Morro Hostel La Paz

... to buy a flight from Santa Cruz to La Paz for the next day. <br>Now in La Paz waiting for the flight. The flight went well, no turbulance, flying over the Andes was impressive, the landing was sligthly more chaotic. Something to do with the altitude - we are at 4061m . The plane has to land at a much higher speed than it uselly does, and therefore takes alot more runway to stop(Quentin should ...

... companies have (both from our guides and from other stories we heard).<br><br>At the top of the death road the sun was shining but as it was about 4500 meters and 9am it was bloody cold and the mist / cloud quickly changed and covered the area so we could<br>not see much. We were each introduced to our bikes and given our kit. We were then<br>give 10 min or so to get used to the impressive disk breaks. We were given the saftly lecture and some useful hints and tips on how to ride the ...

... point that overlooks the valley in which La Paz and its 1.2 million people reside. Stunning photos taken from here showing human settlements clinging to every mountainside and a teeming metropolis below.<br><br>Having made our way down the winding autopista and into the city centre, we crawled through the crowded streets. Every inch of pavement was cluttered with cars, people, street vendors selling everything imaginable ...

... increasingly the tacky-gringo-gifts centre but there are still some bizarre shops ruled over by haggard old woman who sell various herbs, roots, stones and even dried llama foetuses for whatever reasons. It was good fun to have a poke around and gawk at some of the weird things whilst not being too far removed from certain luxuries that capital cities afford... That's right - curry! I'd been hearing about this famous British Indian curry house for months and was desperate to go ...

... afternoon and one day in La Paz. Spent most of it walking around. Went to a really cool park up on a hill (over 4,000 meters = 13,000+ feet) overlooking the city. <br><br>The city is HUGE! Over 1.6 million people and in a deep valley. And the air pollution is horrible! No need to smoke =) Old school buses bleching out smoke and the few private cars are usually old (20+ years). If ...

... and is in homage to the Virgen del Socavon, patroness of the miners. Well since we are nowhere near that said Saturday we found our bus and bumped our way up to La Paz.<br><br>Our arrival at La Paz was a surprise, not because we had made it, but the road (paved!!) slowly climbs through the farmland to a staggering 4000m, making it the highest capital city in the world. As you reach the rim of a crater the sight of the city lying below at the bottom of a ...

... and vegetables, tends to come with spicy sauce which endangers the anal area. Opted for the cheese filled one as we have a long bus ride soon.<br><br>Papas- A bit like a deep fried baked potato, these round looking meteorites of joy are a beauty to fill a gap when youre hungry and want a cheap snack. luurvely!!<br><br>Comedores- An interesting concept, these fervent little burrowers run aroud the markets with plates of food, servicing the street stall holders with hot 3 ...

... br>At La Cumbre we hopped onto our bikes to start our "madness tour" - just to clarify, Madness being the name of the company we had gone with! La Cumbre is located at 4,670m, surrounded by the snow capped mountains of the Cordillera Real - in other words it was cold up there. All our layers were on!<br><br>The first 24km of the bike ride was along part of the new road to Coroico and therefore nice, new tarmac. Unfortunately, whilst I was happy with the pace set by ...

... our pigeon Spanish that we were highly unlikely to be able to smuggle a llama foetus past UK Customs and Excise - no matter how lucky it might be. We ended up buying a small piece of ceramic "tat" (Louise reckons that's North-East speak for a good luck charm) of "Pachamama" or Mother Earth to ensure no bad karma followed us out of the market.<br><br>On Day 1 of the climb, I met my guide high in the mountains at the company's base camp which sits about 4,600m up the mountain. Felicio ...

... we went inside. They showed us a video of the Salt Flats tour and it all seemed very professional. We decided to book through them. The problem was that they usually book the bus tickets for you, but as it was around 6pm the company`s office had closed. We didn`t want to to book the trip for Wednesday then discover that we couldn`t get the bus on Tuesday night, so we said we`d come back the next day once we`d been to the bus terminal; despite it being a Sunday the next day, the ...