Coroico...not the most fun place in the world

As the guidebook says, theres not a lot to do here except chat with your fellow bikers about the harrowing death road.....and to be fair, they werent lying! Had planned to spend a day in Coroico after the bike ride to do some walking, but what i thought was a gentle 2-3 hr stroll there and back, turned out to be a serious half day (at least) hike. So by the time I had sorted myself out in the morning and then discovered this, it was too late to do anything. Luckily I had hijacked a couple of english boys who had also done the bike ride, so we just loitered around for the day sunbathing, blagging our way into a posh hotel to swim and admiring the view. More importantly also found a source of homemade ice-cream so treated ourselves to 2 scoops for the bargin price of 30p. yum.

Did meet the worlds most annoying girl though and was forced to spend the evening socialising with her as there were only the 4 of us around. She took great delight in giving us reams of travel tips (despite being only 21 and this being her first trip, i think out of essex!), she spent a good while blaming the delays in the NHS on immigrants (really have to make up a new job to tell people...) and then had a bit of a rant about how the parents here were so irresponsible having so many children when they couldnt afford to feed them so they then beat the children and made them work on the streets. My argument that family planning isnt so advanced here didnt seem to cut much ice.....and i thought foreign travel was meant to broaden the mind and make you more tolerant. Ah well

Then today spent 5 hours baking to death on a minibus back up the road, and discovering that bike riding down it was a whole lot less scary that being in the front seat of a minibus going back up as I held back squeals of terror and tried to will myself to fall asleep...no such luck. Also got my first intro to Bolivian public transport. Buses were advertised every hour, in reality they went at 11 and 1. And then they actually left at 1.30. And then we had to wait for half an hour at one point while they decided to open a part of the road. Joy.

Next stop the jungle, how many delays can there be when you are travelling by boat??? Have rather sensibly decided to fly up to the jungle....the boys I was with decided to go by bus. We both left at the same time, I get a night in a bed and still get there before them. Ha ha ha.