride our breaks the whole way down because I was convinced if I had the tiniest bit of speed I was losing control of that bike.
We were the slowest ones, but had a personal escort, Oscar, who got us down after about 4 hours to safety. Web we got to the bottom we found out a girl that went with one of the junky companies had a bike whose breaks failed, and she fell over the edge and died. It was the first death on the road in about 2 years. Our friend Diana, who rode with a different group, also fell and cut open her chin and knocked out 2 of her front teeth and had to cut her trip short and flu back to Brazil to recover. At the end of the day, I'm so glad I did it because it was amazing, but I'm even more relieved that nothing bad happened to me or my friends I was there with (minus Diana of course).
In all in was in La Paz for almost 6 days, which is the longest amount of time I've spent in any city so far. It was a busy, crowded, dirty city with a lot of bright colors and poor people, which sounds terrible but I did really like it there. Not enough to want to go back, but I enjoyed my time there. Some of the things I found were interesting (plantains and fried chicken on every corner at night - replaces my drunken empanadas after a night out) and a market that was bigger than some towns in upstate New York that sold everything from sewing machines to cotton by the kilo to used clothing. And I finally did some shopping, and am now the proud owner of a Che Guavara t shirt and $0.40 bootleg DVDs!
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