Bolivia

Stage 6 of 6: Thursday 18th to Monday 21st April 2025

“If you had not seen it, even if you had seen on a video, you would not believe it,” said Abraham (our guide), as we drove down ‘Death Road’ (officially named the Yungas Road), the notorious 36km gravel track that winds its way from a turn-off east of La Paz to the small town of Coroico. The road is known for its extreme danger and narrow, single-lane sections with unbelievably steep drops. We took a private minibus down the road on our second day in Bolivia… just for fun!

Abraham’s words pretty much sum up our time in South America.

We had researched lots of travel sites, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and spoken to people who had been here, but nothing could have prepared us for the amazing, vast, diverse, and vibrant continent that we encountered over the last month.

Let me start by saying Bolivia was not originally on our list of places to visit, but I am so glad we got to see this interesting place and finishing our holiday with a few days in Bolivia turned out to be a great decision.

Have you ever been to Bolivia? Do you know anyone who has? Do you have any idea what it is like?

As far as I’m aware, the only person I know who has been to Bolivia is my good friend Sandy who travelled there about 20 years ago.

It’s certainly not regularly on the tourist trails and to be honest, I knew very little about Bolivia until we made the decision just a few days before we flew into La Paz, its capital.

La Paz is the highest capital city in the world, sitting at 3700 metres above sea level (ASL).

We had all coped pretty well with the height of 3360m ASL in Cuzco, although Dave had struggled a little with breathing and both he and I found any uphill walking hard going.

La Paz is another notch up from that, and Dave didn’t manage the higher altitude very well. We landed early afternoon, and he decided to rest on Thursday night, while the kids and I went out to dinner.

We’d already had lunch at a food court at a Cinema complex just 50 metres from our Airbnb when we arrived there around 3pm (Dave got to have Burger King!), so we didn’t go to dinner until 8pm, having to walk the seven or eight blocks as Uber was showing no availability.

Since then I have figured out that Uber isn’t much of a thing in Bolivia and found a taxi app (InDrive) where you can order a taxi, bid for a lower (or higher) price, track the car’s location, but then pay cash at the end of the trip. Half Taxi, half ride share – best of both worlds!

The seven or eight block walk to the restaurant ended up being mostly uphill (La Paz is very hilly, sitting in a large ‘bowl’ that’s 1000m deep) and was pretty hard going, even for Will and Emma who are now at the end of their colds, but still rather congested.

We were a few minutes late for our booking at La Rufina Restaurant, but were greeted warmly by a lovely waitress whose English was remarkably good. We chatted to her during our time there, and she told us that she had learned English to enable her to get a study visa to go to the UK to undertake a Science Degree but unfortunately had not been able to go.

We ordered one entree and two main dishes to share and each of them was very delicious. The complimentary mini empanadas were actually my favourite, but everything was good, although we didn’t eat it all, and couldn’t fit in dessert.

I had booked via WhatsApp and the waitress even sent us a message afterwards to say how lovely it was to meet us! All for around A$75, which is incredibly cheap, especially given it is considered one of La Paz’s best restaurants.

We walked back to the apartment; I finished and published the previous blog; and then we all crashed… it was a big day!

We all slept well in the large (if not modern) apartment with amazing views over La Paz. Everything here is quite reasonable, compared to Australia although everyone we spoke to talked about the cost-of-living increases and the government corruption. The accommodation, for example, was only around A$100 per night.

Friday 19th April

I’d booked a half day tour, and we met Abraham, our guide for the morning, in the centre of the old part of the city. Abraham was an absolute delight and proudly showed us his city. We were driven around by an equally lovely driver in a very new car – all for less than A$100 for all four of us. The tour included a visit to ‘Valle de la Lune’ (Moon Valley – named by Neil Armstrong for its similarities to the Moon); rode on three cable cars (they have 10 separate lines which traverse the city); a lookout with the most amazing view of the whole city; and a stop back in the centre to see the ‘Witches Market’, which wasn’t of particular interest to me, and the dried llama corpses hanging ready for people to buy and sacrifice were rather off-putting!

Here is a heap of photos to show what we did!

We also got to see the Changing of the Guard ceremony outside their presidential place – not quite Buckingham Palace, but not too bad! Dave even got a pic 😉

Abraham was so good as a guide and gave us some great ideas about what to do while we were in Bolivia, including recommending the drive down ‘Death Road’. He said he was already booked for the next day, but did suggest I request he be moved to tour with us. I messaged the Tour Company and soon had it all booked – including the manager reluctantly swapping things around so that Abraham could come with us!

