Waking late from our festivities in Copacabana, we had a leisurely breakfast and boarded a bus to La Paz in the afternoon.  It was the first time in a while I was able to stay awake and enjoy the scenery from a bus.  La Paz is a huge, sprawling metropolis nestled in amongst awesome mountains.  The huge, snowcapped Huyana Potosi mountain looms large over the city.  We tried and failed to book into a number of popular hostels.  Evidently, they were all too popular, and the large crowd that had overtaken Cuzco between Christmas and New Years seems to have all landed in La Paz at the same time.  So, our group eventually ended up at a small, unknown, but decent and cheap hotel. Around the corner from our hotel was a nice steakhouse, where I ended up overeating some delicious ribs.  By that point I was too exhausted to do anything else, so I went to bed and got a full night’s sleep for the first time in a long time.

The next day, we toured around the witchcraft markets, with some amazing, disturbing and downright disgusting sights, sounds and smells.  I never really need to see another llama fetus.  We wandered around more, stopping now and again to enquire about the various tourism options around La Paz.  Finally, we settled on booking a mountain bike tour of The World’s Most Dangerous Road. Eventually, we ended up back around the popular hostels where some of our more forward-thinking friends had reserved rooms. 

We picked up a bunch of our friends (we were now a group of 16 people) and tried to get some dinner and see Sherlock Holmes, a movie we all miraculously could agree on (and one which I’ve been eagerly anticipating for a while – we tried to see it in Arequipa, Peru a few days earlier but it was sold out).  When we finally were able to actually wrangle the whole group together and walk down to the theater, we were disappointed to find out that Sherlock Holmes doesn’t actually open in Bolivia until this Thursday.  So, instead we opted to do the only other thing all 16 could agree on, and go out drinking.

After a long, rough night, we met our bike tour group early in the morning.  We drove for a bit out of La Paz, had a small breakfast along the roadside, geared up in helmets, vests, knee and elbow pads, got on our bikes (far superior to the bikes I had in Baños and on the Inca Jungle Trail – a good thing since this is a road where people often, you know, DIE) and headed off.

The first bit of the road is nice and evenly paved, with a decent shoulder and gentle slope off the side.  Eventually, though, the asphalt gave way to gravelly, rough terrain, the shoulder evaporated entirely (in fact, at times, the ‘road’ is barely wide enough for a single car) and that gentle slope evened off into an incredibly high, sheer rock face. When I wasn’t completely overtaken with fear, I was able to relax and enjoy the amazing scenery.  The adrenaline rush and the incredible jungle surroundings made this trip one of the more exciting things I’ve done on my travels.

We got back to La Paz late (our bus broke down – the only downside to our tour company, Downhill Xtreme, which was by far the most affordable option we found) but still managed to shower, change and get out with a few good hours of partying. 

Today, we’re all trying to sort our where our respective journeys take us.  It seems inevitable that this gigantic group will have to split up.  As for myself, I will stick around La Paz for a day more, then head off to Potosi, which I am vaguely familiar with from reading The Open Veins of Latin America.  Potosi was the source of silver for Europe for years, and became one of the many towns to be bled dry and left to wither.  Now, it’s a tourist destination where you can visit the still-active mine, do some caving, and from what I’ve heard, blow up dynamite (which makes my inner child smile devilishly).