The Great Escape to La Paz Wednesday 11 August - Saturday 14 August: La Paz (Bolivia)
We found out the hard way that the national pastime in Bolivia is striking, and we were unlucky to just land in the middle of a big one. Two provinces were squabbling over who owned the rights to a cement factory on the border between them and some angry miners joined in to protest against President Evo Morales and some new taxes. Apparently they also wanted an international airport for Potosi.
Grand result of this all was that an angry mob of miners blocked all main roads around the mining city Potosi. In addition they were throwing sticks, and wait, you won't believe it, dynamite at passing cars and buses. As all this fun was spreading as a wildfire and was about to reach us in Uyuni, we were forced to change our travel plans radically, skipping Potosi, and renting some of the last 4x4 Toyota Landcruisers in Uyuni to get us out of there overnight. So here is where the great escape to La Paz via Oruro starts.
Our convoy of four 4x4s left Uyuni in the direction of Oruro at around 20:00 when it was already pitch dark. The problem is that in this part of Bolivia there are no asphalted roads, no lights, no landmarks and no GPS. So we drove in complete darkness over bumpy and dusty roads, seemingly clueless where to go.
We had an unlucky start as the first jeep of our convoy ran into a bunch of angry miners when asking for directions. These jokers started to hit the 4x4 with sticks and fortunately the driver managed to get Christian, Amy, Gaby, Michelle and Marcel out of there. From there on we avoided asking for directions and of course got lost. This forced us to knock on some doors in one of the small villages we were passing, where we offered one of the sleepy residents a wad of Bolivianos to guide us out of the desert and in to Oruro. The whole ordeal took us over 12 hours and I still wonder how our 16-year old driver got us there without GPS.
Later we heard that we had been rather lucky, as one of the other guides told us he had to quickly make his way out of a public bus in Potosi after angry miners started to smash the windows and threw dynamite under it. Welcome to South America! From Oruro we took a bus to safety in La Paz, another 3-4hrs. Our great escape from Uyuni to La Paz took us around 16hrs.
La Paz is a bit like marmite. You either love it or hate it. We loved it. This represented the real raw South America for us. Small cobblestone streets with people selling all kinds of stuff everywhere (from dead baby llamas to fake football gear from "Nike Drive Fit"). Or as my buddy Sach said "the place has soul". As the city lies in a valley, at night La Paz looks like the spaceship from the Steven Spielberg movie “Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind” when all the street lights are on. At 4,000m above sea level, La Paz also happens to be the highest capital city in the world.
We did have a bit of luck, as Bolivia was playing Colombia in a friendly game. We easily managed to get some tickets and watched 90 minutes of dreadful football. These guys make QPR look good. Bolivia had one half decent player, the midfielder Da Rosa. He would probably just make it into the 1st team of Lincoln City. The game ended 1-1 after two comedy goals. I think the level of the Bolivian League is summed up by the fact that a team from La Paz called "T. Strongest" is leading the table.
Emma chickened out of this, but a bunch of us spent a day with three blokes called Chello, Messi and Paparazzi (you can't make this stuff up) mountain biking down the infamous Death Road. The Death Road is legendary for its extreme danger: in 1995 the Inter-American Development Bank christened it as the "world's most dangerous road" One estimate is that 200-300 travellers were killed yearly along the road.
At the end of 2006, after 20 years of construction, a new road (a by-pass) from La Paz to Coroico was opened to public. Since then, traffic on the Death Road has decreased substantially, although still circa 25 tourists managed to kill themselves on this road since. Death Road starts at 4,640m high at La Cumbre and goes down to Yolosa which is at 1,295m above sea level. 3,345m of vertical descent, 64km of downhill madness, all over a sandy path with a width of about 3m. It was pretty wicked. We survived and got a T-shirt for our troubles.
As we were reaching the end of the first part of our trip, we unfortunately had to say goodbye to our own Indiana Jones / Chief Experience Officer / part-time sand-boarder / full time guide Christian. Where could we better do this than in one of his "friend's" restaurants called Maphrao On which had great Thai food and a dangerous happy-hour. The whole thing ended in Mongos, where a DJ was playing David Guetta while the Santos game was being shown on giant screens.
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