21st February 2015 – Potosi to La Paz

Today is going to be a hard days drive as we have 535 kilometers to drive to La Paz and everyone is feeling tired with the effects of the altitude.  We drive to the outskirts of Potosi going through what looks like a new city being developed.  There are new building going up everywhere.  We go through our first toll booth for the day and Michael pulls over while we wait for everyone to get through so we can continue all together.  When he goes to start the car there is no ignition, so we send most of the cars off while green car & blue b stay behind to help us. After about 15 minutes of eliminating things Michael fiddles with the wires on the starter motor and there appeared to be a loose connection and the car starts.  So we pack everything back into the car and we’re off driving through the mountains over the winding roads trying to catch the others up. We climb   We finally catch the other cars at morning tea.The drive after morning tea continues through the mountains and we need to be on the look out for animals on the road from dogs, sheep, cows, lamas & pigs.  We drive through small villages and towns.We eventually pick up a divided highway with 2 lanes each way which makes the driving a lot easier, but more difficult to find a lunch spot, so we stop at a quarry on the side of the road.The highest that we’ve climbed to today is 3936 meters, but we still feel tired so we are having plenty of driver changes, drinking lots of water as we continue to La Paz driving through towns. This town has a feature sculpture of a bowler hat.We eventually come over a crest to the site of snow capped mountains in the background and El Alto in the foreground which is a satellite city of La Paz, with a population of about 1.3 million people.The drive down into La Paz is spectacular.  Our GPS is taking the scenic route down some very steep zig zag roads, we can smell hot brakes, Blue B runs out of brakes, RIP is in 1st gear to save his brakes but we all make it down in one piece.  The boys are saying if we have to drive out that way we won’t make it up, the cars will have to stay here!  The good news is there is a much gentler road to drive out on through a forest, in fact we should’ve driven in on it.  Another little hiccup with the GPS.