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Worlds Most Dangerous Road leads from La Paz to Coroico, and is the only option of travelling to and from these places. The road begins at a high altitude where fog can make visibility difficult and ends at a low sub tropical climate. The road surface is slippery and muddy with large loose rocks from the hillsides above. Some parts of the road are no more than 3.2m wide with no guadrails and a vertical drop of 2000m is not uncommon. Further still the lorry drivers that precariously use the road are often drunk and careless and do long stretches of driving without sleep. These treacherous conditions and bad drivers have caused many deaths along the road. And 1995 the Inter-American Development Bank christened it´Worlds Most Dangeroud Road´. So, what does Bolivia do about it...... turn it into a tourist attraction! Of course.
And what did I do, mountain bike down it!
Leaving Amy and Lolly behind (of course!) our tour (Gravity) set off from La Paz to our starting point, La Cumbre, some 4700m high by a beautiful lake, yes, pretty dame chilli. Layered up as ever in Bolivia our guide talked us through some safety precautions (thankfully).
Our Instrutor Dave
Just informing us that the part where he's pointing is the narrowest and slipperiset, but can you cycle through it real quick, as you don't wanna pass it when a lorry comes. We were told that we would have to cycle on the left hand side of the road, basically just in the white line from the vertical drop, because apparently this is safer......! By this point I was a little dubious as to what to expect, but very excited. All geared up and ready to go we hear a loud crash in the back round, everyone looks towards the noise, oh... its only that a lorry has driven into a car. Not quite the sight to be seen as your about to embark on the worlds most dangerous road, and what a perfect example of crap lorry drivers that can´t bothered to avoid a car, so what hope have we got. Great.
We started our descent on beautiful wind-swept, steep, twisting roads. This section is part of the new road which is tarmacked. This gave us a chance to get acquainted to the bikes and the speed. You can´t hear anything apart from the wind rushing passed.... and the horns of the trucks that want you to move the fuck out their way.
Every so often we´d stop and our guide would check that everythings ok, and implement a
little more fear into our faces, by telling us stories of tourists with broken bones or worse. Just before we approached the actual ´Worlds Most Dangerous Road´he told us of a guy, who was one of the lucky ones that fell off the cliff edge. He was lucky as he was only in a coma for 3 weeks instead of dying, and the last thing this guy could remember was watching an eagle.... "so kids, keep your eyes on the road".
Time for the infamous narrow dirt road that is cut precariously into the side of the mountain and descends 2000m to our left and overhanging rocks and cascading waterfalls to our right, riding through mist, low clouds and dust. Knowing this and knowing that our support jeep only has 60m rescue rope, and Bolivia only has two helicopters and neither are used to rescue fallen tourists, I was pretty much shitting myself. As I was riding down, fast, but safe, I thought to myself this has got to be by far the stupidist thing I've ever done, but was loving ever minute of it! The section of road that is only 3.2m wide, (so just enough space for
a lorry to pass), is the slipperiest part of the road, and our instructor kindly informs us that he wants us to cycle really fast through this part as not to be stuck in the pot holes, or river running off the edge from the waterfall above. Oh ok then....
After the most dangerous parts we started to get on streches of road that are were still dangerous, and you can still hurt yourself but there was no element of death involved from falling off the cliff. These parts were awesome (sorry to sound like an American jock, but they're really were). By this point we were all really used to the bikes and the bumps, and I became a real speed junkie. Loved it!
Our finish line was in a lovely little animal sanctury called La Senda Verde, where spider, howler and squirrel monkey's ran free (was at one with them). And a well needed and deserved buffet lunch. By far the best trip I've done so far. Had so much fun!
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