BIKING DOWN THE “DEATH ROAD”

10. June 2011

Most roads in Bolivia are in fairly bad conditions sometimes rather a path than a road. And there are a lot of dangerous roads. But there is one road – going from La Paz to the Amazon region Yungas - that is more dangerous than the other roads called El camino de la muerte (death road). Five years ago a new asphalt road was opened but before all traffic to the yungas had to go on that road – cars, buses, trucks. Mostly this dirt road is about three meters wide; on the right side is the mountain, on the left side a drop-off a couple of hundred meters deep. In addition to that, it's a rather steep road. In less than 70 km it descends from 4650 m at La Cumbre pass to 1200 m in Coroico. I don't understand how trucks and buses could go down that road – in both directions. But I do understand how 200 – 300 people could die here yearly.
Read an interesting description of this trip down the Death Road on BBC News.
Now most traffic goes over the new road and the old road is one of Bolivia's main tourist attraction. Crazy backpackers going down by mountain bike.
After beeing picked up at the hotel from the tour company we went by minibus to La Cumbre, the start of the downhill bike ride. There it was rather cold and there were icicles along the road. The first part of the trip was an eight kilometer downhill ride on the new asphalt road. Riding was very easy and the road wide and fairly good. But overtaking trucks by bike was a little weird. After an hour or so we arrived at the “real” Death Road. The road was very narrow with lots of curves. Going down full speed wasn't an option for me. Far too dangerous. Interestingly traffic going down is on the left side of the road (although normally traffic is on the right side). This meant biking close to the edge instead of biking close to the mountain. The ride was interesting and the landscape was changing from high mountain scenery to jungle vegetation. The scenery was amazing. Deep valleys, green mountains, a few waterfalls.