BMX Bandits

Driving into La Paz you could be forgiven for thinking you were decending into the biggest bowl of porridge Goldilocks has ever seen. Millions upon millions of people are crammed into an enormous dusty valley with the poorest spilling out onto the hills and surrounding badlands while the richest sip lattes in European cafes south of the Prado, pretty typical polarisation for Latin America.

First impression was far from "love at first sight" but having found ourselves "stuck" here for a week for a variety of reasons it has grown on us slowly and rates well above Caracas (as does every South American capital) and maybe even Santiago. Not really a city for sights of cultural significance, there have been enough colourful protests, street fairs (above) and decent coffee shops to keep us entertained. We had great plans to take it easy after blitzing around Peru but as always there were too many odd jobs to do, puppet negotiations to be made with Augustina (below) and latin beaurocracy to navigate for us to sit still for too long...

Desperate for a hot shower after our Copocabana and Isla del Sol escapades we haggled a 3 star hotel down to half price and settled into a cosy room (a real hotel!!). In the daylight of the following morning we noticed the infamous San Pedro Prison (where the inmates have to pay for everything inside, hence wealthy inmates live in 5 star apartments and the poorest share concrete cells below ground) was our next door neighbour and probable contributor to our "half price" bargain. This was fine with us given the plaza is crawling with police and therefore one of the safest areas to be.
A nice day´s escape from the busy city was Valle del Luna, a bizzare erroded landscape called "badlands", i.e. you can´t live here. The bolivian tourist board has been pretty creative in naming some of the erroded pillars of mud providing great spot the turtle / old man / lady´s hat opportunities. With a bit of imagination you can actually see what they´re getting at. See the old man below - funky! Just up the road was the underfunded La Paz city zoo. Not the happiest of zoos but a good way to see some of the promised jungle beasties that we wouldn´t have seen on an overpriced tour to Rurrenbaque. At first, we thought the carp fish were trying to hurl themselves in desperation out of the green scumy pond but then realised it was Spring and hoped they were just doing what fish do in Spring. Plenty of cute monkeys and all sorts of camelids to entertain us but our favourite critter was the long snouted Tapir who fancied a sniff of Stu. All the animals looked as hot as we felt, including this massive condor looking for a bit of shade (or just a bit of room to fly). The local school kids seem to be enjoying it though, lots of opportunities to pester the beasties.

The other main grockle highlight of the area and a must for any self-respecting adventurer is a bike trip down the world´s most dangourous road. This twisty, unpaved jungle route is the main trucking link to Brazil and claims many drivers on 19 hour sleep deprived benders, plus the odd mini-bus... To make matters worse it decends from 4600m at its highest point to 1100m down at Corioca, meaning that bizzarely they have to drive on the left not the right to give trucks coming up hill right of way, just to add confusion to the already perilous route.
We were warned when we signed up that it would be cold at the top. Nothing prepared us for how cold it actually was, oh and nobody mentioned the rain and dense fog either. The only paved section of the road became an excercise in enduring the freezing water soaking through our waterproofs.
Our guide´s strategy for instant warmth was a blessing to Pachamama (mother earth). After sprinkling the local firewater onto the ground we had to take a sip of the 97% proof rocket fuel. YUCK! The slippery ashphelt was a pretty scarey start to the ride but when we got to the muddy, gravelly "World´s Most Dangerous" road part we employed all of Stu´s rock climbing survival techniques including singing silly songs to engage our brains in something other than how sh*t scared we were.
Spaced along the worst sections of the route are human traffic lights, unpaid volunteers who have lost family members to the road and help to warn drivers of oncoming traffic around tight bends. This area is also one of the main coca growing regions in Bolivia and hence a big manufacturing area for cocaine. Police and military checkpoints for coca and the chemicals needed to produce cocaine are also spaced regularly along the road.

The coca museum in La Paz gives a good perspective of coca as an integral part of the traditions, religions and daily life of rural bolivians. It is estimated that 85% of the rural population chew coca leaves although under the Geneva convention coca leaves are still illegal in Bolivia. Strong arguments here against this ban compares the social aspects of coca leaf chewing to coffee consumption in the western world and that it is its insatiable desire for cocaine which in reality causes the problems. Funny that growing coca leaves for industrial purposes, i.e. medicines and companies like Coca-Cola (which still use them as a flavour enhancer), is only legal in western countries. Another irony in the history of Bolivian coca leaves is that they were originally declared satanic by the spanish church and therefore banned. Later on, the spanish realised that they improved the productivity of the indigenous slaves... accordingly they removed the ban and slapped on a tax instead.
Amazingly all 12 riders made it to the base of the World´s Most Dangerous Road in one piece without plunging hundreds of metres off the edge, getting squished by oncoming trucks, crashing into the sides of tunnels or being toppled by waterfalls overhead. We were however soaked and mud splattered. No Stu, the leaf won´t keep you dry!

After deciding against the 15 hour hellish bus ride to Potosi we checked out a local movie on the life of two brothers working in the silver mines. Potosi is the highest city in the world and at one point in its history, the richest. Over 8 million lives have been lost mining Cerro Rico, known as the Devil´s mine because the mountain "eats men alive". There are 2 kinds of miners, those who earn a salary from the government and co-operative miners who only make money when they find minerals and share the profits. The latter and by far the larger group in particular, still work in appallingly rustic conditions with most miners dying of silicosis at 35 or 40 years of age. The two brothers the documentary followed were 10 and 14 and without a father were responsible for supporting their mother and little sister.

Tension currently exists between government and co-operative miners over access to the richer veins of minerals. Recently, 19 miners were killed in a pitched battle with blasting explosives the main weapon after the government promised the co-operative workers access to government mines. A pretty depressing insight to the harshness of life in Bolivia. Inspiringly, the two young boys in the movie were still upbeat and were working even harder to be able to put themselves through school for the chance of a better job and life in the future.

Love,
Kaz and Stu xxx

Meal of the week: pizza delivered to our hotel room after we arrived back from our mountain biking adventure at 8pm, soaked and freezing! (us, not the pizza)

Buy of the week: blue sapo - our engagement pressie from the Aitkens!

Arse of the week: dodgy food - again...

Con of the week: Grab gringa by the cheeks while rummaging through her bag