Before arriving to La Paz I had to stay another night somewhere. I found a nice mountain pass with a small maintenance road to an antenna tower. It was a little windy but in the slipstream of the car I was able to cook some dinner without the wind blowing out the gas stove.
El Alto
On my way to La Paz I had to go through El Alto. El Alto has a larger population than La Paz itself. While La Paz is in the valley, El Alto is on the plane around the valleys edges and is much more of a sprawl than La Paz. The quality of the buildings is also significantly lower. From La Paz there is multiple cable car lines going up to El Alto.
La Paz
I did the free walking tour there which was really interesting, even though it wasn’t so picturesque. We started near the prison complex that is in the middle of the town. San Pedro Prison is quite infamous for a number of reasons one of which is that the inmates have to earn their money to stay there. An Australian backpacker called Rusty Young wrote a supposedly very good report about life in there; it’s called Marching Powder.
Next we went through the different markets. As I wrote earlier, they don’t really have many supermarkets in Bolivia and buy most things on the markets. The market in La Paz is quite big and scattered throughout many streets and transitions seamlessly to the Brujas Market (Witch Market) where you can buy all sorts of ingredients for traditional rituals to appease to Pachamama. Flower crests, herbs, incense and mummified baby llamas among other things.
Basilica Menor de San Francisco. The inside is supposedly full of mirrors that were supposed to trick the native people into believing that their soul had been taken by god and they needed to convert to Catholicism to reclaim their soul.
Next we went to the old parts of town where the churches and government buildings were situated. After a short history lesson about those buildings the tour was over.
By sheer coincidence Dimple, whom I last met in Barriloche, was on the same tour as I and so we hung out for a bit afterwards.
The guy on the right seems familiar but I can’t put my finger on who it is.
After we split again, I went to explore the city on my own some more. I came through a street that was full of barber shops (at least 30) and so I took that opportunity to get a hair cut.
Restaurant Gustu
In my hostel I met an Australian guy who I went to a gourmet restaurant with. We had a 6 course menu with matching wines and a cocktail.
Permitio, Palm Tree heart with smoked cream.
Bread roll, with cream cheese in poppy seeds.
Crocodile/Caiman Carpaccio
Acai Ice cream
Sadly, I can’t remember what all the dishes were exactly.
Death Road
Also known as Yunga’s Road was the only connection to the jungle from La Paz until 1996. It is quite infamous for being super narrow next to a very high cliff. Traffic is still allowed on that road although it is currently not going because a landslide made it impassable for cars.
We stopped at the top of the valley for breakfast, put on the safety gear and took a 10min section of paved road to try out the bikes and check if everything was in order.
View from the start of death road. You can see the road snaking along the side of the mountain and the steep cliff going down to the left.
Further down it got a lot warmer so we took off the jackets.
The road passes under a lot of waterfalls. Nice and refreshing.
The Section where the landslide destroyed the road.
The “Welcome to death road” sign is actually almost at the bottom of the road. Not up at the start. There is also a 300m zipline nearby.
At the bottom, over some nice and cold beers our guides told us some stories from their past couple of years leading these mountain bike tours. They revealed that the road still has a death toll of 2 people per year on average. With those death tolls these tours would be forbidden in any other country.
One story was about a girl who could just barely ride a bike and who was really struggling even on the paved road. She barely managed to jump off the bike before going off the edge of a curve. They later had to hike up the valley to retrieve the bike. She even asked the guide if she could get another bike.
In another story they told of someone who actually fell down 40m and miraculously was uninjured. They have rappelling gear in the car to help people as quickly as possible for such cirumstances.
They also told of someone actually dying on an other operators tour where they helped with the rescue effort but the person had apparently died on impact from falling down the cliff.
Mechanic
After the ditch the car made some worrying noises when I accelerated so I brought it to a Honda mechanic in La Paz. They also did a quick checkup on the car as whole but luckily did not find anything beside the bent metal shroud that was rubbing against the 4WD transmission.
They also washed the car. I don’t think I ever saw the car so clean.
Together with their electrician I also installed a circuit breaker switch between the car battery and the auxiliary battery so I could disconnect the car battery when leaving the car somewhere to prevent the fridge from discharging the starter battery like it happened in Argentina.