Road of Death nearly Beats Us

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Road of death Nearly beat us.....

On our spare day in La Paz, we ride out to Coroico, this time we had Cory (the NZ guy that lives in Bolivia) with us. During our spare time he was busy with Robin, trying to organize the purchase of another BMW 800 GS from the local BMW dealer, so they could rip the clutch out of it and get on the road again.

We all left the hotel, about 11.00am, as Robin, Baz , Wim, Paul and Cory had gone down to the BMW dealer with a show of BMW Loyalty. Now with Diane on the back of Paul’s moto, and Cory, Robin and me in the now shockless truck, and made our way out of the maze, that La Paz is.

The paved road, and the scenic views are just amazing, with the many waterfalls cascading down. On reaching Coroico, with all the riders taking the main road, not the goat track that was on their day sheet, while I was looking for OUR road up to the village, both Cory and Robin, with his GPS had lost confidence in my navigation (Gut Feeling) but soon appeared a sign to Coroico, so up we went. The cobbled road was pretty overgrown and had a lot of wash outs and was quite a challenge for our shockless truck, but we made it OK, maybe Cory and Robin had to have a change of underwear though….

Cory had organized a garage that could replace our front shocks later that day when we returned to La Paz.
After a great lunch, we all set off on the return adventure up the ‘Road of Death’ (the Yangus Road)
I must admit, it was a new experience for me to drive the road, still with Robins BMW on the back of the truck. As there had been a lot of rain, there were so many waterfalls that we had to keep the windows shut much of the way.
We rounded a corner, to see a massive waterfall and two naked male nymphs frolicking in the water, shrouded by a rainbow, wow!!, it was straight out of some fairy tale, or horror/Gay/Blue movie scene, depending on your state of mind at the time!

We continued up the mountain until we were confronted with a fallen tree across the road and a fully laden truck, that had tried to squeeze past, but had miscalculated and now was about to topple over the bank. The Moto’s could go under the tree, but there was no way for our truck and we are two thirds of the way up this road, and as you now we don’t like going back!

We finished up with a lot of people to help, as a minivan appeared full of young English adventure seekers, that had ridden mountain bikes down the road in the morning. So with lots of jacking and packing of rocks and timber, along with Paul and Cory, riding back to a work camp and returning with a massive chainsaw to cut the fallen tree further back, we were getting close to trying to pull the big truck out and back onto the road.

We attached our wire tow rope to our truck, then a length of rope, that we could cut, if at all went wrong, as I was not keen to be dragged over the cliff if the big truck went. We also attached many tiedowns and got as many people as we could to pull on that, with all the others pushing our truck.

With a massive effort, the big truck began to move in the right direction, finally getting it back on the road much to everyone’s relief, clearing the way for us to continue. This had taken just under two hours, so now we were trying to beat the fading light back to La Paz.

Baz and Jan had given up their KTM and rode in our truck, well, with Baz sitting on Robins moto on the truck, so that Robin could experience the ride that he had come for, what great camaraderie we have within this group (or was the road a bit scary for Baz? I think not).
We drove/rode through darkness and fog, until reaching the out skirts of La Paz and looking down on this massive fairyland of twinkling lights, finally reaching our hotel around 8.00pm, too late to do anything about our shocks, so a nice dinner and a bit of shut eye after an amazing adventurous day, just what we came for.

The next morning after successfully negotiating the purchase of a new white BMW 800 GS, with the help of Cory, Robin, Hans and Baz were on a mission to rip out the clutch from the new moto and put it into Robins existing BMW, so he can get back on the road again.
We dropped Robins old BMW off at the dealers, then Diane and I hit the road on a mission to find our way out of the massive city of La Paz. We actually did very well and soon found us heading towards the Bolivian Border and onto Puno in Peru.
Look out for the next blog detailing our 3 hour border crossing and the bloody rip off that we encountered....

Cheers, Rosco

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