The long hard road into La Paz

So we crossed over to Bolivia the other day. what an ordeal that was.

To start with, one of the people in our group didn't get an entry stamp for peru in her passport. You see, on entry in peru we were all given an andean immigration card. It was stamped with the date of entry, as well as the passports. She only had the one stamp.

Everything seemed to go smooth for the next 20 mins or so, (we) entered Bolivia, and then another disaster.

You would think this wouldn't have been an issue, she could prove when she got into the country, she was within the 30 days tourists have, she was leaving. but no. of course its an issue for a bribe extracting customs officer.

That was basically the gist of it, he wanted a bribe. Of course, not really knowing the language or what was gonig on, she just stood there with a mistified look on her face. as did the rest of us. we all stood there looking mistified for about 10 mins, eventually mr briby bribe gave up (there was a que forming behind us after all, by that point it was out the door and halfway down the street), crossed himself and then stamped her exit stamp onto her card (and ironically, also in her passport)

Everything seemed to go smooth for the next 20 mins or so, we crossed the bridge, entered Bolivia, and then another disaster. we were all finally back on the bus (its really a modified truck) and as logan, the driver, started to pull away, he hit a street vendors table with the back of the bus/truck, knocking shitty food and chrisps and drinks everywhere.

He was apparantly oblivious to this, and drove away. Everyone in the back heard the noise, saw the shaking fists of the vendor (and the assumed profanities) and saw a bunch of kids chasing us, actually up beside the bus for the next km or so. Later the tour leader told us that if we had of stuck around, they probably would have pelted us with rocks.

After loosing the street kids (phew) it was a fairly uneventful ride into the city. we were stopped a couple of times for passport checks. oh and a major stop at a police baracade about an hour later. We were there for about half an hour, eventually we found out this was because the vendor had called the police about aforementioned run in. Its not too hard to see a big yellow truck with a toucan on the side and a paint scratch at the back and realise its the same vehicle. He got away with it though, basically said the stall shouldn't have been on the road. Logan is great like that, he flat out refuses to give into police and their usual demands for a bribe. I think thats what the stall incident boiled down to, another bribe for the police.

La Paz itself is awesome. not from a touristy or cultural point of view, in those regards its a real crap hole. but its cheap. really really cheap. i bought a hamburger and a hotdog at the vendor in front of our hotel. total came to about 90c US. We went out for breakfast yesterday, got two big greasy english breakfasts, a few drinks each, louise *had* to get a deep fried mars bar; the whole lot came to a heart stopping 130 bolivianos. no wait, thats about $17 US.

We are back at altitude. something that were all sort of getting used to. here we are 3660 m above sea level. its the highest capital city in the world. while souding impressive, what that actually means is that its noticibly harder to breathe, you get tired just walking down the street, and most people are prone to random dizzyness, headaches, nautious etc (louise) and increased levels of hangovers (bryan)

We declined to cycle down 'death road' yesterday. its widely accepted as the most  dangerous road in the world. something like 8 people on average a year die, although apparantly its a lot less in the last few years. basically its a dirt track 64km long, a couple of meters wide and has a shear cliff drop down one side.It starts at the snow peak mountains, and ends in the jungle. the descent is something like 2500m. This didnt stop 18 of the 28 of us travelling. Although seeing them at the end of it, im really glad we didnt go. They all loved it of course, but 7 out of 18 of them fell off, the worst was a bunged up face, wich a couple of cuts to his lip, chin, nose. I think someone else nearly broke a wrist. It also didnt help that its now wet season, and they had no visibilty due to the fog.

The worst story of all was an unknown guy riding with them, who actually fell of the cliff. luckily he landed on a ledge about a meter and a half down, but apparantly if it had of been 5m before or after where he fell, he would have faced a 100m fall.

anyway we have one more night in La Paz, and then were off to the salt plains. Theres a referendum in a couple of days, and given the shaky political history of the country (read: corruption) and based on the outcomes of previous 'referendums' (riots, etc) the tour leader decided not to hang about...

Oh a note guys: real travel is really crap for uploading photos, so I'm just going to link to the ones i put on facebook. Below are my photos of peru in general.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=62022&l=747cc&id=606656937