La Paz is a bustling, colourful city with houses that cling to the steep sides of the valley that cradles the city and a mass of people that jostle between the trading stalls, which trade every manner of merchandise displayed in a colourful structures that occupy the pavements and even spill out onto the road in the evenings, forcing the pedestrians to make their way through the traffic, the stalls, the people and colours. The colours are amazing. Cerease, blues, purples, lime greens , gold the lot!
The woman appear to do the trading. These are not small woman. These are large, not tall, woman with big hips and long platted hair, with a bowler hat that is perched on the top of her head and somehow is held in place by some hidden force. They appear to be able to sit for hours in one spot trading, or waiting for a purchaser to choose her stall as opposed to any of the other adjoining stalls selling the exact same merchandise.
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| Bus Graphics |
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| Reclining seats; Aircon; Drinks; TV; Music! |
La Paz is not flat. Whichever direction you walk you are either going vertically up or vertically down. You pass men and woman bent double, carrying massive bundles on their backs as they walk without interruption up and down the steep narrow roads. Because of some completion tax, the buildings are left unfinished, the mass of overhead electrical wires almost create shade from the intense sun. It is a hard life. Everybody is trying to eek a living however possible, fixing or polishing shoes, trading goods, sewing garments, knitting, crocheting.
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| La Paz is not flat |
For the visitor, living in Bolivia is cheap. Our en-suite double room at the Savoy Hotel including breakfast cost the equivalent of R100/head. We have had three course meals at the local food at the local restaurants for R8 a head. I had new soles put on my shoes for R35. Bought a spare set of specs with Titanium frame for R280. Petrol R4/Litre.
Downtown La Paz is much like any modern city, housing the larger businesses and banks in their high-rise buildings with reflective glass facades.
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| Down Town |
The traffic is chaotic everywhere with traffic officers blowing their whistles in vein. At the main pedestrian intersection people dressed up in full Zebra outfits control the throngs of people! I first thought that the Zebras were an advertising gimmick but no, they are part of the pedestrian control system.
On arriving in La Paz we made our way through the traffic to San Pedro Plaza as there were two possible Hostels which could accommodate us and the bike. No sooner had we stopped when Mathias and Tanja and their fully laden Africa Twin pulled up behind us with the same intention.
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| Ewa Mathias & Tanja As both Hostels were full we introduced ourselves to Mathias and Tanja, a really delightful young German couple and told them of another possibility that we had heard of. They followed me as we backtracked through the mass of traffic. As luck would have it I took a shortcut down a narrow road only to find the Savoy Hotel! It was not the hotel we were looking for but I stopped and asked Ewa to pop in and see if they had accommodation and room for two bikes! I won’t repeat what came through my intercom but I suggested to Ewa that the Savoy in London was unlikely to have a reciprocal arrangement with the Savoy Hotel in La Paz. |
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| Note the sign above my head! |
She came out smiling. So it was that we became friends with Mathias and Tanja!
M & T moved out in the morning to look up a contact they had and we arranged to meet for dinner. It is strange how life unfolds. Their contact was Cristiaan and his delightful wife Luisa. Cristiaan amongst other thing is chairman of the Cycle Association of La Paz and I doubt if there is a touring cyclist who has passed through Chuquiago Bike Café and felt the warm welcome of Christaan and Luisa. We met Mathias and Tanja at the Café and Luisa invited us all to stay for a lasagne supper. It was a wonderful evening. Half way through the meal Cristiaan said: “Maybe I can give you a challenge and an invitation? We own a property in Lilata which is not more than 170km but more than 150km from La Paz. If you like you can drive and camp there?”
We accepted the offer with open arms. We never made Lilata!
So begun an adventure, which I would have to say must be one of the highlights of our trip so far.
Mathias and Tanja’s average age is half that of ours, but I can truly say that I would chose them as travelling companions anytime. Their enthusiasim, humour, conversation and interests made them a delight to be around and without them and Mathias’s Germanic ways and Tanja’s navigation skills we would never have considered travelling to “Cristiaan’s Mother House” as our destination impossible came to be known.
When we started on this trip Ewa insisted on “No Dirt Roads!” We have just travelled 300km on, down and through some of the most spectacular scenery you can imagine, on some of the most challenging dirt roads and we didn’t fall off!
WMDR is an abbreviation for “the World’s Most Dangerous Road” and it is one of the highlights of any cycle tour and a major source of revenue for the tourist industry in La Paz. We did it on motorbikes!
