Sick as a dawg

Ow. The logical corollary of my over-enthusiastic revels was that when I finally woke up on the Saturday, I felt in no fit state to do anything even remotely requiring physical exertion - my wondrous immunity to alcohol-related headaches continues, but when your stomach is doing somersaults and you have all the energy and willpower of a day-old puppy, this isn't the biggest of compensations. I finally dragged myself out and wandered around town for a bit, giving in to my cravings by having lunch in Oliver's Travels, the self-proclaimed "5th best bar in La Paz" and "proudly 100% fake English pub", where I had fish and chips. After that I wandered around part of the markets, before deciding arbitrarily that since I was still feeling pretty awful later afternoon, and would thus almost certainly not be drinking later, Sunday would be the obvious day to do "The World's Most Dangerous Road", the mountain bike trip down the slopes east of La Paz. So I went around checking out a few of the companies offering the trip before finally deciding on Vertigo (www.vertigobiking.com), where I gave in to temptation and signed up. Then went in search of an ATM to find the money to pay for the trip, and for my excesses the previous night. This done, I had one of the most unhealthy meals of my time in South America, giving in again to the grease cravings of the morning after and getting food from Pollo Copacabana, one of the numerous Bolivian equivalents of KFC which crowd the streets of La Paz (and which, bizarrely, gives you fried banana as well as the deep-fried chicken and chips). Back at the hostel, I had a quick chat with Scott and Jesse, who were engaged in the latest round of what was apparently a long-running chess competition in the bar, had a beer in an attempt to get the benefits of hair of the dog (it failed) and then went to bed early. It is a measure of how knackered I still was that I managed to get off to sleep before 11pm, in spite of the noise from the regular Saturday night party at the bar.