I survived death road (with only a few scrapes and bruises)

An early morning start, a very unsatisfying breakfast (reheated toast, a one hour bus trip and we were freezing our arses off at the top of some very foggy hill. They´d provided us with pants (too short), gloves, an orange vest and a helmet. My red raincoat topped off the look. Our aim: to mountain bike 3345 metres over 64 km down hill. The first 25 odd km was on a wide, well-marked tarseal road and was quite good for gaining confidence with the bike. I had the brake on most of the way as I don´t like to go too fast. Then, we got on the bus for the 4km uphill before we reached the death road.

The death road got it´s name for obvious reasons. Lots of people have died on it. But it used to be the main highway and therefore had lots of traffic on it. They´ve put in a new road now and there are hardly any cars so it´s a lot safer - as long as you take a bit of care and stay away from the sheer drops. The first 10km are the worst so I took that really slowly and was a bit nervous.

The rest of the death road was a lot of fun and we had some really good views as we got lower down. The flora really changes (probably the fauna too but the most we saw were a couple of really huge brightly coloured butterflies). We got down to about 1000metres and my lungs couldn´t believe their luck. I hardly got out of breath on the slightly uphill bits! I´m gonna be able to run a marathon when I get back to sea level.

Having successfully navigated the death road, we took an alternate route down and this is where I took a wee tumble off the bike. Don´t worry though, my right butt cheek took most of the brunt of the fall and that´s well padded. The worst was that my sunglasses slid up under my helmet and I have too small cuts on my forehead (paired with the tan marks from my sunglasses, I´m looking quite the thing right now).

I got back on the bike and did the last 10 minutes (otherwise they wouldn´t have given me the t-shirt!). The chappie from the bike company then washed down my arm and put disinfectant on my cuts. He looked a little concerned when I mentioned that my bum was sore, but I reassured him that I wasn´t expecting him to wash it.

It was a three hour trip home on the ´good´ road (ha, ha). Once again, we had problems getting into La Paz. It was 1 May (labour day) and there were all sorts of celebrations going on. People dressed up in flamboyant costumes (some looked quite oriental) and blocked roads. We eventually made our way back to the hotel where I had a well deserved early night. Debbie had chickened out of the bike ride in favour of a more relaxing day (smart woman) but they´d encountered May day protests with people firing guns into the air so stayed close to the hotel most of the day.

Today has been quite a quiet day. A wander though some parts of the city looking as some museums and taking in the atmosphere. We´re on the night bus (groan) to Potosi tonight with our new tour guide Leon for the rest of the trip - a Brit from Argentina.