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Today I cycled Bolivia's Death Road just outside La Paz which has a byline of 'the most dangerous road in the world'. 'Death road' refers to primarily the dirt section of road between La Paz and the low land town of Coroico. Up until two years ago this was still the main throughfare carrying all vehicles including trucks and busses to La Paz from the low lands. The majority of the road is gravel and narrow (3.2 meters wide at its narrowest point) with sheer cliffs on one side with drops upto 1,000m off the edge of the road (no nature stip here!). It got its name from the high number of fatalities from vehicles (generally trucks and busses, toppling over the edge to the jungles below. Its estimated that in its service life approximately 200-300 people per year lost there lives on the road (some of these tourists cycling it!!). The are apparently still many unrecovered vehicles and corpes in the jungles below the road. What a fantastic place to ride a bike!!!!!!!!
The feature for me other than the promised views was the fact the the day trip promised a 63km ride on a mountain bike, much of it decent and much of it gravel/dirt road. In the 63km distance the altitude drop is approximately 3,550m - to put this in perspective this is over a thousand meters of downhill more than the highest point in the Australian mainland - not something you get the opportunity to do everyday.
Starting at 4,700m at around 7am in the morning, in the snow we cycled approximately one hour of down hill on the b****umen main road out of La Paz to get a feel for the bikes before hitting the dirt sections. It was bloody cold and I had all my cold weather gear on unfortunately my fingers still were freezing to the point of loosing feeling and being extremely painful when stopping to thaw. Stopping every 15 to 20 minutes for the guides to rane in the group the hand thawing began, when the support van caught up the driver popped the bonnet and we all put our hands on the radiator to get them up to a decent temperature.
After a number of police checkpoints and a few rest stops we reached the turn off from the mainroad onto the 'death road'. The rain and snow that had plagued us for the last hour stopped and the cloud lifted momentarily to give us a view of the windy ribbon of road decenting down what appeared to be the side of a cliff. It was a memorable view. Our guide stopped us for a briefing on the dirt and pointed out one extra safety rule. The safest way to get down the road is to ride in one of the wheel ruts on the road rather than on the loose gravel. Though not used a the main arterial road any more the road is still used by farming communities located on the road to get their produce to market. The trucks coming up the road prefer to stay on the left hand side (or side farthest away from the edge). Because the road has many blind corners and tight turns we had to ride in the wheel rut closest to the edge of the cliff!
We took off down hill with a mixture of trepidation and anticipation, it wasn't long before we turned a corner and got a clear view of the massive vertical drop off only feet away from where our bike tyre was - as you rode past, breaking very gently, just enough to check your speed with out skidding on the gravel it was a sobering experience but also exhillerating at the same time.
As we decended the guides stopped us periodically to give us briefings on the sections coming up and also to let us to admire the view (and usually the drop). Often when riding you were concentrating on the road so much you missed this. They also set up a number of action photos and videos to remind us off the experience (watch facebook for the vids soon!). All in all it was a pretty easy gravel ride, especially on the quality bikes we had (very fat tyred, front and rear suspension with front and rear disc breaks) the most difficult thing was knowing that if you lost concentration and came off and went over the edge the best case scenario would be broken arms or legs, worst case you'd become another victum of Bolivia's Death Road.
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