After biking down the World's Most Dangerous road we visited the Senda verde Animal Refuge. A monkey took a shine to me and climbed on my shoulder. He also decided it would be fun to climb under my skirt on several occasions.

In the words of Robbie Williams…..”Me and my monkey!”

The birds are only put in cages at night for their own protection and are free to fly away at any time. None of them seemed to be in too much of a hurry.

Volunteers can become a surrogate mother to an orphaned baby Monkey but must stay for two months and be with the monkeys almost 24 hours a day. Cute but I don't think so!

We stayed at the beautiful Sol y Luna in Coroico. A power outage made for a romantic birthday dinner.

Bananas anyone? The main street of Corocico.

The sand flies took a liking to me!

The view from Coroico

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This was the advice Emma gave us before setting of on our journey down the The World’s Most Dangerous Road . On a bike you go where you look so we were advised against watching the blue butterflies fly over the edge! The road descends from a height of 4700m to 1200m over a distance of 64kms and takes between 3 and 6 hours to ride (we did it in 3.5 hours). 24 tourists have died on this road in the 14 years since the mountain biking began and goodness knows how many cars, buses and trucks. Thankfully there is now a new road link La Paz and the Yungas so only local traffic and bikes use the old road now. Everywhere else in Bolivia you drive on the right but on this road you drive on the left. This is so that the driver can see how close to the edge the wheels are! The down hill traffic has right of way and sometimes the uphill car has to back down until they find a paying place.

Our offering to Pachamama before the beginning of the ride to keep us safe! One on the ground, one on the tyres and one in the mouth! It also helped warm us up at 98% alcohol!

At the top of the new paved road before setting off.

The start of the World’s Most Dangerous road.

One of the amazing views along the way.

A bend you really would not want to miss!

We mostly had the road to ourselves until we caught up to some crazy Bolivians without helmets.

One of the unlucky ones! The last tourist to die was a Japanese girl. They think she was trying to film as she was going down. She missed the corner and fell about 100 metres to the rocks below.

One of the river crossings.

I may look relaxed but believe me I wasn’t!

Checking out the vertical drop on foot before getting back on our bikes!

Can you imagine two trucks trying to pass here?

TIPNIS Protest Marchers on their way to La Paz to protest about the government putting a road right through a national park. They had been walking for a couple of months!

One of the crazy Bolivians who almost put Nick into a ditch when he was trying to pass him.

We got stuck behind a van that refused to let us pass and by the end of the ride, we were covered in dust!

We booked our trip with Barracuda and would thoroughly recommend them!

We were lucky enough to arrive in La Paz in time for The Gran Poder. It was an amazing street parade, filled with colourful costumes and dancers.

Notice the can of beer in the lady’s hand! There was a person walking beside them with a cartoon, handing them out when things got too hot!

After out morning visit to the Gran Poder we attended a street party, complete with a Beatles tribute band, organised by the British Curry House to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee.

The Queen dropped by and was happy to have her photo taken with us!

Nick’s project here involves looking at the tourist services on offer in Malllasa, a village close to where we are living and helping local businesses attract more international tourists.

In our first week we visited the Valle de La Luna and the zoo, and went on a two hour horse ride down to the valley of the flowers. It was a tough job but somebody had to it!

Pumas lazing in the trees.

The cheaters were just gorgeous. It was very hard to get a photo through the fence but we gave it a good try.

Check out that cowboy hat!

Yesterday we went out on quad bikes for two hours through the valley near where we are living and up to 4000m.

Thankfully the quads came with a helmet, unlike the horse riding!

Look mum! No hands!

Part of the spectacular view!