La Paz

La Paz is the most incredible city. We spent five days there, enthralled with the way it tumbled down the hills into the basin-like valley with the central city at the bottom of the concave. There is a strong juxtaposition of modernity and tradition, it being common to see women dressed in traditional skirts and woollen jerseys with long plaited hair and a bowler hat, passing buy well-dressed business people or students in jeans. Apart from generally soaking up the atmosphere of the place, we had two standout experiences in La Paz – attending a football match, and mountainbiking the Death Road.

FOOTBALL FRENZY

Getting to a football game in South America was fairly well up on our list of things we wanted to do in South America. Their passion for the sport is unrivalled and the spectacle was something we wanted to see first hand. While in La Paz, we managed to buy tickets to a match was between two club teams – Bolivar from La Paz and Universidad Catolica from Santiago de Chile. These two countries have a history of being rivals as Chile took land off Bolivia, leaving the country landlocked. We managed to get an extra ticket earlier that day for our new friend Sara and armed with new Bolivar soccer shirts we headed to the local stadium. The game was for the Copa Los Libertadores, the Latin American Champions League.

We knew the atmosphere would be amazing but I don’t think any of us imagined quite what occurred. We soon found out that we shouldn’t have eaten beforehand as there was all sorts of food leading into the stadium from roast pork sandwiches to grilled meat, sweet coffee and soft drinks - no alcohol, not that they needed it by the fervour that ensued. We quickly settled into the local customs and chants (whistling is a sign of hate) and a fantastic chant was where the stadium self-divided into thirds, led by the noisy band at one end of the stadium who commenced with “Bo Bo Bo,” we followed with ‘Li Li Li” and once “Va Va Va” rung out we all chanted “Viva Bolivar!” Needless to say our voices soon became hoarse – and this was still pre-match. The welcome for the team was amazing – in fact it was akin to the celebrations when NZ WON the RWC. Confetti, rolls of toilet tissue, fireworks and flares (set off inside of the stands) would have turned any OSH officer white in NZ. The atmosphere continued and with a 3-0 win to Bolivar the celebrations were set to continue long into the night.

DEATH ROAD

The “Death Road” is a 63km mountainbike ride that descends down a road with a precipitous drop on one side. Not sure that we wanted to ‘fall’ into this tourist trap we were persuaded by the promise of a few hours in a sub-tropical climate at the end of the ride. It was a fantastic ride (not in the least a fitness workout due to the never-ending descent) starting at over 4600m close to the snow we and 5 other gringos followed our fun and care free guides down the ‘Death Road’. Actually the death road has less death on it these days with a new road in situ that is ashphalt all of the way. There are still plenty of reminders though, within 2km of starting our descent we came across a memorial to 7 people (5 foreigners) who had died when their minivan went off a cliff, the green remnants of which were still visible on peering over. Once onto the gravel we unfortunatley were unable to see some of the major drops due to the cloud cover. With our dropping altitude and the ever increasing warmth though it did not take long for the cloud to lift and we were treated to spectacular views down the valley. We finished the ride at approx. 1330 and headed to a local hotel (with pool) for a swim and lunch before climbing aboard the minivan for our trip home.