Sam and I took the bike ride down the most dangerous road in the world that we were supposed to do several days earlier with Rochelle and Gabe before I got sick. We started about an hour outside La Paz and descended more than 3,600m (11,800ft)in about 64km (40miles) on a one lane, dirt road along cliff drops of more than 1000m (3600ft). You can check out a video of the road on youtube.com at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqPJ6nLtQ5o Needless to say, it was a really awesome experience. I think the scenery was nice, but I'm not sure because I was concentrating on staying on the road the whole time.
The first part was paved for a little while. That was fun because you could go really super fast on the downhills and it wasn't really dangerous just yet. When we got to the gravel part of the road though, that's when things changed a little. The road was really bumpy and my hands really started to hurt after a little while because of how tight I was holding onto the handlebars. Only a few times did I really get nervous. When I looked off the road in front of me toward the drop on my left, I got really scared and when one of the guys from my group cut in front of me and almost caused me to fall, did my heart really start pounding. Other than that, it was a really great ride.
We finished outside a little town called Coroico at a wildlife refuge. We had an early dinner of homemade pasta and it was so delicious. Sam went back for a third plate. He and I decided to stay at the refuge that night because we were planning to take off in that general direction the next day. It was a great place to stay because we were able to go play with all of the animals that evening and the whole next morning, while getting a good night of sleep out in the middle of the wilderness.
I think that was the first encounter I ever really had with monkeys firsthand and I loved it. I sat down to watch them running around and one little one ran over and jumped on my lap and then started climbing all over me. At one point, when it was sitting on my head and playing with my hair, a spider monkey came over and curled up in a ball on my lap. Later that night, the same spider monkey came running over again when it saw me and jumped into my arms. I was walking around with it for a little bit when I felt something wet on my leg. I put the monkey down and saw that it had taken a crap all down the front of me... all over my fleece, all over my jeans and all over my hiking boots... gross!
The next afternoon, we went to the bus stop. It was really just a place on the side of the road with a couple of little stores and a whole bunch of people sitting outside waiting. The bus was supposed to come at 2pm, but I think finally showed up around 4:30... so typical. The bus was really small, also typical, and I was squished up against the window while Sam stretched his legs out in the aisle because he couldn't even fit his legs in front of the seat.
We continued down the most dangerous road, this time in the bus. I think it was a million times worse than being on the bike because I had control on my bike. The bus was really super scary because I had no control and because I could look out my window and only see sheer cliff dropoffs about a foot away from the tire of the bus. When we finally arrived in Rurrenabaque, I vowed never to take the bus again.
We got to Rurre at about 6am and it was completely black outside. There was no light from the moon and apparently they were without power that morning too. Sam and I starting wandering with our flashlights into the middle of town, about a 5 minute walk, and tried to find a hostel with some free rooms. When the sun finally rose, we succeeded and I crashed because I had not slept a wink on the whole entire bus ride.
