The Death Road!!! And my role in the war on drugs.

Communication isn't always easy on the road, and this is especially true when you're spending your time on the most dangerous road in the Americas.

Here we are barrelling down el 'camino de muerte'. That's what the locals actually call it. A few years ago one of the big and mighty development NGO's labelled this road the most dangerous in the hemisphere. Now, crazies such as us can go barreling down it at 55 km/h on a damn mountain bike. At this point the road is paved, but it certainly gets a bit worse in parts.

This is how we spent a day in Bolivia. A fantastic country that is fantastically poor. This makes for your dollar going a long way, and coincidentally, exceptional hospitality from the local folk.

For most of the time we were well over 3,600 meters above sea level. This makes for frequent use of Coca tea, Coca candies and other wonders that are coca. This strange little leaf tends to help with the altitude, wards off hunger, fixes your guts, and probably has about 16,500 other medicinal properties. But, because rich lawyers in New York like it best when mixed with gasoline (and other fine traditional ingredients), and then have it shot up their nose in the form of Cocaine, the poor little Coca leaf has been at war with the U.S. for quite some time. Funny how in order to make Cocaine gasoline is just as important as the Coca leaf, but it is the impoverished Coca farmers in Bolivia who get soldiers sent on to their farms and agent-orange-like-herbicides sprayed on them and their crops.

Personally, I'm all for the Coca leaf. And I plan to bring some Coca tea back with me to share with you all. Certainly our customs agents will have the good common sense to recognize this traditional herb for what it really is....a tastey infused beverage, and not a dangerous drug.