Surviving the world's most dangerous road (but picking up unwanted hitch hikers)

Another three weeks have passed and our journey through Bolivia is now at an end, leaving just Brazil and Argentina to cover before I head back for Christmas and put a fullstop at the end of my travels. For now at least…

Firstly I survived “Death Road” and looking back I'm glad we did it now. When I was working in London back in July, someone sent an email slideshow with vertigo-inducing photos of this treacherously winding road where apparently lorries and buses regularly career off the vertical drops at the edge. Not to mention the odd mountain biker. My reaction at the time was a mental footnote “must not go there” - however within a couple of minutes another email popped up from Bernard who was clearly very excited about the prospect. I hoped he’d forget about it with all the distractions of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru but realised my game was up when we eventually arrived in La Paz to find every hostel and travel agent crammed with posters selling the trip.

I suppose in hindsight it was also obvious the beginning of the ride was going to be sub-zero, after all you drop from nearly 5,000m at the start to just above 1,000m over a course of about 43 miles. Dressed like über cycling-nerds with fluorescent orange jackets, helmets and gloves (all that was missing were the trouser clips) we freewheeled down in biting cold for about 20 minutes. On the way down I spotted something strange coming into focus at the side of the road ahead. At first it looked like an oversized white urn with sticky-outy things protruding at right angles from it. Which I suppose would make for a rather odd-looking urn in fact, but remember this was all happening whilst hurtling along with my eyes streaming in the wind. When my brain eventually assembled all the information into a coherent image, I rather wished it hadn’t. It was in fact a frozen dog, about the size of a labrador, surreally lying on its side with all four legs stuck out straight and perpendicular, as if moments before it had been standing up and someone had just tipped it over. I wondered whether this was a bad omen and whether I might spot a frozen person next, but at least I reasoned the unfortunate mutt hadn’t been part of a cycling tour…

Overall it was a great experience, even if at times you had to ignore the sheer drop to one side and just focus on falling into the hill if that is what you were going to do. I have to admit there were moments of utter fear when I stupidly allowed too much speed to build up - my body went rigid with hands cramping, clenched on the handles trying to brake while the wheels complained, sliding and skitttering on the loose stones and gravel. In the end though my worst injury was to my pride. When we came to a small stream crossing the road, unlike other riders who had dismounted I decided to cycle straight across - after all what are mountain bikes for? Unfortunately for me it was deceptively deep: not only did the water go halfway up the wheels but the other bank also turned out to be a vertical wall which Muggins here drove straight into, resulting in groin flying onto handlebars (ouch, haven’t done that since I was about 11) and then as a result of forward motion being suddenly cancelled, tipping sideways into the water. Really slick...

After La Paz, we did a trip to the Bolivian Amazon basin, near a town called Rurrenabaque in the north-west of the country. To get there from La Paz you have the choice of a 24-hour bus journey or a 1-hour flight with either an airline called Amazonas or TAM, the latter being the commercial arm of Bolivia’s Air Force. If anyone is reading this in Bolivia and debating which one to take as we did - trust me, go with Amazonas. We already knew TAM had a reputation for delaying and cancelling flights but decided to take our chances... not only was our 8am flight delayed until 5pm, they also landed at a different airport and then made us pay for the extra bus journey to the town. On top of this, when we asked to change the date of our return flight (as the delay meant we'd missed the first day of our jungle tour) TAM even had the nerve to charge a “Penalty Fee”. We found out we’d been lucky though - many people who were meant to be on the same flight were told there was no room for them because of people who’d not been able to get on the plane the day before. What a shambles…

The area of the Amazon basin we went to was called the Pampas, a wetlands area full of Alligators (not crocodiles! No one on our tour actually knew the difference when the question was put, but for the benefit of anyone interested see info from en.wikipedia.org at the bottom of this page*), birds, Capybaras (the world’s largest rodent) and Anacondas. Yes - the last creature was the one I really wanted to lay eyes upon, but when the time came for our hunt on the second morning the heavens opened and we ended up prowling around marshes and bogland in the kind of rain that’s so heavy it almost looks fake, as if from a movie set. Several hours later we were all drenched, no sign of any anacondas but at least I have some amusing photos of Bernard looking distinctly unimpressed in his poncho. The next morning another group brought a baby one back to the camp for some token pictures, disappointingly it was about the size of a grass snake but at least we could technically cross it off the list.

