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Published: December 6th 2007
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All rugged up at the top
Bandito-mountain biker extrordinare The Worlds Most Dangerous Road!! Rock on!! Hey, I´ve got an idea, lets mountain bike down it as fast we can!!
This is officially the worlds most dangerous road, or at least used to be before they built a new one (which is also pretty bad and is falling apart only a few years after completion…). Apparently at the height of it´s infamy it averaged (more or less) around 400 deaths per year and it has a really interesting history for other reasons as well (like one of Nazi Germanys nastiest pieces of work fleeing to live on the road to carry on with attrocities against the locals on American sponsorship!). Just another one of Bolivia’s long list of Worlds best/highest/most etc etc… The ride starts in the snow capped mountains and descends 3600m over 65km in 4-5 hours of riding into the humid warmth of the jungle at Coroico.
So after reading the travelers bible (Lonely Planet) and listening to many a horror story, I decided to not mess around and chose Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking, the company who kicked the whole thing off 9 years ago and has the best safety record (read as “no deaths”). They
offer the best equipment and the best safety instruction. Sound like a plug? Only coz they really impressed with the whole thing from office to tour and the beers, food and animal refuge at the bottom. Oh yeah, they also hae the best t-shirts included in the package price!
Seriously though, people die doing this mountain biking trip, the most recent being a few months ago. Of course there are the obvious one's with testosterone fueled speed and guys losing control and sailing over the edge of one of the many 400m cliffs (one guy was rumoured to have been pulling a wheely as he sailed over...), but there are also some really tragic ones. Like the girl who was takin it really easy and safe, saw a car coming up, decided to get off her bike to let the car go past, got off on the wrong side of her bike (yeah, on this ride there is a wrong and right side of the bike), took a step backwards and over the edge of the aformentioned 400m drop... like I said, pretty tragic. Then there are the less scary but pretty horrible stoies as well. Like the chick
the week before being concused and losing her memory of her last two months worth of travel... average.
The day of the ride loomed large and I set off for the meeting place in La Paz to meet our Guide for the day, Lynn, a very cool South African chick. Gravity had two groups going down that day and the other group had Alistair, a kiwi guy who owns/runs the company (and a hostel in La Paz), as their guide. Another very cool guy. Both the guides a bit crazy as you would expect extreme mountain bikers to be…
Within a couple of hours we had reached the starting point at 4700m above sea level (the highest I've been yet) in the snowy mountains and were given our weapons for the descent… Kona mountain bikes with top components. Kitted out with helmets, goggles, warm gear etc, and prepped with our first safety brief, we held to custom and made an offering to Pachamama for a safe descent of the road (consisting of pouring some 95% alcohol over our front wheel and then taking a swig… pretty gross).
With some 95% alcohol on board, we're off!! Sweet, the
first part of the descent is on the sealed New Road and consists of sitting back and going for gold, passing buses, trucks, cars and other bikers who get in the way!! Pretty cool!! Even though these first sections are pretty easy, the group had it´s first casualty… not following the safety advice of “watch your following distance”, and misjudging slightly the quality of the components (the brakes) on the bikes, one of the girls hit the front picks a bit too hard and sailed clear over the top of the handle bars! Not too much damage done though, so all good. The ride is separated into sections with stops to regroup and rest. The first couple of stops were at police check points, one of which was a narcotics check point. This area is full of cocaine factories and marijuana plantations. This stop was pretty interesting because they aren’t only looking for the cocaine/narcotics itself but also for all of the ingredients required to cut it down from the coca leaves. This list of illegal ingredients, basically the shopping list for cocaine manufacture, is proudly shown on a huge billboard… information on how to make cocaine anyone? Not convinced
this is the best idea the narcotics cops ever had…
So onto the real Worlds Most Dangerous Road… the three metre wide, dirt/gravel/rock track with the up-to-400m drops over the side!! Sweeeeett!! Won’t go into to much detail about individual sections, but some of the challenges included large areas of bare rock, loose gravel, loose large rocks, waterfalls, the cliffs and really wanting to look over the edge while traveling at high speeds… all of this while trying to find the balance between keeping up with the front guide, staying in control of the bike (I chose a hard tail bike, it was cheaper but harder to control without rear suspension. I was glad I did tough coz both the guides rode hard tails and I didn’t want to look like a wuss!), not going over the edge of the cliff on one side or into the cliff on the other and being first (yeah there’s that macho race mentality thing again… get in there boy!!)!!
THRILLS!!! SPILLS (not me of course)!! And the RUSH!! SWEEEEETTT!!!!!
Can’t say to much else, it’s another one of those activities/places with sights, sounds, smells and feelings I can’t describe. Had
an amazing ride and would highly recommend it to anyone, especially to those with a small mountain biking death wish.
At the bottom, we had totaled four crashes (one guy accounted for two of them himself... testosterone + over estimating skill + conditions = injury) with two requiring some patching up. I volunteered my patching skills and applied liberal amounts of painfull antiseptic to large and deep areas of gravel rash... sadistic fun!!
The animal refuge was a really cool way to end the ride. A really relaxing atmosphere with heaps of animals around. The aim of the game with this place isn't to rehab and release the animals, but to give them refuge, so interaction is allowed, and encouraged by the animals themselves. Monkeys crawling into laps, birds sitting on the backs of chairs, Coatis climbing all over you!! Very cool.
After a hot shower, change of clothes, a good feed and a few beers we were given the options fo the return to La Paz... the old road or the new one! Strangely, the new road takes longer, and the old road is now safer because there is virtually no traffic on it. Of course
It´s all downhill from here...
One of the lethal corners/cliffs that has claimed many lives. Can´t see it in the photo but there is the remains of a bus and a truck down here the old road was chosen as most of us wanted to see what we had just ridden but at a more sedate and leisurely pace and as a passenger. The views were pretty spectacular! and the stops to look at the remains of buses/trucks etc and to hear more stories were pretty sobering.
All in all, a highly recommended day and one of my highlights for the trip so far!
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