Road of intense super death and rock n roll

Back in La Paz. After a bunch of running around we found ourselves in La Paz with a week before our friend Jason came to town. Just to update, me and Lotta met for the first time in our lives in Cambodia in 2003, when we were both traveling. This momentous meeting was created by our mutual friend, Jason, who we had both met at different times but on the same trip through south-east Asia. Flash forward to today. We had been e-mailing Jason, who is a native of and still lives in L.A., about our trip. It turned out he had about a month in which he could do some traveling and we thought it would be cool if he came on down to Bolivia, we said as much and he said "what the heck, I´ll be there." So, he was coming to La Paz on the 11th and we had a week to kill.
Lucky for us that La Paz is a great city. We decided to go to some ruins that were just outside of the city, only a day trip really. The ruins of Tiahuanaco, a pre-Inca civilization, were uhmm sort of boring. Apparently, this was a pretty great society and they did a bunch of stuff, and invented some farming and building methods and did some other stuff, but they should have put some more time into making things that were not so dull. The least they could have done was make their civilization "mysterious" or make some big, strange structures that no one understands. Maybe a 40 ton rat/lizard statue made out of rock, that could have been put here by U.F.O.´s hey, I don´t know, but something. O.K. I am not really being fair, the Tiahuanaco´s did have everything I am complaining they did not have but every society after them destroyed what they made so all that is left are some rocks and monoliths. The Monoliths are cool, I will have to admit. I suppose some of it is ruins burn out. After a while a person gets a bit burned out on the ruins. There really were some cool things there, for one thing they worshiped the Puma and had a bunch of statues of Patcha Puma, which is sort of like "mother Puma" but really it is just fun to say¨"Patcha Puma" a lot. I bout a small Patcha Puma statue for good luck. The natives think it will bring luck, but I am not so sure how much luck a non-practiced, completely destroyed religion will bring me. None-the-less I think a cartoon based on the life and times of "Patcha Puma" would be a big hit in the states. Sorry got a little side tracked there.
The Tiahuanaco people made a big pyramid, what no one told them is that in order to be remembered they have to make pyramids much higher. This "Pyramid was only about 16 meters tall, but very wide, about 200 sq meters. A good PR agency would have told the Tiahuanacoians that wide pyramids are soooo like 234 B.C.
One of the cool things they had was a basement, very modern at the time, decorated with faces, the first face is the most modern.

They also had a monolith that went on a rampage and started beating up monoliths from other excavation sites. Apparently, he was carved out of some poor quality rock, left out in the elements and was just never really cared for or given the support that other, much more responsible monoliths were given. Anyway, one night he had too much Chicha (a local corn beer) and he just went nuts and cut an Inca condor spirit statue, with a broken bottle. They caught him and threw him in this barbed wire cage, they also had some guards with jackhammers just in case.

O.K. although I never get tired of it, I suppose I should stop bagging on the Tiahuanaco civilization, I mean it is not like they do not have enough problems, I mean not existing anymore and all.
Just some random things about La Paz. McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy´s Watch out . Bolivia has it´s own fast food chain and it is coming for you. Soon my friends, on every coroner there will be bright, new Mega Burger. Right now this young up and comer busting out of it´s seams with over three locations, but I think it is only a matter of time before happy meals are a thing of the past and all kids are whining to their mothers to get a "Mega PicPoc" What is this? welllll a mega picpoc is a very large plastic cup with a cardboard divider on the top and a straw sticking out of it. On top your fries and chicken bits are divided and you suck on the straw to get your (divided from the food) drink on the bottom. It is really an amazing invention and easy to walk around with, hmmmm if you see a "Craig Burger" pop up just forget you saw this.

Banks in U.S. are backed up to 100,000.00 dollars so you have some security when you use the bank. Banks in Bolivia are back up by however many shots the guard with the machine gun or shotgun can get off on anyone stupid enough to try and rob the bank. Every bank we saw there were VERY armed guards outside.

