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Published: February 16th 2006
La Cumbre... 4600 m
A small pray before descending down The Death Road. By the way this is only one of two roads through the Andes in Bolivia.I have to wonder how places named such things as "The Death Road" can prove to be so alluring to travellers. For me, I think places like this are a means to shock myself out of the complacency of wandering around churches and grazing through touristy markets. After a few days in La Paz, that kind of shock treatment was definitely in order.
Regardless, some might question the sanity of willingly hopping on a mountain bike to ride down a road that has more fatalities than any other in the world. But that is exactly what we did, and it was a blast.
The road itself goes from La Paz, high in the altiplano, crosses the Andes, then drops over 4000 metres to Coroico and the tropical lowlands. In honesty, the road isn´t nearly as dangerous as the name suggests... It´s the drivers on the road. But that isn´t to say the road couldn´t chew you up and spit you out, never to be seen again.
Starting from La Cumbre (4600m), the first half of the 80 km descent is all paved, and makes for some very fast, cruisey riding past through the peaks of the Andean Mountains. Very
Getting Ready....
Randy is getting very excited about jumping onto his RM Switch... beautiful, to say the least. We hardly needed the fully-suspended "Rocky Mountain Switch" bikes that we were riding, but we really do like to ride in style. We were apparently pretty lucky to have sunshine at the summit, especially considering its the rainy season still.
The last half of the road we got to put the bike to a bit of use. The rode is all dirt, very narrow, with precipitous drops that seem to go on forever. The numerous crosses and monuments along the way were testament to the hazard this road poses. The monument in Hebrew honouring a poor Israeli girl who road off a cliff on her bike was particularly disturbing, considering our situation.
The situation wasn´t improved when it started to torrentially rain for most of the last half. The rain was so hard that we couldn´t see with our sunglasses on. Visibility was only marginally better with the glasses off. There were brief moments when instinct caused me to close my eyes to avoid the spray of rain and mud. Nothing like going down the Death Road with your eyes closed.
Obviously, as I am writing this entry, we came out unscathed.
Blue Bird Conditions
The cold and sunny conditions at the top were very different from what we found 1500 m lower! The only unfortunate aftermath were the running shoes that were soaked for days afterwards. On the positive side, we now get to wear our "I survived the Death Road" t-shirt with pride. There was no shirt that said "I nearly survived the Death Road".
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