Death Road - the world's most dangerous road and La Senda Verde

---

J:

When we first heard about Death Road Holly said she had a bad feeling about it and made me promise to not go down it. It is rare that Holly makes such a stand, and since it was not on my list of must-do things on our travels I agreed. However, the closer to La Paz we got, the more we heard about it and the more excited about the ride I got. Under weight of expectation Holly relented and I booked myself on the trail. Holly didn't change her mind entirely though and instead took a bus down to La Senda Verde, the animal sanctuary where the ride finishes.

I opted for pretty much the most expensive tour operator of the trail as they are supposed to be the safest - we'd heard stories from a guy we met in La Paz who went down with a cheaper company and experienced his pedals falling off on the ride! Although of course a better company won't guarantee a safe trip - the most sophisticated bike and helmet in the world won't help much if you fall down a 600m cliff.

Anyway, on the day itself we woke to the sound of torrential downpour. This being the rainy season shouldn't have come as a great surprise, but was unwelcome nonetheless. We got a bus up to 4,700m and the start of the ride and were greeted with an even blanket of snow and a sign ominously warning that 43 people have died this year on this road alone. It certainly did something to sharpen the concentration.

We set off in atrocious weather - short of being icy the conditions couldn't have been much worse. With the wind and rain whipping into our faces, opening my eyes was becoming increasingly difficult yet equally important, so I adopted a medium of constantly blinking to satisfy both the ocular discomfort and desire not to fall off the edge.

The first half of the trail was on tarmac to allow us time to gain confidence on the bikes. I started off very slowly and barely lifted my hands from the brakes, conscious that aquaplaning was a very real danger. After an hour or so of this we turned down into the narrow, broken gravel track that is Death Road. Luckily by this point the weather had cleared so while my now saturated clothes kept me freezing, at least visibility had improved significantly. In Bolivia, as with most of the continental world, driving on the right is the custom and it was with some relief that the massive drop was off to the left hand side of the road so that puts a few extra feet between us and oblivion. Unfortunately though, and for some unexplained reason, on this particular stretch of road this is switched and we had to cycle on the left hand side, making it a little more precarious.

It was much more difficult to maintain stability on this surface, but having accustomed ourselves to the bikes by now I was able to attack the corners with much more verve. In fact as the trail progressed the exhilaration and pure joy of hurtling downwards increased and the ride seemed to be over very quickly though in reality it had taken three hours to traverse the 76km across and 3,600m down.

H:

My trip down to La Senda Verde was very different. I left Joe in the early hours of the morning in the pouring rain for his death road "experience", slightly ominous I thought but Joe reassured me he'd use the brakes... Not being such a thrill seeker I decided to catch a little bus along the safer new road to Coroico which is not sold for it's thrills and deathly spills. The little bus turned out to be a minivan and I am pretty sure these were just people who decided to make some extra money en route to Coroico with the space in their van as their was certainly no official way as to how this whole system worked. I hopped in one with promises of leaving in five minutes... five minutes of Bolivian time - one hour later and we were off. The driver had managed to pile in more people than seats by standing on his van roof for an hour or so shouting out his destination to the people in the markets nearby.

It was still very wet and driving through the markets out of La Paz it was quite funny to see this didn't stop the local women from dressing up. They were still wearing their full skirts and rather colonial shawl outfit with bowler hat on top but now with plastic bags wrapped around their hats. Must be the fashion as they were all doing it.

The road to Coroico while safer still seemed quite treacherous, numerous landslides meant that we were quite often pushed off the beaten track and a little to close to cliff edge for my liking and I worried about what Joe was going through. It was however some of the prettiest landscape I had seen on our South American trip, starting off in the clouds and snow capped mountains above La Paz (the llamas didn´t seems to mind the cold being knee deep in snow) and winding our way down the other side and into the Yungas, tropical, hot and muggy and all in 3 hours.

The driver had agreed to drop me on the doorstep of La Senda Verde, where we were staying with the animals for a couple of nights, however he changed his mind when a friend wanted to be picked up and I was out on the curb with a point in which I hoped was the right direction. Walking for an hour uphill with the sweaty heat and a slightly overpacked backpack was quite unpleasant and just when I thought I was completely lost in the Bolivian wilderness with only the mosquitoes to keep me company a couple of local women drove round the corner and offered to take me there. I don't usually jump in cars with strange faces but they smiled a lot and had a fan so in I hopped! It was actually only just around the next corner.

Over the river on the rickety bridge and past the big old lovely guard dogs and guard Macaws I found Joe and his team all alive and in the restaurant. Phew! Reunited we went on search of the animals. The sanctuary is made up of hurt and lost animals who have been found or brought to the sanctuary and then they are looked after by all the volunteers who shovel poo, feed bears and get lots of very sweet monkey love. We found some of these monkeys by the pool and got a bit of a fright we they treated us like their tress and were swinging off arms and bags and all. Joe made friends very quickly with one wee Capuchin and was perched on his head grooming his hair and beard... perhaps being so hairy is why the monkey felt so very at home on Joe hehe. I tried very hard to make friends with the shy Spider monkeys who has the sweetest faces and by the last day my persistence paid off and I got a very long limbed cuddle.

The first evening we hung out with the volunteers in the Hungarian bar and ate goulash. The Senda Verde isn't bandied about in all the tour agencies which was quite nice for Joe and I as it meant we were the only guests and got the animal attention all to ourselves and perhaps nice for the volunteers too. However tonight was poker night and they seemed quite excited to have some fresh players in the mix, especially considering Joe and I are very much amateurs. While Joe sings about his win against a professional it still was his first time and I never having played before. I don't think they were expecting us to shake down the house, or whatever the cool card term is, but this is obviously our game and we came first and second! I like poker. The volunteers beaten and poor went off to bed with promises to take us to feed the bear in the morning. I wasn't sure if this was a threat or not.

Thank goodness we were actually just watching this feeding in the morning. The bear had banana, cereal and yogurt and my Winnie-the-Pooh favourite honey sandwiches for breakfast! Gobble gobble gobble. He didn't look mean at all with honey smeared on his lips.

There were lots of hilarious animal moments as is often the way with watching animal moments I suppose. We had been warned about the coati (a raccoon relation) and his nasty moods and teeth but that just seemed to spur on the naughty monkeys and their game of pull the tails. Dog and coati soon got quite tired of the game and turned on the monkeys who were then a little helpless caught on the ground out of their safe treedom. A slightly sticky situation in which Joe commented was indeed a Mexican standoff. The giant dog, long limbed monkey, old grumpy coati and very cheeky Squirrel monkeys looked a bit silly not waiting to see who was going to make the next move. We left them to it but I bet the coati won.

He also won Joe's affection one afternoon (or more likely scared him into it) and I caught the coati nuzzling Joe's ear by the pool one morning. Apparently this was very odd coati behaviour. Perhaps it has something to do with the hairy again but the animals were all vying for hairy Joe's attention.

Enough animal talk though... it was a lot of fun getting so close to these animals but we are off into the wild next and I don't think I will be cuddling any of the animals we find in the Jungle.

Missing you all! Sorry my blogs get a bit waffley and long x

---