55 kms out of La Paz you climb from 3500m to 4700m. You are in the clouds.
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| In the clouds |
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| A way to go! |
It is cold and you are travelling on a good tarred road. The surrounding vegetation is the sparse Alti Plano vegetation that we had become accustomed to. Passing through one police barrier and a drug inspection post the tarred road ends. A few kilometres further Cristiaan passes an unpretentious, unmarked road. He does a U turn and heads down unmarked road with two OAP’s following closely on his heals, completely oblivious to the fact that this was the beginning of the WMDR.
For the next 64 odd kilometres we drop 3600 meters, out of the clouds, through waterfalls and rivers, switchbacks and vertical valleys into Equatiorial Rainforest. This is Death Road. This is some of the most stunning scenery you can imagine. The precipitous drops, the solid green walls of indigenous forests broken by fields of Cocoa fields that cling to the mountainside at unimaginable angles and finally drop to Yungas river thousands of meters below. We wouldn’t have missed this for anything in the world.
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| A group about to decend |
The sight of Coroico purched on a distant hill drew Death Road to a close.
We would never had contemplated going down this road had it not been for the careing of M & T who waited for us on every precipitous bend. It is the sort of journey that bonds friendships for life.
This was the beginning of a four day adventure which started out as a small trip to “Cristiaan’s Mothers House!”
On reaching Coroico, Mathias found a really beautiful German owned restaurant. Pepper steak done to perfection and views over the valley saw us close to evening.
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| Well deserved German cuisine! |
It was Easter weekend and there was absolutely no accommodation in Coroico added to which was a music festival in a nearby field. We headed in the direction of “Cristian’s mothers house”! As light faded Mathias headed off down a dodgy roads and returned with a beaming grin. He said he had found the best camping site in the world, in a field virtually on top of the world overlooking the cocoa fields and a distant Corioco. It really was a beautiful place to camp, in spite of the thump, thump of the distant music festival whose music strade up from the valley below.
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| Camp in the clouds |
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| Cocoa Plant |
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| Pack Horse |
“Cristian’s mother’s house” proved to be more of a challenge than we thought. After a leisurely start, we twisted and turned through spectacular scenery for a good number of hours. The World’s Most Dangerous road proved to be a comparative highway compared to what we were now travelling on for the simple reason that the traffic was flowing in both directions. The quality of the road was no better, the precipitous drops on either side of the road were no less dramatic, but we had not encountered the mad bus and taxi drivers the previous day, one of which nudged T & M into a nearside ditch without a moment’s thought. Luckily no damage was sustained to body or bike.
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| Watch out for Taxi's |
A much needed stop in the afternoon at Puente Villa, a gathering of small houses on a beautiful river close to return path to La Paz made us decide that if we pursued our mission to “Cristian’s mothers house” we would need more days than we had spare! We set up camp, enjoyed a swim in the river, a clothes wash and a great supper before crashing to sleep in minutes. The concentration needed on these roads certainly made you sleeps well in the evenings.
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| Puente Villa Camp |
It was 150km back to La Paz. After 75kms we came across El Casteel del Loro. What an amazing place. Built by the Spanish in 1820 on a projector looking down on a trout filled river and overlooked by three waterfalls. The fact that it was lunch time had an inviting swimming pool and a room rate of R100 per person per night decided it for us. We would have lunch, walk one of their trails and stay the night. Good decision. The lunch was excellent, the trail through the virgin forest to a spectacular waterfall where we had a refreshing swim. Another good night’s rest and a really healthy breakfast saw us recharged for the last leg back to La Paz.
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| El Casteel del Loro |
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| Shall I swim under the waterfall? |
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| Dramatic mountains |
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| Waterfalls everywhere |
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| Our Rooms at El Casteel del Loro |
What we had not expected was a road closure because of a landslide. Apparently the toing and froing of the earthmoving equipment had been going on for three months and the hours wait was a lucky one, as previous road users were forced to have even greater patience.
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| Landslide |
The addition of water to the road surface caused by the diversion of the stream which caused to landslide created new driving challenges. For 50 kms we twisted and turned our way up to 4500m, where we eventually made contact with the tarred road we had so eagerly deserted four days previously. What a trip, we wouldn’t have missed it for anything.
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| We did it! |
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| End of the gravel road |
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