We had passed a ‘Cholita Wrestling’ theatre on our morning tour and decided to go back there once we were finished. My first (and probably last) wrestling performance but it was fun (and funny) to watch.

Having now worked out the Taxi app, we easily got one back to the apartment (30 mins = A$6), grabbed a simple dinner, then an early night before our early start to Death Road.

Saturday 20th April

Abraham, with a new driver, this time in a minivan, picked us up just before 8am. He gave us a quick run-down on the day and we drove about two hours until we reached the turn-off point to Death Road. Along the way we stopped for a delicious cheese and chicken-filled hot pastry and also at a couple of viewpoints to take photos of the spectacular scenery. At the highest point we again stopped for a photo (which is amazingly nearly 5000 metres ASL), where it started to snow!

At around 10:30am, with rain steadily falling, we turned off the ‘new’ highway onto the Yungas Road. While once the only connection between La Paz and the Yungas region, a newer, safer road was built about 15yeards ago, leaving the original Death Road primarily for adventure tourism, particularly mountain biking. 

It took us nearly three hours to drive the 36km. I’m not sure that driving in the rain on the world’s most dangerous road helped my nerves much, and by the time we got to the bottom (descending 3000 metres) I felt like I had run a marathon, my heart rate had been high the whole time!

In 1995, the Inter-American Development Bank dubbed it as the most dangerous road in the world, although statistically that’s no longer correct. They still lose around 200-300 lives a year (they actually don’t know an accurate number as it’s so hard to recover bodies) and considering only about 300-500 people use it a day, that’s not great odds!

Without going into all the details there were three particularly interesting (terrifying/exhilarating) moments…

1. We came around a corner to find an excavator repairing a completely collapsed road, and 15 mins later he had rebuilt it, and we crossed over!
2. We came across a landslide, and all the boys got out to move the rocks, only for the landslide to start again!
3. We came across a truck coming the other way, had to reverse about 200 metres to find a spot where we could pass, and then only just with our mirrors hitting and the side of the cliff VERY close!

There were also some amazing moments – beautiful rainforest, gorgeous waterfalls, birds, and more!

I think I will rate this as the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done. Everyone else in my family has jumped out of a plane, (30 times between them), surely that must be safer… might be time for me to try skydiving!

At the end of the drive down we had a walk around and some lunch at Coroico, then used the ‘new’ road to get back to La Paz. Abraham did offer to go back on the old road, with a grin 😉

By the time we got back to La Paz it was nearly 6pm, just enough time to head into the city for the ‘Foodies walking tour’ we had booked. It was not the most amazing food tour I’ve ever done, and not helped by our sheer exhaustion, we left about an hour before it was due to finish. Here are some pics, just for the memories, not because it was impressive!

We got back to the apartment around 9pm and repacked our suitcases in preparation for the early trip to the airport. Not as early as our departure from Cusco, but it was still hard to get up at 6am (taxi at 6:30), and especially hard to say goodbye to Will and Emma who are staying in South America for another two and a half weeks. They will do the Bolivian Salt flats over the next couple of days, will catch a bus back to Cusco, then head towards the Amazon. How amazing for them!

Sunday 21st April

Our flight from La Paz stopped at Santa Cruz briefly, then onto Santiago International Airport, where we started this amazing journey nearly four weeks ago.

This is the last blog post about our holiday to South America. I honestly could not imagine having a better experience, we have had seen and learned (and eaten) so much! I did say today to Dave that I wouldn’t change a thing, and I mean that. Yes, sometimes things didn’t go to plan, sometimes we were tired beyond exhaustion, occasionally I got a little cranky, and once or twice I felt a little unsafe. But as I said, I definitely wouldn’t change anything, and we have come out pretty much unscathed, and hopefully a little wiser. (Apart from a broken toe which meant I pretty much wore the same shoes for three of the four weeks😉)

Quick postscript: We have just spent 24 hours in Valparaíso, about 100km from Santiago on the Pacific coast. It was really lovely coastal city, full of colour and street art and we even got to try out a couple of their ‘Ascensors’. There are 16 historical elevators in the city, constructed mainly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Technically most of them are funiculars, but one of them is a true vertical elevator. The view from the top of the two we used was fabulous, on each we travelled up by elevator, then walked down, which suited us perfectly. A few snaps for Valparaíso:

Tomorrow, we board a nearly 15-hour Qantas flight back to Sydney. I’m sure the Aussie accents of the crew will be lovely, and a little strange to hear.

Well, that’s it folks. This blog will revert back to its usual weekly musings, about more normal things…

Until next time, Adiós!