26th January Oruro – La Paz 145 miles

At breakfast we meet the couple who own the tanden, they are Swiss and are on a mammoth trip starting in Europe moving into Central America and down into South America and once they reach Buenos Aires they are going to Asia, wow.
They leave headed for Uyuni which will take then a couple of days and we head off for La Paz. Guess what its market day and the traffic is gridlocked, again. We finally break free of the traffic and head in the opposite direction to the way we want to go until we reach the ring road and then we circle the city to get back on track. Why, you may ask, purely to get away from the traffic it was ridiculous. We gas up and find the right road and away, oh it’s a toll road, so be it.
Progress is quite good today as the road is much smoother so I am able to keep a reasonable pace. One interesting thing today, in the South of the country they have NO roads, just sand tracks, in the middle they have gravel and are building some paved roads, here they have a perfectly good road and they are building another carriageway, why, there’s very little traffic on it.
We pay our tolls as we progress and at some we are just waved through. Lunch today is all about biscuits as we stopped for some water and this shop sells bits and peices and not really enough to allow us to buy sensible things for us to make a decent lunch. One thing Martin picked up was a bag of fluffy puffs, they looked like sugar puffs but much bigger, they also taste a bit like that but no where near as sweet, but boy do they take some chewing.
Whilst eating today the cabaret was in town again to keep us amused and entertained. A coach came through the peage and immediately stopped some 50 meters through and a guy got off and marched back with purpose, a few minutes later he returned with a policeman who started interviewing a man jusrt inside the bus. There was assistance from some of the occupants of the bus who opened windows and shouted down to the officer and this went on for about 10 minutes. Suddenly it was all resolved, the man got off with his guitar and walked with the policeman back to his office and the coac went on its way.
La Paz is now about 11 miles away according to my sat nav and we are just coming into a town where finally we spot some loos, Martin is now desperate having waited about 70 miles. A short break and we discuss where we want to head for which is a little challenging with limited detail on our maps. On we go and this town gradually intensifies and it would seem we are in the outskirts of La Paz. I mentioned traffic and markets yesterday talking about Oruro, well that couldn’t hold a candle to this it was wall to wall and in the main Toyota Hiace minibuses, all full, we turned off to get out of the gridlock but more of the same. Progress was slow as we edged up a hill at about 4100 masl.
La Paz is set in a kind of bowl ona hillside and ranges in height from 3000 masl to 4200. As we reached the top we took the right fork and started to descend and suddenly the buildings cleared and there it was, the image I have seen before of La Paz. Martin took some shots and we now started the descent and the traffic seems to have eased and it is such an interesting road, sheer drop to our right and now greenery and trees. The sun is shining and we also have a little rain to accompany it.
As we go down there seems to be a road to continue taking you down and then various roads go of to our right which then traverse across the bowl. The traffic is back big time and the drivers seem to live on their horns, police are often placed at junctions blowing their whistles, sometimes maintaining good order and at others mayhem justs continues to ensue.
Time to ask someone, well we asked policemen who said yes just carry on down there, taxi drivers who had no ideas, how can a taxi driver not know where the cathedral is and passers by. The traffic by now is awful, the bikes are getting really hot, they are air cooled and getting very little of it, and I can smell my clutch with the repeated steep hill starts. We have now been crawling around the city for over an hour and decide to stop and allow the bikes to cool down and also give each of us a bit of respite. It appears that we are only about ¼ to ½ a mile away so onward and at last we find the hotel we have been searching for.
All looks good but they only have a room for one night, I asked about parking for the bikes and they have a space they could go on the second floor, how do we get up there, ride them up the stairs. Hmmm, I don’t think that is an option so I took her to the front door and showed her my bike, ah, we have another building with dorms and you could park them there. A guy walks down the road with us and shows us the dorm building, it is perfect, large wooden doors which lead to a sort of courtyard, similar to those buildings in ‘The Italian Job’. Back to the main building and we decide to stay and reserve a room for the following night subject to cancellations, neither of us could face trawling round in that traffic searching further.
We get the things we need from our bikes and get ensconced in our room. It is now pouring down with rain so we chill a little and wait for it to ease. Back out to play with the traffic and by the time I get just down the road we have hail bouncing of my helmet, all parked up we venture back to the hotel.
Another good thing about the hotel is that they serve dinner and today being Austrailia day we are having BBQ’d prawns, salad and veggies. It also has its own micro brewery, that’s why Martin spent so long searching for it!
We had a good but noisy evening and I caught up with a lot of the blog as we now have WiFi and will get that uploaded in the morning.
We met some great people from the UK, Sweden and one guy who I thought was English and Martin put down as Irish, he turned out to be from Uruguay.
Martin has just informed me that we now have the room for a second night as they have had a cancellation, great result, so tomorrow we will probably venture out to the Road of Death having caught up with the blog etc.