La Paz: 8 Apr

Back from the jungle! What a mission. Actually, in the end it was a great 12 hour trip in a great american 4x4 which was a change from the Toyota Landcruisers that dominate the "roads" here. Needless to say, the GMC broke down not 20km out of town. Luckily, puting 15 litres of muddy river water in the radiator solved the overheating problem on the mountain passes.

So the 10 of us (7 Israelis, the driver, a crazy German/Spanish mountain bike guide, and me) finally got to see the mountainous jungle road to Rurrenabacca in daylight. It was insane. The whole trip had cliffs on each side of the road as we followed the Rio Beni, then crossed the watershed to the Rio Corioco. Did I mention that we were racing against the clock the whole time to make the uphill Death Road before dark. And that the driver drove for 12 hours solidly, and that we had 10 mountain bikes on top. Anyway, somehow I drew the short straw (the Israelis had shared a dorm with him the night before!) and had to sit next to the crazy Spanish/German guide for the trip. And he wasn´t crazy in a good way, just really crazy---fits of manic high pitched giggling, shouting at trees to stop moving, buying hologram religious stickers and sticking all over the inside of the car (OK, maybe that wasn´t such a bad idea), and drinking 4 litres of MangoPop just for an extra sugar rush (and 15 piss-stops).

Unfortunately, none of you will get to experience the full extent of the tortorous [can never remember how to spell that word] road which normally takes busses 20 hours to complete, because we passed at least 30 teams of road-workers and bridge builders constructing sweeping bridges to cut out the sharpest corners. Don´t know who´s paying for all of this, but they were working damn hard.

Well, we did do the Death Road at night. Wasn´t really a problem, and the waterfalls into the roads cleaned the car and bikes nicely.

Back in packed La Paz (Passover is coming up), I got a prison cell in the Hotel Alem, and unfortunately was too late to go to any of the super resturants there.

Nextday, in a sleepless haze, I found my self in the travel agency booking a multi-stop tour Cusco in less than 20 minutes.