La Paz – highest capital in the world

Well, as is often the case, a few hands of cribbage with me supping on whiskey and Deryn on Bolivian wine, turned into a bit of a bender.  Once the mini-bar acquired booze was finished we headed into town to a local Thai resultant for a feed before finishing the night in the Red Lion pub to watch a local band.  Deryn kept forcing Irish coffees down me believing it would stop me keeling over. 

I was in better shape than Deryn next morning for our flight to La Paz.  Once again the flight was incredibly easy and it wasn’t long before we were in the Hostal La Posada De La Abuela in the artisan area of La Paz, just around the corner from the witches market.  A great location. We explored the area before getting an early night to recover from the previous night’s excesses.  

We arranged a taxi to take us to Tiwanaku the next morning – while more expensive than a bus (about $80), it meant we had the freedom to come and go at our own pace. The drive to the ruins took about 3 hours – with nearly half of that just getting out of La Paz’s and El Alto.  We made the decision that we would catch the Mi Teleferico (cable car) back to our hostel to avoid the worst of the traffic. 

The Tiwanaku dominated a large area of the southern Andes around 500 to 900AD.  The ruins included temples, a pyramid and some amazing sculptures. The huge stones used in the construction (weighing up to 25 tones) were transported from quarries over 90km away.  Insane.  Also the quality of the carving (straight lines of the H’s) shows a incredibly sophisticated society.  The belief is that a severe drought eventually led to the demise of the empire.  While impressive, it didn’t quite match up the quality of the many Inca ruins we had seen.

We got dropped off at the first station of the Mi Teleferico on our way home.  We had to change lines twice – each time getting off and buying another 3B ticket (60c) – before we arrived back at our local station. It was incredible. Firstly we got to go above the El Alto market – South America’s largest outdoor market.  The scale of the market was unbelievable – it stretched as far as the eye could see off every street. We then got to drop down onto La Paz with amazing views of this unique city.

The next morning it was an early start to get down to the Higher Ground Cafe where we were being picked up by Gravity for our Death Road (Yungus Road)  mountain bike ride. The trip didn’t start well when our guide Nate said he had expected us the previous day.  It wasn’t a major hassle though as they just needed the shop to load more bikes and gear which delayed our start by 30 minutes. 

Death Road was cut into the side of the Cordillera Oriental mountain range by Paraguayan prisoners in the 1930’s during the Chaco War.  The road was the only connection between La Paz and the Yungas region.  Between 200 and 300 people were killed every year and as late as 1994 a car was going off the edge on average every 2 weeks.  The worse accident was in 1983 when an overcrowded bus went off the edge killing over 100. A new road was finished in 2006 so now the old road is mostly used by mountain bikers (25,000 a year), although 30 bikers have died since 98.  Including a Kiwi who was riding with Nate only 3 months ago.

We started the ride at 4730m.  The first 22km was on the new sealed road (so we basically just bombed it). We then voted to get back on the bus for the 10km uphill bit before starting the Death Road proper.  It’s 33km to the town of Coroico (1200m) at the end of the road.  It was a shame that the top half of the ride was shrouded in cloud because we did not get to appreciate the views – or the sheer drops!!  While not technically difficult (half our group had not mountain biked before), you still had to be careful because of the sheer drops off the side of the road (some more than 400m) and that the road narrowed to about 3.5m wide at times – how big trucks and buses drove along this road is beyond me.  Rails were put on some dangerous corners a few years ago by the parents of a child that was killed on the road.  Nate, and Gravity, did a great job in managing the group although, as I pointed out to Deryn, we could have done the whole thing easily in a third of the 6 hours it took our group with the many stops and rests on the way.  The quickest is apparently 47 minutes which you would need to be mad to attempt to beat.  Nate was also asked by a group of Americans to guide them on riding up the road.  He declined.  

The ride finishes at the La Senda Verde Wildlife Sanctuary. It’s a sanctuary set up by a couple of locals to care for animals rescued from trafficking.  It has lots of the impressive Bolivian parrots, spider, howler and squirrel monkeys, capybaras and even a tapir (which Deryn was lucky enough to see!).  When booking the ride we had also booked the Tree Hut at the sanctuary, deciding it would be nice to stay the night rather than get the Gravity bus back the same day.  What a great idea!

We did a walk around (the noise from the parrots was amazing) before having dinner and heading to bed in our tree house. It was magic sleeping in the ‘wild’ and waking up to the noise of the birds and howler monkeys. Sitting out on out little deck and watching the Spider monkeys was also cool, including a few that got very close and personal.  We then did a tour with Sally, a Brit who was volunteering there.  The size of the place was impressive although it appeared that they were doing it a bit tough – Sally confirmed this saying that they are just not getting tourists staying like they used to.  Our guess was that the state of the accommodation would put a few people off.  We hired a taxi to take us back to La Paz.  The new road itself was impressive and thankfully the weather was good so we got to see a lot of the scenery that we missed on the way down. 

We spent the afternoon walking around again before getting enthused and heading into a bar for some Pisco Sours. We then caught the Mi Teleferico again to see how it looked at night – still impressive – before finishing the night off in the local English Pub playing cribbage again. On that front Deryn now leads 38 to 35 games. 

We had a 545am taxi to get us to the airport for our 7.56am flight to Quito, Ecuador via Lima.  Deryn left her glasses and headphones in the hotel room (that’s 2 lost headphones with mine left in Rurrenabaque).  The perils of early morning departures.  We had arranged a taxi to meet us at the airport for the 3 hour drive to Banos de Aqua Santa, the hillside town near the Tungurahua volcano.  The name of the town reflects the healing powers of its many hot springs.  We finally arrived at the La Casa Verde Eco Guest House around 3.30pm.  It had lovely views of the surrounding hills and fast flowing Rio Pastaza.  

And again we finish with a dog.  Or a Banos dog lookout to be more accurate