I had sort of mixed feeling on this. On one hand I felt very secure, it is nice to have a lot of security around. On the other hand, WHY DO YOU NEED SO MANY GUARDS!.
We also ended up seeing the new Fantastic Four movie for like three dollars which was fun and the movie was made much better simply by seeing it in Bolivia, I recommend that if you have to see a bad movie you first go to a developing nation to watch it.
On a movie note we found a place that sold movies and we bought one, The Transformers. I think the movie had come out in the theaters about three hours earlier and now I hold the DVD in my hand for two dollars, God bless Bolivia.
So, we walked around, ate some stuff, and poked some things with a stick, but then Jason came in to town. He showed up in the middle of the night at our hostel in tip top shape after a very long trip from L.A. to Lima, to La Paz.

The next day checked out the city and ran into a guy who asked us if we wanted to check out the prison. This might seem like a bad idea but we read about it in the guide book. You can have a guide take you into a Bolivian prison and talk with some of the less dangerous inmates about their experiences. In a Bolivian prison you can live as well or poorly as you can afford. If you have 20 grand you can have your own apartment with catered food, a sauna if you want. Many inmates bring their family into the prison to live with them. If you have no money you have to do odd jobs to earn money to pay for your food or shower. Anyway, we thought it would be interesting. They guy we were talking to already had to English girls interested, so in our group of five we said yes. He lead us to the prison said it was five dollars each. We gave him the money and he went to the prison and came back and said we had to wait for two hours. He would meet us back here in two hours. Yes, it sounded like a scam and in fact it was a scam and we never saw that guy again. But, what would a trip to a different country be without having someone rip you off for five bucks. In all fairness I can not even blame the different country, the guy who ripped up off was obviously from the the U.S. Oh well.
That day we also booked a bike ride. The ride would be about 36 miles and would take at the end of it we would take a bus the rest of the way into the jungle. We wanted to take the bike ride because it is "THE MOST DANGEROUS ROAD IN THE WORLD". In those 36 miles you go from 12,000 feet to 6,000 feet.
We saw the tour company, mountain madness, that offer a mountain bike ride down "the most dangerous road in the world" but I took it with a grain of salt, I come from the U.S. the home of the over hyped non-event. In the U.S. a thing may be advertised as "most deadly", or "super-intense" but in the land of the sue-happy we all know that no matter how dangerous a thing may look it is perfectly safe because no one wants to get sued. What I learned quickly is that Bolivia is not really hip to advertising yet. The tourist industry is just starting to take off so when they call something "The most dangerous road in the world" it is no joke.

Also, keep in mind that by Bolivian standards a "safe" road is a one lane slightly washed out dirt mountain pass with rock slides and bandits.
How does a road get the moniker of "most dangerous"? It was given by an Inter-American Development Bank report. An average of 26 vehicles per year disappeared over the edge. The road is just 10 feet (3.2 meters) wide, most of it with 1800 foot (600 meter) drops, with waterfalls spilling over the dirt to make slippery mud in certain spots. Most of it is gravel with mid-sized rocks that sit around waiting to kill. The road use to be MUCH more dangerous about 8 months ago. A new paved road has been made and almost all vehicle traffic uses THAT road now. Before then, bike riders would have to hang out on the edge while trucks and buses drove by,because upcoming traffic gets to stay by the mountain.

We broke into two groups of four each and one guide. One group, the fast group and one slow. I was in the fast group but I was by far the slowest in the fast group. After going down the road I can say the only way it is NOT the most dangerous road is if there is another road made of LAVE, where tigers try to devour you and men sit in caves trying to sell you AMWAY. Only that road would be more dangerous

Ever since the new road was built, "DEATH" on the road has declined but don´t worry bikers still zip out over the edge just in time to think "ummmmmh oop´s" Our guide would stop us at certain spots to point out where "just last week two Germans were racing their bikes and ran into each other and both went over the edge" Some of the guys in our group complained that they wanted to go faster, where as I thought that walking might be too fast of a clip for me. Anyway we lived and it was very pretty.
Once down from the mountain we stayed in the town at the bottom, then we booked out tickets on the bus into the jungle.

We got to our "bus station" in the middle of no where at two in the afternoon. We waited for our bus until seven. The upshot was meeting two very nice sisters from Canada. At seven our bus got there and we started our 16 hour night bus, on what can only be considered the second most dangerous road in the world. With Bolivians sleeping literally underfoot, and on top of us the bus ride was.....an experience.
Happy to be in the jungle we showered and drank. Next stop.....Jungle
Drinking some beer in the jungle.