28/08/2019 - La Paz to Coroico, Bolivia

We got up and Josh went down and had breakfast whilst I stayed in bed. We packed up our things, checked out, and our hostel host called us a taxi. We took this to the northern bus terminal. It looked like absolute chaos, the kind of place you clutch your bags a bit tighter and double check your pockets are zipped up. We went down the walkway, the only non-locals we could see, with the different bus companies shouting destinations and trying to get our attention. After not too long we found a company going in our required direction, for a fair price. We bought our tickets and put our rucksacks into the boot of the people carrier. It is technically a bus station but is more like a collectivo car park – the transport is in people carriers, and you leave when the car is full rather than to a time schedule. After about half an hour of waiting we had a full car. Josh and I were in the back with a reasonably small man so we were ok, in the middle of the middle row was a huge man, that fell asleep immediately and his head was bobbing around in the peoples faces either side of him. Watching the man on left hand sides unimpressed reaction was so funny that Josh and I were properly cracking up, but no one else found it funny. On the right hand side in the middle was a man with his daughter on his lap, she was under one year old. Even if seat belts are in the cars, which there weren’t in this car, there is usually no clip or they are broken. Before we left we were approached by some French girls who said they were paying a driver to take them to our destination via the ‘death road’ and would we like to join them. We politely declined. Most of the roads in South America feel like death roads we were not up for this tourist attraction! The death road used to be the only way to get to Coroico, our destination, but a new safer road has been built. The death road is a very narrow road dug into the side of a cliff by Paraguayan prisoners of war in the 1930’s, and earned its name because so many people have died on it. So we felt like we had done the sensible thing, taking the new road, going with a proper company, plus, having a one year old with no form of seatbelt on would surely make any driver be extra careful?! Once we were out of La Paz and going down the new road, we saw our driver stroke his crosses hanging from the rear view mirror and say his prayers a handful of times, not the first time we have seen this but it always unnerves me! Well, Josh and I have never in our lives been on a car journey like this one. Overtaking on blind corners at flying speeds, it was terrifying. One car we overtook even pulled up alongside us when our driver stopped to buy some coca leaves, and shouted at our driver. You know it is scary if other South Americans find it too much! Josh exclaimed aloud at one point, and I saw our driver look in his mirror at us and accelerate, I think he was enjoying the power and scaring us, so I told Josh to stop reacting aloud. No one else in the car said anything, and we felt pretty helpless. I’m not sure if our driver was drunk, just having fun, or far too comfortable on this known road, but we couldn’t wait to finish the journey and get out. Maybe the death road would have been safer! It makes me nervous for our journey back, but I’m not sure what else we can do to reduce the risk of having a driver like that. When we pulled up in the main square of Coroico, the driver pulled our bags out of the boot and there was blue liquid all over them. Regardless of this and the reckless driving, I said gracias, to which the driver didn’t even look up, he quickly got in the car and drove off again. When moving the bags Josh got the blue liquid on his leg and said it really stung, so I found the baby wipes and he mopped himself up. There was a taxi opposite, so I negotiated a price and we got in. We got dropped at our hostel ‘Sol y Luna ecolodge’ which had been recommended by Rhiannon. The taxi man started trying to sell us excursions but Josh was itching to sort his bag out, so we tried to get away as quickly as possible but (kind of comically) it did take a while. We walked to main reception and left our blue covered bags outside whilst we checked in and got shown our room. The room is a beautiful double in what is like an old farm-house, surrounded by mountains and foliage. It is absolutely gorgeous! We went back to tend to our bags. We emptied them completely and I ran our stuff into the room whilst Josh started rinsing them off. I think it was some sort of bleach, it has eaten right through both of our bags. Josh’s bag got the worst of it and has a hole in the bottom and some parts are completely ruined. My bag has a ruined side pocket but we caught it just in time before it burned right through the side of the bag. What a nightmare! It must have been in the corner of the drivers car and burst all over the boot. We did wander what the feet smell in the car was. I reckon the driver will have a hole in the boot of his car by the time he gets back to La Paz. It also explains why he drove off so quickly, I think he had realised what had happened! That was not the best way to start our little holiday, but we rinsed the stuff off and hung them upstairs in the laundry area to dry. Josh has some ruined clothes and bits too where it soaked right through! Once we had sorted the bags we sat outdoors next to the house and ordered a late lunch. It was really warm and so peaceful. Afterwards we felt exhausted so went and lay in the sun in our room, and both fell asleep. We showered in the outdoor shower block and then had some dinner in the restaurant outside in our pijamas. We had some lovely pancakes for pudding and then went to bed, played some monopoly deal, and fell asleep to a film.