La Paz Photos


2012-05-20
La Paz, according to many, is the highest capital in the world, although Bolivians consider Sucre to be the true capital even though La Paz is the seat of government. There was a huge police presence here, many were even in full riot gear. We didn't see any violent protests while we were here, but I assume they must be common.

La Paz's most famous tourist attraction, other than its cocaine bar, yes apparently they serve actual cocaine, is Yungas Road, more commonly know as "The World's Most Dangerous Road". It was given that name by an Inter-American Development Bank study in 1995 due to the huge number of annual deaths it caused. Since then, Bolivia has built an alternative road on the other side of the canyon that is safer, but there is still vehicular traffic on the original road and, in addition, many tourists bicycle down it to be able to say they've ridden it and survived.

Nearly the whole way, one side of the road is a sheer drop to sure death and the other side is the vertical mountain wall. Bicyclists are told to ride on the left side of the road, the side with the cliff, despite driving on the right on nearly all other Bolivian road, because that's the side cars heading the same direction drive on due to the driver being better able to see his cliff-side wheel position. Bicycle deaths are fairly uncommon, but they do happen on occasion. Cars going over the edge are much more common. In fact, we even passed a spot where a car had gone over the edge just two days before and burst into flames as it tumbled down. It's charged wreckage was still visible dizzyingly far below on the canyon floor. In our group, two people crashed, luckily neither over the cliff, one of whom broke her hand. Both people who crashed were right next to Massey when they went down, but he claims innocence.