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Published: June 23rd 2006
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Just a bit more to the left
On the Death road you have to drive on the left side (normally right). This was done to make it easier for the downhill traffic to see the oncoming traffic. Uphill traffic has the right of was as if they would stop they most likely couldn’t start again.. The “World most dangerous road” or “Death Road” as it is lovingly called by some tour operators in La Paz is a 40 km stretch of dirt road on between La Cumbre and Coroico just outside of La Paz. The stats say that on average 20 vehicles go over the unprotected edges and around 100 people loose their lives on this stretch of road per year. The cliff drops in some places a couple of hundred meters before gravity is defeated by well ground.
The reasons why there are so many accidents is that the dirt on the road is very fine and therefore slipper and the road is in most places only 2.5-3 m wide. In winter this is even made worse by heavy rains. Oh and did I mention that the road is two way. There was an attempt to make the traffic go one way in the morning and the other in the afternoon but the locals didn’t like it so this was abandoned. They even started building a new road to replace the dangerous stretch but so far it took seven years and they are just halfway. It looks like, thanks to corruption, it will take another
Our bikes
Quite good bikes with excellent breaks as you would like to have if it goes constantly downhill 7 to complete it.
The biggest accident happened when a bus went over the cliff and took over one hundred passengers and the driver down. The curious thing is not that all people died but how they got 100 people into one bus!
What do you think responsible people like I would do on such a road? Yes your right they would hop on a mountain bike put their helmet on and ride down this exact road and a bit more. Why? Well its 60 km downhill and 40 km of that on an unpaved road. All that down from 4700m to 1200m that’s why. Who would miss such an opportunity?
Before all the mums and mums to be in this world scream out “idiot” let me assure you that it sounds more exciting and dangerous than it actually is. The whole mountain bike trip is well organized with pretty good bikes and professional guides. At least my operator seems to have professional guides. A friend of mine told me that she passed a group of which the guide rode over the cliff…
Not to forget that we were protected by Pachamama as we had a sip of
One for Pachamama and one for the road
Having the obligatory drink for safe arrival before we started 95% alcohol for her and gave (speak spilled) some for her before we started riding. Talk about drink driving. One thing our guides insisted upon was that we had to stop and get of our bike when a truck came towards us. Not a bad thing once you realize that the road is sometimes just as wide as a truck and a bike. Not much space for errors. On the other hand the guides didn’t have a big problem to overtake trucks which went the same direction as we did. Not that easy when you do not have a lot of space for errors and you can hardly see anything because the truck leaves a cloud of dust behind it.
In the beginning the guides were a bit cautious and took it slow and stopped often but in the end they let it roll.
In all it was great fun and I’m glad that there were only a few uphill sections as riding a bike uphill at such altitude is not easy and I also had a slight cold which developed in a pretty big one after the ride. Wonder why…
Next stop back top La Paz
and then to the Amazon in Rurrenabaque
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misswendyo
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Awesome
This looks awesome! You truly are ACTION RALPH. W