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Published: March 25th 2007
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Illimani with a fresh coating of snow
This means that the starting point of the bike ride will probably have snow :) Finally, with only one weekend to go in La Paz, and with a little convincing from some people who were traveling through Bolivia, it was time to go down the World's Most Dangerous Road on bike. On Thursday night, I met up with two people from Ottawa, Nigel and Erin. Nigel is the son of a woman I took an Italian cooking class with in Ottawa last year. An interesting experience meeting her son in La Paz! Over beers at the bar at their hostel, they invited me to join them on the bike ride to Coroico so I took them up on their offer. Better to do this one with somebody rather than do it alone.
Finally, Sunday morning came along and I was up early as we had to meet at a cafe on the main road of La Paz at 7:30AM, however, living in La Paz, rather than staying in the tourist district meant that I had a good half hour walk to get to the cafe. From the look of the mountains surrounding La Paz, I could see a fresh dusting of snow from the rain the night before. I can't believe that after a
whole week of dry weather that it had to rain the night before my bike ride...go figure! At 7:45AM, we hopped in the bus and started our ascent to La Cumbre, the starting point of our bike ride at 4,750 metres above sea level. The rain the night before in La Paz meant snow in La Cumbre, so there was a fresh dusting of snow that we would have to start our bike ride in. First time I had seen fresh snow since winter of 2006 in Canada. Needless to say the temperature was a little chilly at the beginning of our bike ride, however, the sun at this altitude was very intense and kept me nice and warm. After some instructions on how to survive the bike ride, we passed around a small bottle of almost pure alcohol, took a small swig and pour some on the tire of our bikes as a sacrifice to Mother Earth (Pachamama). The first part of the bike ride was quite wet and about five minutes into it, my feet were already soaked. The views of the mountains and the valleys below covered in snow were absolutely spectacular to see. The last time
I was down this road was in a minibus and there was no snow. As we descented more and more, the weather was getting much warmer which meant that we had to strip off the rain suit that was giving to us into much warmer clothes. Finally after about an hour and a half or two hours, we were at the split off point where the newly paved road continues one way, and the World's Most Dangerous Road continues the other way. The first 250m of this road I think were the worst, with bigger rocks on it that made it hard to control the bike, especially after biking on pavement for the first two hours of the bike ride. The views were just as spectacular as the last time I was on the ride, but this time there was no one blocking my view 😊 Luckily as the new highway opened in December, there was little traffic on the road which made it a little more relaxing. I gotta say that I felt much safer biking down this road rather than driving down it in a minibus. Our group stopped a few times along the way to take pictures
Where the bike ride begins
And look at all that fresh snow and for a quick snack, and before we knew it, we were on the home stretch to Yolosa, the village below Coroico at 1,185 metres above sea level. Hard to believe that we had descended 3,700m since the beginning of the bike ride. Through waterfalls, hairpin turns, narrow roads and rivers, our group made it to the bottom safely.
Outside of Yolosa, our group went to an eco-lodge where they greeted us with a free beer before being able to shower, go for a swim in the pool, play with the monkey and have lunch before heading back to La Paz along the new highway. Lunch was really good and was definitely needed by most of us as we didn't arrive here until around 2:30PM. Finally, at about 4:30PM, we loaded into the bus and it took us back to La Paz. The ride was pretty quiet as most of us were exhausted from the bike ride.
Needless to say, for anyone who knows my mother, I didn't tell her until the day after that I was doing this bike ride. She found out about this road by doing research on the internet and asked me never to
go on it. I am sure she knew that someday I would be biking down this ride, just like thousands of other people every year! Great way to end my official last weekend of working and living in La Paz!
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