The world's most dangerous road

It seems perverse that one of the main roads out of one of the highest cities on Earth should actually climb as it leaves town.

But climb it does - just short of a lung-sapping five kilometres (three miles) above sea level, where even the internal combustion engine is forced to toil and splutter.

Then it pauses for a while on the snow-flecked crest of the Andes before pitching - like a giant white knuckle ride - into the abyss.

The road from Bolivia's main city, La Paz, to a region known as the Yungas was built by Paraguayan prisoners of war back in the 1930s.

Many of them perished in the effort. Now it is mainly Bolivians who die on the road - in their thousands.