Hooray for flat roads

Sunday 27th April

In my opinion flat roads are the signs of civilisation. And so we are back in some sort of civilisation today as we take the 12 hour journey to La Paz. To be honest there isn't too much to say about most of the trip except that we made very good time due to the fact that we were off the bumpy stuff. Also a lot of the road was flat, which is good as our truck can't really go up or down too quickly.

The highlight of the trip was the last hour, not because of drink for once (there was no drinking today after the last trip) but because of the approach into La Paz. La Paz is built in a sort fof crater, and the surrounding suburbs (known as El Alto) are about 400 meters higher than the city centre. To get from the outskirts to the centre you have to drive down a motorway which rings its way around the crater, providing some great views of the city. Unfortunately as it was the best road we had seen in weeks, our driver took the opportunity to speed down it, and so we couldn't really get decent photos. But it is amazing.

For some reason that evening out guide had booked us for dinner into an English bar. I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure the others did. I had a good chat with the guy who owned it, and commented on his musical designations. He labelled U2 as Britpop (?) and when I pointed out they are Irish, he apologised by playing the Pogues as an Irish band - I didn't like to point out that they are actually English. Still it helped me discover the other Irish in the bar, and meant I was able to stay chatting while the rest of the group (sensibly) headed home early before their early flights the next morning (I lucked out and am in a later flight).