La Paz and Death Road

La Paz is a really interesting city built in basically a huge crater. As you come into the city you get expansive views down into the centre with an incredible background of the Cordillera Real mountain Range and Mt Illamani looming to one side.

About a 1&1/2hrs drive outside the city is the start of the Yungas Road, also known as Death Road! It should be fair to say that most of us have seen the Top Gear episode where Jeremy and co drive down "the worlds most dangerous road". 

It's true that the road has got some crazy drop offs and not loads of safety barriers. But it hasn't been the worlds most dangerous road for way over a decade. There's infact a new road that bypass's the Yungas road and has done since before the Top Gear crew arrived. So in actual fact there's very little traffic mountain bikes aside. Good fun day out though never the less.

The day after back in La Paz I did the free city walking tour (highly recommended) and learnt about the La Paz prison lifestyle (made famous in the excellent book "Marching Powder"), Cholita culture, live human sacrifices to Pachamama (that some claim are still happening today) and tricks used by missionairies in colonial times to convert indigenous people to christianity.

Really enjoyed our short spell in Bolivia, wish we had more time to spend there as there were still lots of other things we wanted to do. Hope to go back one day.