La Paz

19th of April:

Woke in the middle of the night with uncontrollable bowel movements, but after some quality time at the toilet, I could safely go to bed again. I woke up some hours later, but this time it was the normal waking up; but I still felt ill and so didn't eat any breakfast.

I took a taxi to Eloy Salmon, the electronics market of La Paz, where I bought an unbranded iPod replacement, as those long busrides are pure killers at night when I can't read. There I also saw an extra battery for my camera which I might return to buy. I also saw a lot of iPod rechargers, something Yasmin had been looking for (her recharger is broken.

Afterwards back at the hostel, I wanted to do the Lonely Planet scenic tour, but oh my, how La Paz isn't scenic. It is a broken down piece of rubble, with no sense of charm. One big dirty loud market, and where it isn't one of the three, it is the other two much more. However I did see one beautiful thing, when I walked into a church there was a wedding underway, and inside the church, the couple being married seemed aglow, and the words of the priest were very sincere (his voice), which was the best thing I had to go for, I understood some of what he said, mainly it was about life and death, the beauty of love and the importance of the chuch.

Back at the hostel Nadia asked me if I wanted to go out, but after dinner I was very tired, and Nadia was actually quite ill, so both of us went to sleep.

20th of April:

My 3 month anniversary, I celebrated by calling home (as I always do on the 20th), spoke for nearly 30 minutes with both my mother and my father, it cost roughly $0,5 per minute, so it ran up quite high, but I can afford that once a month. Today I was also supposed to have been on El Camino Del Muerte (The Road Of Death), known in English as the Worlds Most Dangerous Road (WMDR), but two days ago an American had veered over the edge and died, so Gravity (my operator) had cancelled all tours till Thursday.

So I get a refund and a sorry (yesterday). So today I went out and found a different operator; almost all of the operators are located on a street called Sagarnaga, so logically I went there, found a much cheaper operator ($40 instead of $75), all without it seeming dodgy. I also went to the busterminal and bought a busticket to Potosi, and as it is at the other end of the country,

I bought a ticet for a nightbus, a bus cama (cama means bed), and returned to the hostel where I didn't do much until Yasmin, Uval and Nadia asked me, whether I wanted to come to the cinema. So off we set to the cinema, where the only movie running in English was "There Will Be Blood" with Daniel Day-Lewis. We all first had a small snack in a small eateria upstaitrs, before heading into the world of popcorn.

The movie was simply amazing, it is the story of a Daniel Planview, an oilman who starts by digging for gold in 1898, and his story from the first oil discovery, all the way until his undoing, and while it is a deep movie (we were all looking for something light) I thoroughly enjoyed it, and if I recall correctly from the poster, it was nominated for a good deal of oscars, something that was certainly deserved, a fantastic movie.

21st of April:

I woke up at 6 o'clock, got myself ready and got picked up 10 minutes early (in South America?), went round the town to pick up two other people, Ivan and Marco two brothers from Mexico living in USA (American citizens), before we headed to the office of the operator for breakfast, followed by quite a long tour to the beginning of the road. We all got our gear, our bikes and an information talk.

The first part of the road is paved, and it is a part of the new road that has replaced the WMDR. It is very nice and easy, although it was here that a bus with more than 100 people famously went over the edge (some of the wreck can till be seen). However it wasn't dangerous, just very cold (4200 meters altitude) and took about an hour to the bottom, where we each paid 24 Bolivianos (roughly $3), loaded the bikes back onto the van, and drove to the beginning of the real WMDR, the road that was built by Paraguyan prisoners of war, during the Chaco war.

The second part is very narrow, sometimes steep, rough gravel with big water puddles and scattered waterfalls over the road. However we had been out very early, either that or been fast, which meant that we had the road to ourself. And I must say that even if it was littered with other bicyclists you would have to be a flailing moron to go over the edge, because it is the WMDR, you pay extra attention, and the awareness level is just extremely high. But truly, all the tons of crosses we saw along the way (quite a good deal were tourists) were from before the replacement road was finished, as back then there had been heavy traffic as well. When the American had gone over the edge, I have no idea what happened, but he didn't respect the road and paid the price.

At the bottom, we had been riding for some 3-4 hours (it was now 12), so we were taken for a shower (it had been very hot going down the second part) as well as an absolutely humongous lunch. Then we started driving back, and as the point of the road was linking the main country (altiplano) with the jungle part of the country (the pampas), it was a very long road back, and I wasn't back at my hostel before 17.30, a WMDR tshirt richer.

In the evening Nadia, Sofie (Swedish), Yasmin, Uval, Heather (English) and I, went to Mongo, that fateful restaurant where I got my second food poisoning. And just to rub it in the face of whoever, I had the same dish (meat Lasagne), it was simply that good, I absolutely loved it. Afterwards Nadia, Yasmin, Uval and I headed to the Hard Rock Cafe, which I thought a bit weird, as I had never heard of a Hard Rock bar, but it turned out to be fake, a total rip-off.

We got there, and I hadn't seen that many Israeli's since I was on the Carretera Austral in Southern Chile. If someone had told me that I had suddenly warped to Israel, the sheer number of Israeli's would have convinced me. However on the lighter side, I did see two Israeli's I hadn't seen since Ushuaia; funny how after all that time, we still end up in the same place. But I was very tired, and decided to go back to the hostel and sleep.

22nd of April:

It was a fairly early morning, but for some peculiar reason, on this special morning, the Wild Rover hostel didn't make breakfast, only the free breakfast was available, which consists of two bread rolls with jam (which I still don't like), so I had the breadrolls without the jam, waited around for 11 o'clock, went to Yasmin's hostel, as she wanted to go to the electronics market to buy an iPod recharger, and I wanted to buy a second battery. Uval came along as he wanted to buy a battery like the one I wanted to buy (it is used in the Canon G9 as well).

So we all got there, Yasmin bought her iPod recharger and I bought my battery, Uval found the battery too expensive however, and then went back again as I had to check out by 13. So I got back and checke out, and then waited around the hostel most of the day, got my last pistures burned out to DVD and mailed 4 DVD's to my father, before going out for dinner to an amazing place called Eli's. It was a family run place turned big, but it retained a wonderful charm, amazing fun and great prices. I had a steak with rice and vegetables and finished it all in no time.

It was then goodbye time, so I went to the busterminal, bordered my bus, fiinished watching No Country For Old Men (another absolutely superb movie, which I believe actually won a couple of oscars, if not four), and fell asleep.