The best bit for me was the last day when we swam in the river, which was perhaps unwise considering several eight-foot alligators were basking on the edge of every bank - our guide assured us the resident “Pink Dolphins” would swim around us and protect us from them though. Very reassuring. I wondered what if one of the dolphins should take a silent dislike to one of us - or if they had a secret pact with the alligators to slip them the odd backpacker here and there…

Looking back I suspect the biggest threat was not the alligators or piranhas (thankfully the latter were minnow-sized) but all the micro-organisms swimming along in the murky brown soup. In fact I think it may have been where we picked up some uninvited hitchhikers, but more of that later...

Our next port of call was a town called Potosi, apparently the highest city in the world at over 4,000m, and once one of the largest cities in America, at its zenith rivalling London as a result of its abundant silver mines. Nowadays the precious metal has been mined away (most of it shipped to Spain over the centuries) but there are still around 15,000 men labouring in the mines every day to extract zinc, lead and tin from the ore. We took a tour of one of the main mines, which was still very much in use. After being given protective clothing, helmets and headlights, we made our way along a winding passage, several times having to stand to the side as a cart of rubble came trundling along the tracks. After walking a couple of hundred metres or so the air become warm, stale and acrid, the smallest slip or scrabble of feet sending dust billowing into the beam of our headlights; we had to tie handkerchiefs around our faces to avoid coughing fits.

By the time we got to a passage that wound steeply downwards, deeper into the mountain, we’d already lost a third of our group to claustrophobia - the guide escorting them back to the entrance. I tried not to think about where I actually was as we slid and crawled further down, at many points on hands and knees as the passage became so narrow. Eventually we emerged into a dark chamber where a man had been at work for several hours, manually hammering a foot-long hole in which to insert a stick of dynamite. Our guide interpreted for us as he only spoke Quechua: he was aged 36 (although he looked at least ten years older) and had been working in the mines since he was 14. Most of the time he and his family worked five or six days a week but sometimes seven, also as the mines never close he told us they often work through the night in order to earn more money - a typical salary for a miner is about US$50 dollars a month - not very much when you consider many of them have 3 or 4 children to support.

Sitting there in the dark listening to this man speak I had an overwhelming realisation that life working behind a desk in a big city really is OK. I don’t think I’m alone in getting to a stage in life where one thinks there must be “more”, or one questions one's purpose. It’s not the first time things have been bluntly put into context on my travels but probably the most metaphorical. The average age of a miner is less than 50: the accumulation of years working in this harsh environment often results in fatal sillicosis of the lungs.

We brought all the miners gifts from the local town - soft drinks to quench their thirst, coca leaves (which they chew all day long) and dynamite. That’s right - dynamite. As I made my way from the market with a couple of sticks in my bag I really wished I’d paid more attention in school chemistry classes about the stability of nitroglycerine which was clearly printed on the side. Our guide said they were perfectly safe and you could even light it with a cigarette lighter without it detonating (I declined his offer of a demonstration) but it was still hard to relax as the bus trundled along, several grams of high explosive juddering around at my feet. Later in the afternoon, once we were out of the mines, we set off a spare one on open ground about 50 metres away: the resulting explosion made me instinctively utter a profanity and left my ears ringing.

After Potosi we travelled to Bolivia’s main attraction - Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. At over 4,000 square miles it's roughly 25 times the size of the Bonneville Salt Flats in the US; for miles in every direction there is nothing but white salt, baked hard like concrete, smoothed flat like an ice-rink except for scattered tyre tracks and strange hexagonal ridges from where the rain falls and evaporates. (I have no idea why they form that shape, I suspect my cousin John would be the man to explain this phenomenon - when you have a moment, be a good chap and let us know at the bottom of the page please, I'll buy you a pint when I get back if you get it right!)

The sun is also blisteringly hot there - the altitude and reflective effect of the salt means even Factor-30 (for people like me at least) is as effective as slapping on shampoo. But we had a lot of fun taking photos - because of the flat featureless scenery you can really play around with perspectives - as hopefully you'll see in some of the photos on this and the next page.

One of the last towns we went through was Tupiza, perhaps most famous as the place where Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid were finally gunned down by the Bolivian Army. The scenery is straight out of a Western movie: dusty plains with scattered shrubs and cactuses, punctuated by monolithic red stone cliffs and toothy ridges - even driving through it on the bus I fount myself mentally humming Ennio Morricone’s iconic scores for A Fistful Of Dollars, and The Good The Bad and The Ugly...I wished I'd had them on my iPod.

Whilst here we joined a one-day horse trek to see more of the scenery. Bernard being allergic to horses had in anticipation already taken antihistamine tablets after breakfast; what he hadn’t prepared for was, out of a bunch of placid looking horses, being handed the big aggressive alpha male, whose name we later found out was Bronco. As in “Bucking”. I have to say I was in stitches in the first half hour as the two of them fought each other along the way - if the horse decided it wanted to eat a hedge it would do so no matter how much he pulled the reins or dug his heels into its side.

What was absolutely terrifying though was the first moment his horse broke into a gallop. To my surprise and horror my steed, which had been happily trotting along in second place, immediately followed suit catching me completely unprepared. I didn’t have time to rearrange the reins - instead I grabbed hold of the saddle with both hands and was now holding on for dear life as it thundered along the ground, threatening to shake me off at any moment. At the same time it also dawned on me that unless I trusted the damn animal to slow down and not gallop off with my corpse into the desert, I’d have to switch hands at some point in order to pull on the reins. Eventually I managed to do it and somehow seeing Bernard’s expression and realising he’d passed through the same moment of pure fear, I couldn’t stop laughing… perhaps a little manically.

In fact we had another moment later in the day where the two of them burst into a gallop again, this time even more violently than before. Our guide had told us earlier that the two horses were “good amigos” but this time even he took a long time to get them to stop, racing along beside us. The next day I could hardly move: I was expecting to be “saddlesore” and have an aching posterior but it was my upper torso and back which felt like I’d been in a boxing match. I suppose trying to look dignified during all that galloping had taken more muscle power than I’d thought.

So here we are now, a couple of hours from the Brazilian border having taken a nightbus and two planes to get here from southern Bolivia. We're both in need of a decent hotel to clean away the dust and grime, shave off the Robinson Crusoe beards and generally return to normal civilised attire. But going back to that moment I mentioned earlier about uninvited hitchhikers...

It started on the way to the airport this morning: a little belch in the back of the taxi. Bernard scowled moments later and asked if it was me that had just broken wind. By the time we boarded the plane there was nothing I could do to stop more and more escaping - it was like my stomach had suddenly become a sulphurous, volcanic vent. As my condition worsened I began to feel nauseous; looking over at Bernard it was clear it was having a similar if not worse effect on him. A quick bit of googling this afternoon showed it to be one of the key symptoms of Giardiasis caused by an amoeba-like parasite called Giardia Lamblia. Also known in some countries as "Beaver Fever" (!)

We've both been suffering from recurring stomach gripes, cramps and frantic dashes to the bathroom over the last few weeks - the chances are we've been giving free rides to hundreds of these micro-sized beasties, perhaps since the day we swam in the jungle river. Although with the state of hygiene in Bolivia we really can't tell where it all began. Regardless, we wrote down the names and bought the antibiotics needed to treat the ailment and a whopping dose of 4 elephant-strength tablets seems to have done the trick - although only time will tell...

On that note it's time for us to leave for Brazil, a little more of a challenge as the language now switches to Portuguese and I only know how to say thank you. Still, at least they'll think I'm polite!




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*The Difference Between Alligators and Crocs (For anyone who's interested!)

Alligators differ from crocodiles principally in having wider and shorter heads, with more obtuse snouts; crocodiles have a longer narrower snout, with eyes farther forward.

If one looks at an alligator and then a crocodile, one will notice a difference in their mouths: only the upper teeth are visible when an alligator's mouth is closed, while a crocodile's mouth will reveal both upper and lower teeth, as their fourth tooth sticks out from the lower jaw, rather than fitting neatly into the upper jaw.

Crocodiles also tend to have green eyes, while alligators have brown ones.

Another distinction can be drawn between the jaws of the two animals. Crocodiles' jaws are much more narrow and are used to tear and grip on prey. By contrast, alligators' jaws are meant to crush bones

(There you go - just think how interesting you'll be at dinner parties now, thanks to me!)

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